An interview with Simon Wu, VicePresident R&D and co-founder, Homa Appliances, below is the 2nd part of this interveiw.
How do you go about matching that brief-for-the-future?
For us, it’s not as much a brief-for-thefuture as it is the current status of our proposition! Homa is OEM by vocation,and serving global leading brands gave us invaluable insight into bothtechnology advances and consumer trends. Also, working in close collaborationwith suppliers, technical partners and University research organisations,helped us gain a unique understanding of which technologies are significant andwhen they are mature enough to be most effectively used and become mainstream.It is the case of No-Frost. We haven’t invented it, and it’s been around for awhile, but it’s come a long way and is now ready for us to take it to the nextlevel and systematically feature it across our entire range of products.
How do you do that, and how can you takeNo-frost to the next level?
Since our beginnings as OEM, which we stillproudly are, we’ve also achieved true ODM status and are offering client brandsour own take on the industry’s state-of-the-art. No-Frost is substantiallyabout having air constantly flowing around the cavity, removing excess humidityand preventing the formation of frost while at the same time ensuring eventemperature levels throughout the appliance. This way, food lasts longer and infresher conditions. Only, No-frost systems do use up energy. AI invertertechnology, applied to the compressor, helps offset the relative increase inenergy consumption and even improves the refrigerator’s overall energyperformance. The intelligent use of LED lighting also reduces energy consumptionand elevates the product from a design standpoint. In the end, we can offer aproduct that saves energy, with high-end features, and this on a scale fewother producers in the world can attain. As a matter of fact, we’re offeringexclusivity, but for all. With the timely introduction of leading-edge technologythat can be immediately scaled to any dimension, we are offering our clients akey competitive advantage. A claim we can sustain because in our industry, sizedoes matter, and our being specialised in cooling and at the same time havingsuch a large production footprint further boosts our relative scale, and edge,over generalist players, and offers our clients compelling and competitiveproducts in a record go-to-market timeframe.
What other innovations are you introducing?
We tend to infuse the same sense of carethat customers have toward their food into every aspect of development, and newfeatures in our products reflect this state of mind. We like to describe ourapproach to design and engineering as “nature-inspired”, though every intuitionis tried out and validated through testing and prototyping with external,specialised partners. So, just like no-frost is inspired by the air massesconstantly moving around in a natural context, we have introduced the newconcept of “Multi Climate Zones”. Different levels of temperature and humidityto preserve other foods in conditions that are best adapted to the mand asclose as possible to their natural environment. Sometimes we draw on the ideaof simple, traditional ways of keeping certain foods fresh and wholesome, likethe beds of ice in market stalls, which keep fish and seafood cool without freezingit. We recreated this situation in our “reverse cool” converter box that canreach temperatures below O°C. Flexibility and choice are also critical to a newcustomer experience, with larger boxes and drawers to accommodate largershopping, more freedom to organise the internal spaces of the refrigerator, andeven switch the basic function of individual compartments from refrigeration torefrigeration to freezing. New, intuitive and precise User Interface solutionsare also being introduced and will enhance customer experience, whichultimately is the principal driver of the current trends in our industry.
"We infuse the same sense of care that customershave toward their food into every aspect of development, and new features inour products."
Simon WU, Vice President R&Dandco-founder, Homa Appliances
