Bathroom design bags red dot award

His company produces luxury bathtubs priced from Bt60,000 to Bt600,000 each for upper-class consumers. But Wacharamongkon Benjathanachat, the president and founder of Bathroom Design, has never had a bathtub in his house. He takes a bath from an earthen jar.

Wacharamongkon is a strict practitioner of Buddhism. He sleeps on the floor and lives in a small townhouse. He owns only one car, a 4x4 Colorado pickup, because he has to often travel to rural areas for his other businesses for royal foundations.

But do not get him wrong. Wacharamongkon has a strong business acumen, though maximising profit was never his goal. He received his bachelor's degree with honours in marketing from Assumption University (Abac) and a master's degree in marketing from Thammasat University. He is also passionate about designs.

Wacharamongkon began his career as a sales representative of Siam Iron and Steel after graduating from Abac. After about three years, Wacharamongkon quit the company as he no longer found it fun selling steel bars and rods.

"I felt there was no fun in marketing [the steel]. We couldn't do any differentiation whatever, in packaging, or colouring because of the limitations set by the law," he said.

At 26, Wacharamongkon started his own business in 1995 after visiting a shower-enclosure market and seeing that all companies there had imported, fixed-size shower enclosures on sale. On learning that many bathrooms could not fit the fixed-size shower enclosures, Wacharamongkon imported the frames and customised them. Later, his company Bathroom Design expanded to importing other items such as water heaters, faucets and showers, mainly from European brands.

Though the company began by selling plain bathtubs, it soon escaped fierce competition to sell bathtubs, which come equipped with many systems.

"As the iPod had arrived [in the market], we designed our whirlpools to respond to the new generation's lifestyle, as it likes technology, health and entertainment products that are fun to use. We were the first to link iPod with whirlpools, beginning with wired and, later, moving to wireless connections," he said.

Bathroom Design's focus on design was first recognised last year when it won the IF Product Design Award. And this year, the company won the Red Dot design award for its IGLOO and Escalate bathtubs. Wacharamongkon flew to Germany to receive the award on June 23.

Bathroom became the first Asian company to receive the Red Dot design award for bathroom products since the internationally renowned design contests were introduced more than 53 years ago, he said.

Plans of being in the top five

Wacharamongkon Benjathanachat said Buddhism's "Chan-ta" or the "passion" he has for designs has made him see and think of everything as ideas for his bathroom products. Wacharamongkon said, for example, he got the idea for his designers to come up with the Spiral-bathtub series when he saw the Thi Lo Su Waterfall in the jungle. Wacharamongkon can always find innovative business ideas.

In the past 18 months, Bathroom Design has received more than 10 awards. The company plans to be one of the top-five global brands of bathroom products in terms of innovation.

"If the first phase following 1997 was 'differentiate or die', our second era is to 'differentiate to be in the top five in innovation for bathroom products in the world'. If we compete only in the local market, it won't be long before Chinese products come in [to become real competitors]. Already, Chinese bathtubs sell for Bt3,000, compared to ours for Bt9,000," Wacharamongkon said.

Starting with about Bt250,000, Wacharamongkon grew Bathroom Design in 13 years to become a company with about Bt400-million annual sales revenue.