Sanitas Troesch, a traditional Swiss company with more than 100 years of history, is the leading provider of kitchens and bathrooms in Switzerland.

In its 19 modern showrooms, Sanitas Troesch presents inspiring examples of arrangements for kitchens and bathrooms, combined with a professional advisory service. The company’s 31 sanitaryware shops provide plumbers with an assortment of 3,000 articles for repair and replacement. In 11 locations Küchenexpress provides a rapid repair service for kitchen equipment. The Element-Küchen subsidiary provides carpenters with a comprehensive assortment of high-quality kitchens and services from 10 regional centres. Sanitas Troesch generates annual turnover of CHF500 million and has 980 employees. Since 2005 the company has been owned by the French Saint-Gobain group, which operates in 68 countries with over 170,000 employees.

The company strongly focuses on the quality of its customer interaction and engagement as a hallmark of its high-quality brand identity.

To appeal to a customer’s need for individuality, the company offers almost unlimited customisation of materials, fittings, surfaces and colours on top of a catalogue comprising more than 100,000 base articles.

But Sanitas Troesch not only aims to respond to a client’s taste or style. 

The company views itself as being in the business of selling emotions not technology, a business strategy also adopted by the automotive industry.

On the understanding that emotions want to be experienced and shared, both before and after the sale, Sanitas Troesch makes it a priority to look for ways to enthuse potential buyers and give them confidence about their purchase. The social aspect of the sales process is crucial, since friends and family often act as important advisors – and can offer their own experience as long-term ‘expert kitchen users’.

A prospective client buys a kitchen only once or twice in a lifetime – less often than they would typically buy a car. Since a customer is faced with such a vast choice of customisation options, an exact physical preview is often impossible. It is therefore paramount to give prospective owners confidence and trust in their choice.

For many years Sanitas Troesch has been providing CAD models and renderings of customers’ dream kitchens to aid the imagination. The customer can experience the look of the final product from different angles, including an assimilated ‘view out of the window’ based on photographs. In a constant effort to make the experience even more realistic, the company experimented with 3D-printed models to add a haptic dimension to the preview. Even so, Sanitas Troesch’s passion for quality was not yet satisfied.

The company’s IT department researched innovative ways of engaging the digital customer.

Could digital help the company better serve customers who cannot visually imagine a kitchen? Could it be done on a limited IT budget? Can it wrap its physical products within value-added digital services that appeal to the communication habits of a modern consumer?

How are communication habits and client expectations changing and how can the company create and transport emotions in the digital age? Protecting its values, can the company give customers a good feeling about their choice before a purchase and how can overheads and churn in the showrooms be reduced? Can prospective customers share a kitchen design with their social network to gather broader feedback?

Sanitas Troesch decided on servicing the clients’ emotional and social needs through a virtual reality application, implemented and experienced at low cost and with easy accessibility. Already having access to the 3D CAD data of every available kitchen in its range, including room layouts, the company identified Google Cardboard as a cost-efficient, low-barrier technology.

Going further, sharing and social components were added, which allow clients to access their design models in the cloud and to share content with friends and family securely. Integrating data between these components was a simple configuration task:

the CAD software supplier implemented a customer portal to provide immersive models securely for download on mobile devices, giving access to a simple at-home 360° walk-through visualisation.

The application has been rolled out to all the company’s showrooms. Advisors provide clients with individual download links in-store, so they can use the 360° walk-through visualisation at home – directly in the location of their future kitchen. They can also send invitations to their social network, creating not only personal emotions, but also a social network of emotions that the clients can fall back on to strengthen their purchase decisions.

What has been the impact of the roll-out on the sales process and client interaction? Client reaction has been extremely positive, as the following statements show:

‘At last, I can imagine the kitchen.’

‘Wow – I can really feel the kitchen. ’

The sales team are also enthusiastic about the new solution. The immersive walk-throughs generate a sense of gamification and fun. Since Sanitas Troesch is the first kitchen supplier to provide virtual reality previews, the novelty factor is high.

Word of mouth spreads and people want to try the solution at consumer shows. This creates additional brand appeal.

It can also showcase kitchens otherwise not on view at the exhibition, e.g., cottage kitchens. Showroom overheads as well as customer churn are reduced and clients come to a final choice more quickly and with more confidence.

All this goes to show that digitalisation projects do not have to be complex and can add tremendous appeal to the market through customer experience and emotional engagement.