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MANILA, Philippines — European appliances brand Beko recently welcomed Alper Yildirim as its new country director for the Philippines.
In an exclusive interview with Philstar.com, Yildirim shared some tips for those buying appliances for the first time, or thinking of changing their old ones with new.
Check the brand’s reputation
“They should really think about the long-term investment because these kinds of products you buy once and then maybe 10 years later, are they still there? Look at from that perspective,” he said.
Understand an appliance’s function, check if still necessary to buy it
“It's easier to make the right decision when you can understand, ‘OK, do I really need this? Do I really need to invest this extra just to have this look?’,” he pointed out.
Buy first what you really need
If you only have a budget for one appliance, Yildirim recommended buying a refrigerator first.
“I think that's still the biggest market (the Philippines) in the refrigerator (segment),” he shared. “I think it has the highest penetration as well, yes, refrigerator, because it's hot. That's like a must because we love to cook a lot, so if we don't have refrigerator at home, leftovers will spoil.”
According to his company’s research, many Filipinos have more than one refrigerator at home.
“First you buy a refrigerator, then maybe something for cooking,” he advised.
“Our refrigerator in the refrigerator category, we're the only one selling dual-cooling technology equipped refrigerator from smallest capacity,” he claimed.
Also a bestseller in the Philippines, he said, is still connected to the humid weather – air conditioners.
“Right now, aircon is growing fast, probably because of the shift of the weather condition. So, mostly in the houses right now, they have more than one aircon.”
Go for the fully-automatic
“It's a lot easier to use a fully-automatic washing machine,” he assured Filipinos, especially those who still prefer the traditional handwashing.
“More focus in terms of business strategy would still be the fully-automatic because we want the Filipino consumers’ lives to be updated to make it more easier. You just load your laundry, put in your detergent, put in your softener, and then leave it and then after probably an hour or so, come back and it's all finished… This is the most efficient way of taking out all the, you know, dirt and everything without really damaging the clothes as well.”
Champion sustainability; pick durable products
According to him, Beko is “more about sustainability… creating affordable solutions for the people, but still sustainable products.”
It is not only important that a brand stands for sustainability, he said, but also commits to circularity by “trying to help the overall environment by using the optimum energy usage products - durable products with a lot of recycled materials being used and during the whole production cycles, the optimum and most feasible way of production is used.”
After-sales services
Part of being committed to sustainability is to have the appliances repaired, instead of buying new ones, so a brand’s after-sales service is very important, said Yildirim.
“Because our responsibility as a manufacturer doesn't end when the customer pay and then we deliver their purchases. Our responsibility continues as long as the product is being used by the customer. So any issue about the product, we need to address and year-on-year, we keep on improving our after-sales.”
According to him, part of their after-sales services is to plan about helping customers to properly dispose their old appliances.
“They (customers) want to upgrade or probably, replace a very, very old refrigerator already, which is not energy-efficient. So this is one of our after-sales projects. We are studying how can we help those consumers who would want to upgrade or buy new products, to help them on disposing their current product. That’s the one that we're developing that we're coming up, hopefully first, with refrigerators.”
According to him, there is really a great demand for a project that would help consumers especially with proper appliances disposal.
“Demand is there. We're actually only 10 years in the market, so there's not really a lot of products that are being disposed off (from our brand), we're too young,” he said.
“We're going to start the project this summer. We're studying and building partners with the staff so that when we collect all of the old appliances, we already have a partner where to dispose all of them.”
For now, he advised customers to sell their old appliances first before buying new ones, instead of just disposing them.
“We are trying to study it and see where we can come in as a manufacturer to help this consumer.”
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