Business View Magazine | March 2019

40 their spa will look like in the backyard.” “In terms of our product development, we’re trying to accelerate our product development cycle,” Johnson adds. “Historically, this market has had an annually-based development strat- egy. You have a series of products that’s typi- cally launched in either the fourth quarter or early first quarter of the year; you run with that product during the course of the year; and then you make a series of changes the following year. We’re trying to move away from that, a little bit, because that becomes a bit problematic when you’re changing 25 to 50 percent of your prod- ucts within a short window. It puts a heavy strain on the organization in terms of executing the changes; it puts a strain on your QC (Quality Con- trol) efforts, and on your productivity efforts. “So, what we’re trying to do is move into a more consistent, but faster-paced, product develop- ment schedule. Instead of having once a year, where we make a whole series of changes, we’re moving more towards having changes made on a more consistent basis throughout the year. The underlying strategy we’ve coined as ‘accelerated innovation.’ Instead of waiting for the next devel- opment cycle before launching an improvement to the product, we’re able to improve it immedi- ately and drive that higher level of value to the end consumers on a more consistent basis than what we have done in the past.” Johnson gives a lot of credit to his suppliers - the manufacturers of the control components, light- ing, blowers, ozone generators, etc.- for helping to drive MAAX Spas’ product development pro- MAAX SPAS