Faced with a challenging residential market, developers and builders have to rethink how they can make their project stand apart.
Increasingly, financially-led incentives such as deposit payments and rental guarantees are leading the pack. The question to be asked is, how will these incentives reflect in the eyes of your client?
It’s time to think outside the box and review new opportunities to enhance your project.
One area that provides rich ground for differentiation is the kitchen. Through careful appliance selection to value-add products that enhance your client’s lifestyle, you can provide new elements that will resonate with your target market.
We had a chat with Shriro Commercial’s general manager, Brad Street, for ideas on how developers, builders and architects can get more out of their chosen kitchen brands.
Shriro Commercial provides leading kitchen, sink and tap brands, including Omega, Blanco and Neil Perry Kitchens, to Australian builders, developers and architects.
“Projects can look at a multi-brand approach for their kitchens, allowing them to tweak their offering to different parts of the market, or potentially through upgrade and value add options,” Street said.
“We’ve often seen that kitchen appliances fulfil the basic need of fleshing out the kitchen.
“However, consumers are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to kitchen brands and by providing new options, you can show how your project’s kitchen meets the needs of the contemporary consumer.”
Depending on the diversity of your project’s target market, having different kitchen brands and enhanced products provides a signal to your client for where the development sits.
For example, having a contemporary brand for entry level and a premium brand for larger scale units provides new opportunities and stories to tell for your target market.
Your commercial partners will be able to tap into their brand expertise; working closely with you to match different brands to your project’s requirements.
The world of kitchen and lifestyle appliances provides you with more than just oven, rangehoods, cooktops, fridges and dishwashers.
Think about how you can choose products that resonate with Australian lifestyles. Two such products that come to mind are ironing centres and BBQs.
An ironing centre allows you to integrate power supplies and ironing boards that fold right up into a discrete cupboard. This intuitive product provides space saving opportunities and showcases thoughtful design.
Barbecues continue to form a cornerstone of outdoor Australian life. Appliance brands have scalable products that can meet the needs of space conscious designs, to more complex units that bring together cooking, washing and refrigeration all in the one package.
Limited time offers continue to resonate with the market and provide you with an opportunity to spur action into your target market.
One such way is via upgrade options for kitchen appliances. This can be approached in a variety of ways, such as offering value add options free of charge or providing more advanced kitchen appliances.
These upgrade options can be tied into a new marketing and communication push or recommunicated to interested buyers.
Leading kitchen appliance brands have a keen focus on providing experiences for their target market. Whether it be through appointing brand ambassadors to hands on cooking demos, you can look at tapping into these for your project.
Potential opportunities could be competitions to have a dining experience with a brand ambassador or a hands on cooking class. These money-can’t-buy experiences provide a critical opportunity to differentiate your message.
Additionally, kitchen appliance marketing opportunities can be interwoven through your project’s content marketing, public relations and events activities, allowing you to leverage their brand equity.
Working closely with your chosen kitchen appliance, sink and tap brands and merchant partners will allow you to get more out of your product selection and provide a clear point of difference in a crowded market.
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