December/January 2026
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but the underlying work started long before most felt its presence. “When I joined, we didn’t even have a business yet,” Mr Grindrod recalls. “We were building everything from scratch, service infrastructure, logistics, compliance, tax structures, legal frameworks. All the things consumers never see, but absolutely notice if they aren’t right.”
It was an unusually long establishment phase, years of groundwork before any serious push for brand visibility. “We could’ve launched harder, faster,” he says, “but we knew that if you get the fundamentals wrong you spend the next five years undoing them. We weren’t prepared to build something on weak foundations.”
Solid foundations Perhaps the clearest example of that philosophy came in TVs. By the time Hisense officially pushed its TV business in the UK, it was already one of the world’s largest TV manufacturers. Technically, it could have entered the market years earlier, but it didn’t. “The UK TV ecosystem is unique,” Mr Grindrod explains. “It’s broadcast-led. If your smart platform doesn’t properly support terrestrial broadcasters, you’re finished before you start. So we didn’t launch until we had a platform worthy of the UK consumer.” That platform is VIDAA, Hisense’s proprietary operating system, which has since grown into a global ecosystem used by multiple manufacturers. “You can put the best panel in the world on a TV,” he says, “but if the smart experience isn’t good, that’s all the consumer remembers. Getting VIDAA right was absolutely fundamental.”
The deliberate, slow-burn strategy paid off. Hisense is now firmly in the top three TV brands
in the UK. “We didn’t do it by shouting loudly,” Mr Grindrod insists. “We did it by making sure every generation of product was better than the last and by being consistent in the message to consumers: we will give you more value than you expect at a premium level of quality.” That positioning, premium rather than value, is something Mr Grindrod is keen to emphasise. “From day one, Hisense has been a premium brand globally. In the UK we had to be consistent with that, even when the easier economic play would’ve been to chase volume. But you only win once with a poor product. The market is too transparent now. Consumers share everything. Retailers talk. If you fail on quality or experience, everyone knows.”
This commitment to product integrity was
strengthened significantly when Hisense acquired the European manufacturer Gorenje in 2018. The move brought premium brand ASKO and an extensive European manufacturing footprint into the group. It also gave Hisense access to a design and engineering culture deeply rooted in European cooking, laundry and high-quality domestic appliances. “Gorenje gave us immediate credibility,” Mr
Grindrod says. “Not just the brand name, but the engineering talent behind it. When I first saw their ovens and cookers in the factory, I knew we had something special. The quality was far above where the Gorenje brand sat in the UK at the time.” Today, Hisense’s European presence is formidable: over 10,000 employees across the continent; manufacturing facilities in Slovenia, Serbia, Poland, Sweden and more; and a joint R&D network where European and Chinese engineers work side by side. “The biggest benefit,” he says, “is cultural understanding.
Europe isn’t a single cooking style. Germany, Spain, Italy, the Nordics, and the UK have completely different expectations of what an oven should do. Being here, really here, means our products reflect that.” Hisense’s strategic patience also led to
a breakthrough in refrigeration. While many brands were pushing combi refrigeration for volume, Hisense spotted something else: British consumers were gravitating towards multi-door cooling long before they fully realised it. “We saw the gap,” Mr Grindrod explains. “Consumers wanted something they couldn’t quite describe - more space, more flexibility, an appliance that looked like a statement piece rather than a box. Multi-door hit that emotional nerve.”
That instinct was right. Today Hisense commands around 34 per cent of the UK multi-door market—an astonishing share in a category with fierce competition. “If you get the product right, the consumer response tells you very quickly,” Mr Grindrod says. “Multi-door is a perfect example of that.”
Looking ahead, the next major chapter for the brand is the expansion of category ecosystems, laundry linked to cooling, cooking linked to smart platforms, and a broader spread of connected products under Hisense’s ConnectLife platform. Mr Grindrod is careful not to oversell connectivity for its own sake. “Consumers have been burned by gimmicks,” he says. “Connectivity has to be genuinely useful. If your phone tells you your freezer temperature has dropped, that matters. If your oven preheats when you tell it to, that’s helpful. If the app just exists for the sake of saying ‘we’ve got an app,’ then it’s pointless. We’re focusing on relevance, not novelty.” >>
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