Delta Faucet Company Receives International Recognition

Citing the company's ability to translate innovative design into business success, the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and BusinessWeek announced Delta Faucet Company as the 2003 Design & Business Catalyst Award recipient. The prestigious honor recognizes the Signature(TM) and Waterfall(R) Pull-Out kitchen spray faucets as powerful industrial designs that when taken to market, established Delta Faucet Company as a market leader.

Considered the "best of the best," the Design & Business Catalyst Award selects recipients from past winners of the Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA) in 1998, 1999 and 2000. The Signature and Waterfall Pull-Out faucets were bronze 2000 IDEA winners in the Furniture-Fixtures Category. The 2003 Catalyst Award will be presented to Delta at the closing night of the IDSA National Conference to be held at the Marriott Marquis in New York City on Saturday, August 16.

Designed to offer both style and functionality to the kitchen pull-out faucet segment, the advanced pull-out spray wand, performance-enhanced features and smart ergonomic design on the Signature and Waterfall faucets have played a significant role in helping Delta increase its market share in the retail pull-out category by over 20 percent in two years. The Signature also is the number one selling pull-out spray faucet in the United States. "The return on investment is one of this year's great industrial design stories," said awards juror Dean Dipak Jain of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

The Catalyst Award is judged predominantly by experts in the area of business and is based on four aspects of business-related design: market performance, financial performance, strategic impact and social impact. Catalyst Award jurors were impressed by the forward thinking role that Delta's Industrial Design department played in the development of the product and hence in the pull- out project's business success.

Source: Gibbs & Soell, Inc.