“There are some exciting concepts being developed that will change the way the bathroom is utilized in the future,” said Michael Painter, senior industrial designer at Priority Designs, a product design firm that creates bath and kitchen products for American Standard, in a statement.  

“However, these new concepts must also address the reality of the water situation – namely that only 1 percent of the earth’s water is available for human consumption, and that while water is a renewable resource, the supply remains constant while the population is growing.”

Understanding the Customer
The company is the largest manufacturer of plumbing fixtures in Canada, specializing in bathroom, kitchen and commercial fixtures, which it sells to retail stores and construction wholesalers. American Standard produces its acrylic baths, whirlpools and shower stalls out of one manufacturing facility in Cornwall, Ontario.  

At its Mississauga, Ontario headquarters, the company runs a 1,800-person customer care center, where representatives handle roughly 60,000 customer services calls monthly from Canada and the United States. American Standard Canada’s strength lies in its ability to service the client, Kandilas notes.

Although most of the research and design at the company takes place in the United States, the Canada division plays a large part in determining the preferences of its customers. The company gathers information on the end-user through face-to-face interviews and through tracking purchasing trends. 

“A lot of our studies are done internally with engineers, designers and architects, homebuilders and plumbers,” Kandilas says. “We do a lot of one-on-one meetings to see what they are looking for in the marketplace and incorporate that into their market.”

Brand Loyalty
Although globalization has exposed the company to new inspirations for design, Kandilas says it has also made more apparent that quality and after-market services are more important to its customers than simply visually appealing fixtures.  

“We have always been able to use resources around the world, but it also opens up the market to the competition,” Kandilas says. “There seem to be a lot of copycat products, where [competitors] are not spending time on their research and development. They come up with products that are similar [to ours and sell them] at lower prices. They look for sales strictly on the design. What keeps us going is that we have the after-sales services and our warranties.