Looking at home in a bright new way

This year China's property market has gained momentum. In the first three quarters, investment in the property market nationwide rose 19.7 percent year-on-year to reach 6.11 trillion yuan. And residential investment reached 4.2 trillion yuan during the period, up 19.5 percent from the previous year.

Nipsea chose to work with top developers in the country. Among the first 100 developers in China, more than 50 are Nipsea Group's strategic partners in this initiative. The paints and coatings giant intends to engage in both their new building and old building projects amid a recovering property market.

Nipsea started rolling out this concept of a renewal initiative last year. It involves the whole chain from product quality, through to dealer bases and painter training. For example, the company has 11 schools to train painters, with about 40,000 painters gaining official qualifications.

The plan for the renewal initiative in 2014 is to reach out to 50 cities in China within their resources - a rather conservative move from a business reaching out to thousands of homes every day.

Wee said the reason the company is being very careful is because it wants to ensure the service delivery system is firmly in place so it won't disappoint its customers.

The CEO believes the huge potential for the growth of his business comes from raising awareness among customers on how easy and convenient it is to repaint both interior and exterior walls - a relatively new concept among Chinese homeowners.

In the interior coating business areas, Nippon Paint China has been trying to position itself to be more relevant to the local marketplace by re-emphasizing the role of coatings in the life of a person.

"Painting is not just a functional thing to protect the walls," said Wee.

"It has texture. It has color. It brings out a whole new environment. And it actually involves emotions."

He said the established thought is that re-painting is troublesome because it involves a lot of moving of furniture and items in the home, often deterring people.

"If you use the latest technology and odorless paint and have professional painters do the painting job you won't have the hassle of being disturbed or having to relocate when the painting is being done," said Wee.