Carrier pours investments in fire safety alarm market

Carrier Global Corp, a Florida-based industrial conglomerate, will invest in online and offline sales channels for its fire and security products in China, as those items have become indispensable in residential and industrial buildings across the country, a senior executive said.

As many Chinese cities took measures to identify safety hazards and strengthen precautions to curb major accidents in workplaces and residential areas in recent years, the company introduced products like its Kidde brand, including connected fire alarms and a smart home ecosystem, to China market in September.

"With the launch of Kidde's new products, our sales performance will be further improved in the fourth quarter of this year," said Zhou Shiyi, vice-president and general manager for fire and security products Asia at Carrier.

Many growth opportunities also arose from China's ongoing consumption upgrading, industrial advantages in digital technology and new economic formats led by e-commerce, he said.

Based on its research, a large number of China's middle-income earners who were born in the 1980s and 1990s showed that their consumption concepts are fairly different from those of the past. They pay more attention to technological innovation and the safety of their family members. Such demand has also stimulated the country's consumption upgrading in recent years.

A total of 109,000 fire disasters occurred in China's residential areas last year, accounting for 43.4 percent of the total number of the country's fire hazards in 2020. They resulted in 917 deaths and 499 injuries, making up 77.5 percent and 64.4 percent of total fire-related casualties, respectively, according to the Fire and Rescue Department of the Ministry of Emergency Management.

In the meantime, a total of 6,987 residential fires occurred in high-rise buildings across the country, up 13.6 percent on a yearly basis.

Zhou said the brand's multi-wave and angle technic of its smoke alarms released in China this time has nuisance immunity and cuts the false alarm rate. End users can receive timely alarm messages via the Kidde app, an open and growing ecosystem installed on users' mobile phones. This will reduce hazards and bring users comfort and a feeling of safety.

Unlike products being manufactured and used in the United States, these alarms integrated China's advanced smart app solutions and cloud computing technologies.

Affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the amount of time people stay indoors has soared significantly, and the health and safety of the indoor environment has come to the center of people's attention, Zhou said.

With more disposable incomes, a growing number of Chinese families are paying close and heavy attention to home decor and healthy home furnishings, including installing new tools to prevent fire accidents at home and ensure safety.

Apart from expanding sales at brick-and-mortar stores in China's city markets, Carrier, a provider of healthy, safe, sustainable and intelligent building and cold chain solutions, has established flagship stores in Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD to bring more convenient options to consumers. It adopted livestreaming to enrich the content of online sales.

"After more than three decades of growth in China, we have deeply felt the scale and speed of market development in the country," Zhou said.

As the government kept optimizing the nation's business environment and continued to relax market access for global companies in recent years, Carrier has become more confident in its growth in China, he said.

With China and its partners pushing for the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement next year, he said the company will continue its investment to augment its capacity, commercial and technical capabilities to serve increasing market needs in China, as well as export more products with digital solutions made in its manufacturing bases in Guangdong and Hebei provinces to other parts of the Asia-Pacific region.