With home still the place to be in early 2021, many consumers are investing in ways to make their living environments more comfortable, convenient, healthy and even a little bit more stylish. So much in fact that high-end home categories including premium household appliances, premium furniture and designer interiors are seeing across the board growth this year.

In a recent survey conducted by the Luxury Institute’s Global Luxury Expert Network (GLEN), 56 percent of respondents agreed that high-end home appliances will see a jump in sales throughout 2021, while 68 percent felt the same about the home furnishings market and 96 percent expressed confidence in the continuing growth of the health and wellness sector.¹

With more time spent at home, consumers are fueling a boom in the home furnishings market as they find more time to curate their own living spaces. It might be argued that this trend is long overdue since who wouldn’t agree that homes should be designed by the people who are going to spend the most time in them? And premium furniture brands seem more than happy to embrace innovation while still adhering to their brand heritage and design identity.

Pairing timeless beauty with exclusive technical and design innovations, Italian luxury furniture maker Molteni provides the customization options – and style – that discerning consumers demand. A great example of this is Molteni’s tailored wardrobe system which offers a range of material and design choices, including doors with 180-degree hinges, exposed aluminum frames inlaid with four-millimeter-thick crystals and handles made from pewter or clad in eco skin.²

Interior design can reflect current aesthetic trends and the technology as well as the individual tastes and lifestyles of a home’s occupants. Since the arrival of the pandemic, many people are choosing materials, fixtures and products for the home not only for reasons of lifestyle-fit, but because they create a more sanitary environment.

Several brands including Kohler and Marazzi have introduced solutions for a healthier, more hygienic living space to meet growing consumer demand. Kohler introduced a collection of touchless and voice-activated kitchen faucets compatible with Alexa and Google and toilets with hands-free flushing, to reduce the chances of spreading germs.³ Italian tile manufacturer Marazzi introduced antibacterial Carácter tiles with antibacterial properties.

LG is also seeing strong interest in its luxury lifestyle products under the LG SIGNATURE brand. A perfect example is LG SIGNATURE Wine Cellar with InstaView^TM technology. With wine sales up during the pandemic, this might just be the perfect home furnishing for vino lovers to store different wine varieties in precisely-controlled, customizable climate zones for their viewing pleasure without opening the door – which would disturb the consistent temperature – with a simple knock.

LG SIGNATURE honors the essence of each product it makes, elevating both functionality and aesthetics with state-of-the-art technology and distinctive, minimalist design. Cue LG SIGNATURE OLED R, the world’s first rollable TV that movie lovers will want to choose over the cinema. The TV’s 65-inch flexible OLED display delivers supreme picture quality and creates new design possibilities and spatial freedom by disappearing from view when not in use. LG’s revolutionary TV offers three compelling modes – Full View, Line View and Zero View – where the amount of visible screen changes to suit the content or the situation.

Empowered with advanced technology, stylish design, and hygiene-promoting features, the today’s luxury products represent innovation at its finest. The new wave of home-living solutions, like those from LG SIGNATURE, are making life infinitely more comfortable and elegant in the stay-at-home era.

# # #

¹ Luxury Institute: Top-Tier Luxury Experts’ Forecast for the Luxury Industry in 2021, PR Newswire, Oct. 1, 2020.
² Designer Wardrobes Modern Contemporary Design | Molteni&C.
³ KOHLER Expands Smart Home Collection at CES 2021, Emphasizes Well-being and Touchless Experiences for Kitchen and Bath, PR Newswire, Jan. 11, 2021.

Since LG’s announcement to withdraw from the smartphone business, Vietnam’s production facility has become the topic of much speculation and rumors, given its role as LG’s largest smartphone production base. But the evolution and transformation of the Haiphong Campus is only just beginning with the future looking bright for Vietnam and LG’s local employees.

“Exiting smartphone production here is part of LG’s plan to restructure our core product portfolio,” said Jung Hai-jin, president of LG Electronics Vietnam. “The closing of LG’s mobile business will not significantly impact LG’s production, business activities or employees in Haiphong.”

Jung said LG will reorganize and expand its Vietnam production by focusing on manufacturing a wider range of products that are currently in high demand around the world, such as home appliances. LG plans to complete the transformation and reallocate all workers within this year. Additional investment plans will be announced once the transformation has been completed.

LG opened its Haiphong Campus in 2015 to produce smartphones, TVs as well as household appliances. Affiliates such as LG Innotek and LG Display have also setup in Haiphong, producing camera modules and displays. Currently there are more than 16,000 employees at Haiphong and if all goes according to plan, LG’s Vietnam manufacturing center should see strong growth in the years to come.

# # #

If necessity is the mother of invention, then innovation could be viewed as the father of the patent. As of the end of 2020, LG Electronics was one of the world’s top patent holders with more than 87,000 patents to its name, many of them related to steam technology found throughout the company’s lineup of premium household appliances. Two successful products that rely on steam for their effectiveness are LG Styler and LG TWINWash™, appliances that in themselves are the result of years of research, development and tinkering.

In fact, the Styler debuted in 2011, nine years after the idea of the steam-based wardrobe management product was given the green light to begin development. Without a patent system to protect the hundreds of thousands of hours and hundreds of millions of dollars invested to develop products like LG Styler, there would be little incentive for companies to innovate.

In fact, the Styler is a compilation of more than 180 LG patents covering features such as the Moving Hanger to shake bacteria and allergens^* out of suits and dresses to the tune of 200 vibrations per minute and Gentle Dry to draw moisture out of clothes without shrinking or damaging delicate fabrics. The patented TrueSteam™ in conjunction with Pants Crease Care deliver wrinkle-free trousers with sharp creases, all without an ironing board.

While the innovation inherent to LG Styler launched a whole new category in home appliances, LG TWINWash was a game changer in its own way. The engineers and designers behind LG TWINWash took a look at a mature product that hadn’t seen much innovation in decades and got to work on solving the age-old problem. With TWINWash, not only can one launder a pair of pants and some socks without feeling guilty about wasting water and electricity, frazzled parents can wash heavily soiled baby clothes separately from adult clothes… simultaneously. One of the patented core technologies that made TWINWash possible is LG’s Direct Drive™, which could deliver more reliable, more effective and quicker results than competing technologies.

One of the many people responsible for LG’s innovation leadership is Dong-won Kim, Ph.D. Laboratory Leader of Living Appliance R&D Lab at LG who is responsible for over 1,000 patents during his 25 years as a researcher at LG. In 2019 he was honored with the Invention King of the Year Award by the Korean Intellectual Property Office.

“Fundamentally, a home appliance should be able to minimize the effort needed to complete one or more household chores but it has to be convenient and easy to use as well,” Kim explained.” When developing a new product, it is essential to constantly ask oneself, ‘Is this bringing value to the customer?’ At LG, we believe this should be the basis for all good product design.”

Kim gets his ideas for his inventions from listening to LG customers and everyday people. “LG Styler came from a conversation I had with the wife of a colleague who told me she removed wrinkles from clothes by hanging them in a steam-filled bathroom,” Kim recalled. “The Styler takes this basic concept and expands on it with a combination of user-friendly design and a number of other unique technologies.”

“The idea for LG TWINWash came after a survey we conducted in 2007 in which 60 percent of the responders said that they wished their washing machines could wash separate loads at the same time,” Kim said. “I’m sure other washing machine makers had heard this complaint before but a two-drum washing machine is no simple matter, which may explain why TWINWash still has no equal even after six years.”

Like all of LG’s products, LG TWINWash and Styler are products based on innovation and creativity fueled by the need to make consumers’ lives more convenient. But innovating can be a laborious and expensive process and this is where the patent system can help drive technological advancement. For inventors like Kim Dong-won, the assurance that his intellectual property will be protected is incentive to keep creating and improving consumers’ lives.

# # #

^* Certified by the British Allergy Foundation (BAF) for reducing 99.9 percent of house dust mite allergens and Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. Certified as an asthma and allergy friendly® appliance by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA).

Life as we knew it may never be the same again. More time spent at home has piqued the interest of consumers looking to adopt a more intelligent way of living. This growing desire for seamless, connected, “work and play” environments is what is bringing the future faster to consumers today. Fortune Business Insights™ predicts¹ the smart home market to reach USD 622.59 billion by 2026. In fact, that’s barely scratching the surface if LG ThinQ as anything to say about it.

What makes the smart technology less daunting today is because now everyone has a smartphone. And through that smartphone, consumers can control all aspects of their connected devices from the bed, the car or the office. The fact that the LG ThinQ app has been downloaded over 30 million times is proof that there is an audience that’s hungry for the conveniences offered by smart products. But what conveniences are we talking about here?

Well, in one research study, LG ThinQ app users in the US said they were most satisfied with the app’s remote-control capabilities.² Although some smart appliances such as robot vacuums are able to do the work for you, there still isn’t a washing machine that can pick up dirty clothes off the floor or a refrigerator that stocks itself. But just being able to control and monitor the home ecosystem from any location brings a whole new dimension of convenience.

The LG ThinQ app was designed to seamlessly connect with the company’s AI-enabled products and services, giving the user full visibility and access to all compatible home appliances while home or on the go. One Korean user discovered LG ThinQ to be an invaluable solution for her laundry routine. “With remote control and monitoring, I can set the washing machine to finish according to my schedule, which means I’m always free to take the laundry out immediately. I no longer have to worry about smelly or wrinkled clothes,” the user said.³

Proactive Customer Care (PCC) and Smart Diagnosis expand the user experience and is another key way ThinQ has made customers’ lives easier. After self-diagnosing every connected appliance on the system, the ThinQ app alerts users and relays insightful suggestions and tips for maintaining their products’ peak performance, such as changing the filter at appropriate times. “It’s great to have the ThinQ app on hand to remind me when it’s time to replace the air purifier filter,” said one participant in the survey. Instead of having to call in and wait hours (or days) for a service technician to visit, PCC and Smart Diagnosis help users identify and resolve the issues themselves. One ThinQ user noted, “Thanks to the PCC feature I’m able to receive alerts on my parent’s appliances so I can do all the maintenance work for them.”

Beyond adding value, LG smart home solutions are delivering more environmentally friendly features to match the priorities of environmentally-conscious consumers. In fact, energy-saving capabilities are one of the top drivers for American consumers switching from conventional devices to smart home products, according to the survey.

On the LG ThinQ app, energy monitoring dashboards displaying monthly usage information are available for every appliance so that users can see where they might be able to save energy by modifying their behavior. “I can never remember if I shut the refrigerator door all the way or switched the TV off,” admitted an environmental advocate who participated in the research. “Being able to check and control all of this on my phone is a huge relief.”

Vacation mode is another proven way to minimize energy use in the home when empty, and features such as Active Save perform tasks like measuring refrigerator openings throughout the day so that refrigerators can switch from low to high power modes automatically, all according to when the user prefers using them.

The ThinQ app is constantly evolving to better meet consumer needs. Additional features to be introduced in the 1^st half of this year include Scan-To-Cook and Meal Kit orders which take the stress out of planning and preparing meals at home. Future features and services will focus on delivering the freedom and convenience that make LG customers’ lives measureably more comfortable than without ThinQ.

Learn more about LG’s smart appliances and the ThinQ app at www.LGThinQ.com.

# # #

1 https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/smart-home-market-101900
2 Kantar survey commissioned by LG surveyed 500 respondents with household incomes within the top 60 percentile in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.
3 Nielsen survey commissioned by LG interviewed 40 Korean IoT brand users between ages 20-44.