Good design doesn’t have to be expensive

Bodum is one of the world’s most popular household brands known for its remarkable simple designs and yet affordable prices. Bodum’s designs could be traced to its Danish roots, a country equally famous for its industrial designers. Bodum has transformed everyday household products into something beautifully designed invigorating one to savor every cup of tea and coffee.

Jørgen Bodum, the charismatic owner and president of Bodum has truly made the company into a global brand, following his father’s legacy who started the company in 1944 in Copenhagen. It has gone a long way from importing kitchen and houseware products to producing coffee- makers and now transforming it into a household and kitchenware brand sold in 52 countries including the Philippines. Today, Bodum also sells a whole range of bath and home accessories as well as office products. Some Bodum shops also offer coffee shops where their own brand of coffees and teas are served.

The Philippine STAR was privileged to be part of the press tour for the Tendence Lifestyle Fair held in Frankfurt where Jørgen Bodum personally gave the press a briefing on Bodum’s marketing and positioning strategy.

Price Before The Product

Jørgen Bodum explained that his main strategy is to listen very carefully to the consumers, which translated to opening their own flagship stores in many countries. He enthused, "Our stores are kind of our laboratory. We have stores in Japan, the US and most of Europe. We use those stores to test our products; to see how consumers react to them. It is in their stores that Bodum gets the opportunity to interact with customers and receive feedback on every product. This mechanism has also brought in new ideas for future products. Since more designer products are equally associated with high prices, Jørgen Bodum’s vision is to make excellent design accessible to everyone by selling them at affordable prices. Their philosophy being that good design does not have to be expensive.

Bodum, unlike other companies, has a unique business strategy: price before the product. They start with the selling price before developing a product owing to the fact that most of their customers do not have the disposable income for houseware products. Bodum believes that if his products get too expensive, they will never be bought.

So how is Bodum affected by the recession? Jørgen Bodum surprised the international press by denying there is a recession. "I don’t think there is a recession. Consumption has not gone down. Most of the countries like Germany may probably spend more money on their mobile phones than on other products. In this industry, we have to realize that we are very low priority when it comes to a consumer’s shopping list." Bodum continued that it is important for this industry to create interesting products through good design and affordable prices. He was right in illustrating that a normal person would think twice before buying a new coffee or teapot. It doesn’t help that durable coffee and tea pots last five to 10 years. The challenge then for Bodum is how to make people change their existing pots without lowering the quality and, at the same time, have the spare parts for all the pots which many of their customers expect to have years after they bought them.

From Cooking Ware To Serving Ware

Today’s life in the fast lane has created a new trend in cooking. Bodum explained, "An average American housewife spends 16 minutes a day for cooking. That is not very much. So we have to change a lot of our cooking ware to serving ware." The one opposite is also another new market for Bodum – those who spend more time in cooking, most of which, cook over the weekend.

"The kitchen is becoming the meeting place in many homes in many countries," Bodum declared. That trend translates to more interest in kitchen and table tops.

It also means that a lot of products are getting related to the kitchen. As Bodum explained, many people watch TV while eating and some bathroom products are thrust into the kitchen.

When one sees a Bodum product, one actually sees components coming from different parts of the world. Bodum has a metal factory in Portugal, a plastic and wood factory in Denmark. Subcontractors produce the rest of the materials comprising 55 percent of the production – all of which are in line with Bodum’s design vision the rights of which belong to the Bodum company. The remaining 45 percent are produced internally. Pressures from China, which Jørgen Bodum considers as "getting better and better," inhibits them to produce more internally. In fact, he also opined that in the future, China would end up to be the only supplier in the world.

The only way to minimize the imitations, Jørgen Bodum believes, is to cover the market, to sell their products in every market. Bodum products are sold everywhere in the world, be it through their own stores or through retailers and sales distributors.

How does Bodum handle imitations? "We sue everybody. We want everybody to know it is not easy to copy us." He added jokingly that even if they lose, they will sue to discourage potential imitators.

Bodum opined that it is more profitable to wait and concentrate on fewer markets. However, in so doing, one does not get to protect their product registrations. They had no choice but to be sold in possibly every market or protect themselves from this problem.

Bodum’s Bestsellers

Bodum’s bestsellers are actually those that have been designed and developed in the ’50s, including one hot product, the Santos coffeemaker. Today, they have developed a high-tech version of the vacuum brewer. Just how high-tech is this new version? It has a programmable timer and the water in the pot is heated by an electric-powered, thick-filmed, stainless heating element. The resulting evaporating steam from this process will then generate the pressure for the water to rise to the funnel and through the funnel tube, where it will brew the coffee beans. After reaching a certain temperature, the heating element will switch off automatically and the vacuum in the jug will suck the liquid down through the filter. "Our coffee machine does not look like a photocopying machine where you push a button and something comes out. Our machine looks like a steam machine and is high pressured," said Bodum. No wonder it was declared by the American Coffee Association as the Best Brewing Equipment of the Year.

Recently, Bodum has received three International Forum Design awards in Hannover, Germany for their Bone China Line table top, C-Mill Coffee Blade Grinder and Columbia Line Coffeemaker. Bodum’s see-through coffeemakers and teapots are personal favorites.

From Coffee To Tea

Bodum’s products are easier to sell due to the coffee phenomenon. Bodum noted that more people know about coffee today than 10 years ago, and gave credit to Starbucks for this coffee boom.

However, Bodum aims to reverse the trend from coffee to tea. He reveals plans to open tea shops in the near future. Bodum explained, "We hope to do it the other way around. Tea is one of the hottest trends today. I think a lot of young people would rather have tea than coffee. Coffee is like beer and tea is like wine." He added that tea is not only healthier, it is also a versatile drink since one could have countless different flavors, variations and mixtures such as fruit or herbal teas.

Bodum puts a lot of investment in the quality of their own teas since serving bad tea will definitely jeopardize their brand. He believes that every cup of tea already has 95 percent margin since everything is water and the rest of the overhead cost is really just the labor and not so much the product. Moreover, in this kind of business, it is not really selling one’s own line of coffee or tea that rings the bells of the cash register but the drinks.

So where will the first Bodum tea shop be? Jørgen Bodum flashed a Mona Lisa smile, "It could be in New York or Tokyo but maybe Stockholm will be the first. I can’t tell where." Who knows? He might just open it in Manila.

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Some of Bodum’s products are available in Rustan’s. For comments and suggestions, please e-mail the author at ciao_micia@yahoo.com.