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WAYES × FOTILE | News

May 27, 2024 · Guangzhou, China

Solving the big matters of the kitchen with technology and love.

As leaders in their respective industries, the ten-year cross-industry partnership between WAYES and FOTILE has been a decade of connected happiness. Together, great design and cutting-edge technology have written a ten-year chronicle of Chinese kitchens, reaching 19.78 million households, caring about the evolution of every kitchen, and creating and witnessing countless stories of happiness.

The ten-year promise between great design and cutting-edge technology has sparked an unprecedented “kitchen revolution.” On the evening of May 25, the grand ceremony of [Super Kitchen · Smart Living — EHOME Super Kitchen Launch & WAYES × FOTILE 10th Anniversary Alliance] concluded successfully in Guangzhou. Distinguished guests in attendance included Zhang Zhifang, General Manager of WAYES; Fu Lijun, General Manager of FOTILE Group’s Home Decoration Business Division; Bian Yuechun, founder of the organizing and storage industry, president of Liucundao Organizing Academy, and founder of Chunxiangshu, a women’s mutual-growth community; Chen Yi, General Manager of FOTILE Group’s Retail Marketing Department; Gui Yating, General Manager of the Group’s Supporting Business Division; Lin Wenbin, Deputy General Manager of WAYES; Xu Wang, General Manager of FOTILE Group’s Guangdong Region; and Guan Guodong, General Manager of the Life Channel and Real Estate Channel of Guangdong Network Radio and Television. More than a dozen media representatives, including Tencent Home, U-Ju, Sina Weibo, NetEase Home, People’s Home Network, Fashion Home, Anju Real Estate, Global Home Network, HC360, China News Network, and Guangdong TV Mobile Channel, also joined the event, witnessing this highlight moment together with online audiences around the world.

The Best Decade

WAYES, with 21 years of expertise in whole-home design and lifestyle research, has provided one-stop custom home solutions for over ten million households, leading the home furnishing industry with “Good Design.” FOTILE, drawing on 28 years of deep insight into 49.416 million households, offers premium whole-scenario kitchen appliance solutions, leading China’s kitchen appliance sector with innovative technology.

“Good Design” is not only an expression of aesthetics, but also the core element of a beautiful home life. Every design detail carries a deep understanding of how to improve users’ quality of life. Zhang Zhifang, General Manager of WAYES, said in his opening speech: “Our 10-year partnership with FOTILE, a leading brand in the kitchen appliance industry, is built on our shared spirit and our equally persistent pursuit of creating high-quality lives for users. The EHOME Super Kitchen we have jointly created deeply integrates FOTILE’s leading kitchen technology with WAYES’ unique advantages in home design, bringing consumers a revolution in kitchen lifestyle.”

Fu Lijun, General Manager of FOTILE Group’s Home Decoration Business Division, also said in his speech: “Our forward-looking cross-industry alliance with WAYES benefits from the genetic match between the two brands’ DNA. It is not just a combination of products and design, but a resonance of ideas and values. Through our joint efforts, we will create a brand-new paradigm of integrated kitchen-and-home renovation for users — a living space that unites intelligence, health, and joy, where family members can share the joy of cooking, enjoy the pleasure of communication, and experience the convenience of technology.”

The Most Powerful “Medicine”

Salt, oil, rice, sauce, vinegar, and tea — the seven daily essentials all revolve around the kitchen. The kitchen should be the warm heart of a home, not an isolated island. Bian Yuechun, the special guest of this launch event and known as China’s No.1 organizer and the “Queen of Decluttering,” shared her 2024 kitchen lifestyle trend analysis.

“People prefer open kitchens, but usually end up choosing closed ones.” Bian believes that in a closed kitchen, family members cannot see each other’s needs, and communication is cut off. The kitchen should not be a self-enclosed corner of solitary toil, but a place to “see family, see yourself, see happiness.” An open kitchen is a form of seeing, a form of expression, and a form of love. How do you solve the pain points of traditional open kitchens, such as cluttered storage and heavy fumes? There is no need to face today’s problems with yesterday’s thinking — the alliance of WAYES and FOTILE has long provided the best answer.

For a kitchen, starting to organize only after it has already become a complete mess is nothing but “first aid” — it cannot truly cure the problem at its source. The most powerful “medicine” is preventive storage design that “treats the disease before it occurs.” As a 21-year lifestyle researcher, WAYES applies “Good Design” across the full life cycle of lifestyles, ensuring that your home has matching, sustainable solutions at every stage of life. Paired with FOTILE’s leading kitchen technology, all fume problems are effortlessly solved.

True customization is what works well at any time. Good design and good technology should both be sustainable, delivering long-lasting, comfortable experiences. Open up the kitchen and take control of your life — clean, orderly, and full of love. The longer you live in a small home, the bigger it feels, and happiness naturally multiplies.

The Best Design

In today’s “delivery era,” kitchens should logically be getting smaller, but the real market gives a counterintuitive answer: recent home designs are expanding the kitchen outward. Consumers increasingly prefer to break with traditional living concepts and choose the larger-scale integrated LDKB (Living/Dining/Kitchen/Balcony) design.

“Companionship, sharing, and happiness remain the mainstream needs of a home — the everyday warmth of life is the embodiment of happiness,” said Zhang Zhifang, General Manager of WAYES. Young people from the post-90s and post-00s generations are not averse to cooking; what they need is a good kitchen with “Good Design.” Today’s kitchen has long moved beyond its single cooking and dining function; it should also accommodate entertainment, emotional connection, social gatherings, and more. So we should open up the kitchen, allowing the living room, dining room, kitchen, and balcony — originally independent functional spaces — to merge into the core of the family space.

The key to great open-kitchen design lies in managing fumes, solving storage, and maintaining aesthetics. WAYES and FOTILE jointly launched the XKitchen Super Kitchen as early as 2022, ushering in the era of super-functional kitchens. The newly launched EHOME Super Kitchen builds on WAYES’ 21 years of lifestyle research across 500,000 Chinese households, organically integrating function, intelligence, aesthetics, space, and scenario design. It upgrades multi-function integration to scenario integration, creating a diverse super kitchen that combines cooking, socializing, and entertainment — within limited space, it integrates unlimited imagination.

“Dividing and merging space is only a means; bringing the family together is the goal.” That is the best design for a kitchen and a home.

The Most Powerful Technology

What stops people from cooking? Beyond the four pain points of fragmented time, small-screen entertainment, delivery-dependent lifestyles, and split living spaces, Chen Yi, General Manager of FOTILE Group’s Retail Marketing Department, believes the most critical issue is actually the lack of essential kitchen configurations.

“A good home deserves a good kitchen, and a good kitchen deserves good appliances.” Facing the upgrade of kitchen appliance consumption and diverse demands, FOTILE — leading China’s kitchen appliance industry with innovative technology — brings the solution for the second half of China’s kitchen story. With original, leading, and disruptive premium whole-scenario kitchen appliances, FOTILE combines users’ home spaces and lifestyles to provide end-to-end scenario-based kitchen appliance solutions, building a new kitchen-living paradigm for customers. Focusing on the three dimensions of function, space, and life, it creates an open kitchen centered on three hubs — storage, cleaning, and cooking — covering the entire chain, redefining the traditional “production center” role of the kitchen into a “life center.” Through smart technology, it enriches the connection between kitchen appliances and people, families, and society, meeting diverse lifestyles and needs. It brings users a smart, healthy, delightful, and elegant kitchen experience, expanding the boundaries of a happy life.

The Best Kitchen Ever

“We build your brand-new kitchen the way cars are built.” With the global debut of the EHOME Super Kitchen, Lin Wenbin, Deputy General Manager of WAYES, used this vivid line to unveil the mystery of the EHOME Super Kitchen. Saying goodbye to piecemeal assembly, it provides users with a complete kitchen solution. The EHOME Super Kitchen creates seven major upgraded smart living spaces:

• New-Generation Kitchen Environment: Restructures the seven systems of “washing + meal preparation + cooking + storage + entertainment & audio-visual + water purification + smart lighting,” allowing previously separate cabinetry, appliances, and utensils to be optimally combined as needed for true kitchen integration.
• New-Generation Space Layout: A brand-new integrated LDKB design that reshapes family interaction scenes, breaking the fixed boundaries of traditional homes to provide an open, fluid, and multifunctional living space.
• New-Generation Health System: Builds a sustainable Healthy Kitchen 3.0 with three systems — “healthy panels + healthy appliances + healthy accessories” — ensuring the whole family enjoys health from water quality to cooking.
• New-Generation Kitchen Storage: Organizes and rebuilds life order with more scientific storage design, keeping every item in perfect order.
• New-Generation Kitchen Aesthetics: Integrated cabinet-and-appliance design and execution, where function and aesthetics are highly consistent, combining beauty with practicality.
• New-Generation Family Cooking Center: Better aligned with Chinese families’ cooking and living habits, and paired with FOTILE’s smart technology, even a kitchen novice can master 36 cooking methods and become a versatile expert in all 18 culinary skills.
• New-Generation Kitchen Scenario: A multi-scenario solution for cooking + socializing + entertainment kitchens, breaking down the barriers between living room, dining room, and kitchen to build a free and comfortable social hub where people, kitchen equipment, and kitchen scenes are organically interconnected.

The origin of all innovation is the user. As the essence of lifestyle continues to be enriched, the best kitchen ever — built by the alliance of good design and cutting-edge technology — naturally comes into being. The EHOME Super Kitchen brings not only efficient, convenient, smart, and healthy new experiences, but also inspires people to build new visions of life.

In the new decade, may “Good Design,” so close to users’ beautiful lives, be made great by love!