Genie Hand Shower is American Standard’s truly innovative hand shower, featuring a pressure boosting and water saving technology that ensures an indulging showering experience to people living in parts of Asia where water pressure and scarcity are daily issues. It presents a simple and iconic design, enhanced by unique functional features for more convenient and enjoyable daily usages. Genie’s inside cavity and micro-perforated spray face were precisely developed to boost the flow while ensuring the spray remains stable and soft under different pressure conditions. The ingenuity of this hand shower relies on the absence of complex internal mechanisms! Its see-through spray face lets the user enjoy how beautifully the water exits from the product and see when it needs to be maintained. The back part features a slot so it can be easily removed with a specially designed tool or a key, for cleaning. The pillowed surfaces give a gentle look to the product which invites user interaction.

In parts of Asia, water pressure is frequently low, and the water flow is too weak for people to benefit from the soothing effect of showering. Also, due to water often being of poor quality, the outlets clog easily. By addressing these issues, Genie allows people to perform their daily rituals properly and stop worrying about personal hygiene. We designed Genie to perform well under poor pressure conditions while reducing water consumption, delivering an enjoyable showering experience for all consumers, regardless of their water supply situation. Also, Genie’s simple and consumer-centric design combines aesthetics and functional features not seen yet at such price positioning.

This product is very strategic for American Standard as it demonstrates how committed we are to deliver our promise of raising the standard of living by providing beautiful and purposeful products for everyone. Low water pressure and water scarcity are really two issues that constantly affect people in Asia, so GENIE is extremely relevant for these markets. It was launched beginning of June this year and we expect to sell several hundreds of thousands of units in the first year. Also, we are aware that people living in other parts of the world face similar issues and therefore we plan on leveraging our group’s network and resources to offer GENIE on other markets to gain market share and consequently increase our sales volume.

Low pressure and water scarcity are current issues in Asia. We wanted to create a hand shower which boosts water pressure, consequently reduces water consumption by several liters per minute in comparison to traditional hand showers. With Genie, we are making advanced technologies and thoughtful design features accessible, offering an indulging shower routine to everyone. Genie features many fewer components than traditional hand showers, as the front is over-injected onto the body, optimizing the number of materials used and steps during manufacturing. Furthermore, Genie doesn’t require any special treatment after production, limiting its impact on the environment.

Genie was only made possible after reaching a fine balance between design and engineering. We went through many rounds of fine-tuning and testing with a cross-disciplinary team, to guarantee product quality and durability for long-term usage. To achieve this very simple looking and iconic design, the organization had to embrace the challenges and rethink the traditional manufacturing techniques, including updating the supply chain network to achieve the level of quality and performance intended.

We have engineered, prototyped and tested several designs to define the best ratio between spray face size, size of the holes, number of holes, and volume of the inside cavity so it performs well under poor pressure conditions while reducing water consumption. Genie features 120 holes arranged evenly in a linear pattern -to enhance the watering effect of the spray- which contrasts with the circular patterns one can usually find on a hand shower. The transparent plastic on the front let users see through, and the openable back supports with easy maintenance of the product. On the body, we have used a very advanced dual injection process which ensures the direct and perfect sealing between parts, reducing thus the number of components. At the same time, this unique technology allowed us to achieve aesthetics and materials combination that are new at this price point.

Genie development process took about two years from initial concepts to production. It challenged the organization all the way from the conceptual idea to our manufacturing processes, requiring the teams to spend months on understanding people’s needs, generating ideas, prototyping and refining the design before shipping the product to our consumers

With GENIE, we wanted to create a product that addresses the consumer insights of poor showering experience at low pressure and that features aesthetics and materials combination not seen at such price positioning. With the iconic transparent colored spray face and universal opening system, the product offers a great balance between emotional and practical benefits.