Built to Lead from Fittings to Lifestyle Solutions

As Hettich India celebrates 25 years of operations in the country and strengthens its experiential retail presence with the launch of a new Hettich Exclusive (HeX) store in Noida, the brand continues to expand its footprint across India’s evolving home interiors market.

In an exclusive interaction, Rahul Thakkar, Director – Sales, Hettich India & SAARC, shares insights into Hettich’s journey, evolving consumer preferences and the company’s retail expansion strategy. The conversation explores the role of experience led retail, opportunities in emerging markets, changing expectations around home interiors, and how innovation, localisation and strategic partnerships will shape Hettich India’s next phase of growth.

What inspired Hettich’s India entry, and how has the brand’s journey evolved over the past 25 years?

When Hettich set up operations in India at the turn of the millennium, the furniture fittings category here was largely unorganised, carpenter-led, and price driven. We've always believed in playing the long game in a market rather than chasing quick wins, and India's scale, its growing middle class, and its appetite for better living stood out even then. The inspiration was simple: bring innovative German-engineered products to a market that was about to go through a housing and interiors boom.

Twenty-five years on, the journey has moved from being a furniture fitting brand known mostly to carpenters and OEMs, to a consumer-facing lifestyle brand with its own experiential touchpoints, Free Design Services, and an impressive portfolio that has grown well beyond hinges and slides into furniture fittings, architectural hardware, furniture lighting and Blaupunkt built-in appliances. That's really the story of this anniversary year and our theme, "Built to Lead." We've built the category here as much as we've built the business.

Why was India strategic for Hettich, and how have Indian consumers and the furniture fittings industry evolved over two decades?

India ticked every box for a long-term bet. A young, growing population, rapid urbanisation, and a cultural shift toward owning and personalising one's own home. What made it strategic wasn't just the size of the market, it was where it was headed. We could see this industry moving from unbranded, unorganised fittings toward branded, engineered, design-led solutions, and we wanted to be the ones leading that shift, not reacting to it once it had already happened.

Previously, the fitting was an afterthought, decided by the carpenter without much input from the homeowner. Today, people walk into a store and ask for soft-close mechanisms, height-adjustable systems, or smart storage by name. The industry itself has grown up alongside them: modular furniture is mainstream now, dealer networks are far more organised, architects and interior designers have become key influencers in the buying decision, and customers are far more willing to pay for quality and durability instead of just picking the cheapest option on the shelf.

What is Hettich’s strategy behind its experience-led retail model through Experience Centres and Exclusive stores?

Furniture fittings are, by nature, invisible once installed. You don't see a hinge or a lift system in daily life; you only experience it. That makes it very hard to sell purely off a catalogue or a website. Our company-owned Experience Centres and franchise-owned Hettich Exclusive (HeX) stores exist to solve exactly that problem. They let a customer open a drawer, pull out a wardrobe lift, or test a soft-close door for themselves, and that one magical moment builds more trust than any brochure ever could.

The strategy is really to combine that hands-on discovery with genuine service. Our Free Design Services let in-house experts walk a customer through the whole journey, from concept to execution, whether it's a compact kitchen or an entire home. It also gives us a way to showcase the full portfolio together, fittings, hardware, lighting and appliances, as one integrated interior solution rather than disconnected products. And that's increasingly how customers plan their homes today, not one item at a time, but as a complete space.

With the new HeX store in Noida, what are Hettich’s retail, distribution and key growth markets?

The Noida HeX store is part of a network that's been expanding steadily through this anniversary year. We've opened new stores across regions, from North India in cities like Ludhiana, to Central India in Nagpur, and now the NCR market with Noida. Alongside the HeX stores, we're also continuing to strengthen the dealer and channel partner network that's really been the backbone of our distribution for over two decades now.

In terms of markets, we're focused on the metros and the larger Tier I cities where premium and modular interiors are already mainstream, while at the same time pushing into fast-growing markets like NCR, Central India and North India, where residential real estate and organised furniture demand are picking up quickly. It's really about a balanced footprint. We want to deepen our presence where the category has already matured and build early leadership where it's just starting to take off.

What major consumer behaviour shifts is Hettich witnessing as Indians seek personalised, functional and aesthetic homes?

The single biggest shift is that customers now think about their homes the way they'd think about any other considered purchase. They research, they compare, and they want to see and touch a product before they make up their mind. Storage and functionality have moved from being practical necessities to design statements. People want a wardrobe or a kitchen that works flawlessly, but they also want it to look good doing it.

We're also seeing personalisation turn into an expectation rather than something reserved for the premium end. Customers want fittings and layouts suited to their specific space and their specific lifestyle, not a one-size-fits-all solution. And durability has become a real conversation now. Buyers ask about the number of open-close cycles a hinge is rated for, which simply wasn't a question a decade ago. All this plays directly to what Hettich has always been good at: innovating and manufacturing.

How is demand for modular kitchens, smart furniture and premium interiors shaping Hettich’s product and retail strategy?

It's pushed us to think beyond individual components and toward complete, integrated solutions. Our expansion into architectural hardware, furniture lighting and Blaupunkt built-in appliances is a direct response to that. Customers want one trusted partner for the whole interior, not a fitting from one vendor and an appliance from another.

On the experiential retail side, this is exactly why our Experience Centres and HeX stores are designed as immersive, curated spaces rather than product counters. They let customers experience everything come together in a real kitchen or wardrobe setting. It also means our design services team must think like interior consultants now, not just fittings specialists, because that's genuinely how today's customer approaches their home.

What are Hettich’s expansion plans for HeX and Experience Centres, and which cities or regions are key priorities?

We intend to keep expanding at pace. This anniversary year alone has seen multiple new HeX stores open across the length and breadth of the country, and that momentum is going to continue. Going forward, the focus is on strengthening our presence in high-growth urban clusters while also widening the funnel into emerging cities where residential construction and organised interiors demand is picking up quickly.

Rather than a purely metro-first approach, we're building the network by format. Experience Centres in the metros and larger cities, and HeX stores taking the brand deeper into Tier II and Tier III markets, so that we're present wherever a customer is making their buying decision.

What is Hettich’s retail expansion strategy, and what does it seek from franchisees and channel partners?

Our growth has always been through a partner-led model, and that continues to be the backbone of our expansion. HeX stores are typically run in partnership with dealers and channel partners who bring deep local market knowledge and trust, while we bring the brand, the training, the products and the design support.

What we look for in a partner is less about capital and more about mindset. A genuine belief in customer experience and service, a willingness to invest in training their teams properly on our products, and a long-term outlook rather than a transactional one. Given how consultative furniture-fittings selling has become, we need partners who can guide a customer through a design conversation, not just ring up a sale over a counter.

What opportunities does Hettich see in Tier II and Tier III cities for premium home interiors?

This is honestly one of the most exciting parts of our growth story. Aspiration in smaller cities has caught up with, and in some cases even outpaces, what we see in metros. A lot of that comes down to social media exposure, NRIs and migrants returning and bringing metro habits back with them, a genuine construction boom in these markets, and the Government of India's Smart Cities push, which is driving organised, planned urban housing in exactly these towns. Customers there increasingly want the same modular, design-led interiors as their metro counterparts.

The opportunity for us is to bring our experience-led retail format into these markets early, instead of waiting for the category to mature on its own. A HeX store in a non-metro city often ends up being the first place local customers see and understand what "engineered" furniture fittings really mean, and that kind of first-mover trust tends to stick around for a long time.

What key challenges does Hettich face, and how does the brand differentiate itself amid rising competition?

Competition has intensified from both organised international players and a growing base of domestic manufacturers offering fittings at very aggressive price points. The core challenge for us is holding the line on quality and value while the market gets more price-sensitive at the entry level, and there's also a growing shortage of skilled manpower, carpenters and technicians trained to work with modern fittings, which we're addressing through the Hettich Poddar Woodworking Institute (HPWWI). Educating customers and channel partners on the real, long-term difference between an engineered, BIS-certified fitting and a low-cost substitute is something we're constantly working at.

Where we differentiate is in the combination of German engineering heritage, BIS-certified products that customers can genuinely trust on quality and safety, a wide and integrated portfolio spanning fittings, hardware, lighting and appliances, and increasingly, the experience-led retail and design-service model we've built. That mix of product depth, service and trust, backed by the recognition we've received as a preferred and trusted brand in India, is hard for a purely price-led competitor to copy.

What is Hettich India’s growth vision, and how will innovation, localisation and experiential retail shape its future?

Our vision for the next phase is really captured in this anniversary's theme, "Built to Lead." Having built the category over 25 years, the next chapter is about leading it with the same intent, just at a much bigger scale and much closer to the customer. We've already set the foundation, both in experiential retail and in manufacturing. Now the next phase is about growing each of those channels so we can give our customers truly world-class, German-engineered solutions in the region.

That means continuing to expand our experience-led retail network, with plans to add 150+ Hettich Exclusive Store (HEX) outlets by 2030 and bringing more of our global innovation pipeline into India, faster than before. At the end of the day, as Indian consumers keep raising the bar on what they expect from their homes, our job is to make sure Hettich is the brand anticipating that shift, not just following it.