Business View Magazine | June 2019

382 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JUNE 2019 is so cheap. Sixty percent of the market is gas. We don’t sell gas appliances, only electrical appliances. The gas units are moving away from tank style to instantaneous, and then from instantaneous to condensing instantaneous – that’s the latest trend – which is the highest efficiency gas unit. On the electric side, you have the domestic hot water heat pumps that we manufacture - as do other companies, like A. O. Smith, Rheem, and Bradford White, and we anticipate that market for domestic hot water heat pumps will grow dramatically over the next few years.” BVM: Are consumers becoming more demanding with regard to ‘smart’ features and design? Wetherby: “Educating consumers about efficiency and/or renewable aspects of energy consumption is an ongoing thing, especially, with the trends toward automation and integration with customers’ smart phones and computers. Even though it’s a bit of overkill for water heating. We did make a color change on our tankless, whole- house water heaters, and that is quite an aesthetic improvement. It’s appliance white and fits in anywhere – a simple change but I think it will be quite effective.” Stiebel: “A lot of companies already have an app where you can log into your water heater and change the temperature on your smart phone. We are working on it; it’s not something you’d use very often, but it’s something we must offer if we want to sell those kinds of appliances. At the end of the day, it’s a cylinder that you have in your garage or your basement, but they do come in different colors, and there’s a control panel on all the units. The quality of the product, the reliability, and the reputation of the brand are very important. Nowadays, people can go online and read product reviews; with the consumer so much more informed, if you don’t have a very good product, you’re not going to sell anything. People go online, find our product, and buy it through the online channels, including major retailers like homedepot.com , amazon.com, and lowes.com .”