Technological and design innovation: how Idral will face a new year full of challenges
The situation of these years 2020, 2021 and the new 2022 brought us to completely new moments never faced in the past due to the worldwide spread of the COVID virus, which made us rethink and change our system of living and working.
After a stalemate in 2020, 2021 saw a month-on-month growth in the demand for material both in Italy and abroad, which generated a disproportionate increase in the cost of all raw materials and a great difficulty in procurement. Another issue we will have to face is the cost of energy, which will weigh heavily on production costs.
With all these new challenges, companies like Idral, must be able to react more quickly and effectively; it is precisely at these times that our investments in new technologies, production systems and innovations in our production chain allow us to be more agile and flexible and enable us to deal with these sudden changes.
In spite of the not insignificant criticalities related to procurement and the rising costs of raw materials and components, Idral has proved to be up to the challenges of this historical moment, being able to look beyond and not just 'ahead', investing for years in an increasingly digitised and flexible production system. Idral is in a continuous process of development and implementation of Industry 4.0, making improvements to the production system every year with innovations in the process and with the development of technologies applied to the products, giving more and more emphasis also to design. In addition, we are concluding an important LEAN Manufacturing implementation path that allows us to be more and more efficient.
Design is an element that we have also started to develop on technical products such as ours: with the new Idral catalogue price list, in fact, we are presenting the new electronic tap "OTTO", with its extremely accurate aesthetics and with the possibility of unique customisations, the result of the collaboration with the designer Luca Papini, who, thanks to his creativity, has developed a line capable of attracting the attention of our public and creating pleasant and comfortable environments even outside the home. We are also launching a new multifunctional wall-mounted console in laminated plywood complete with faucets, soap dispenser, electronically controlled hand dryer and mains power supply, which completes the 4all series with an even more compact design. We complete our range with new anti-limescale water conditioners and anti-bacterial SANIJET faucets equipped with anti-bacterial SANIJET jet breakers.
The difficulties of moving freely between different territories and countries have prevented us from maintaining the pace of our intense business activity in recent times, but it has pushed us towards the development of new channels such as digital marketing, webinars and the use of technology in general to keep us connected with our customers. This year, however, we also want to resume our in-presence sales activity, which will see us present first in the Russian market with the Aquatherm fair, followed by the MCE (Mostra Convegno Expocomfort) fair in Milan, and finally we will also be present at Cersaie in Bologna. In addition, we will continue to participate in informative webinars for designers, which allow us to give visibility to the brand and educate participants on our solutions and innovations. Our technical sales promoter will continue to be on hand to give advice to facilitate the design process. In addition, the BIM of the products, which has been on Idral's website for a year now, has brought an important benefit to designers, facilitating their work. Since the beginning of the year, the new restyling of the website has been presented, which is much more intuitive and immediate for consultation, full of useful information and news; moreover, on the homepage you can find the new company video, which lets you enter our production reality to touch who we are.
by Riccardo Poletti
Sales and Marketing Director