How’s business been for Smeg this year? 

I’m incredibly proud of the team and what they’re delivering at the moment. It’s not the easiest economy to deliver growth in, and in an industry like ours, we’re seeing people take longer to consider product purchases. But it’s quite exciting to be able to say that we’ve grown for back-to-back years. The most pleasing bit of that is that we’re not reliant on one category because we’ve got three quite distinct areas: major domestic appliances, small domestic appliances as well as the professional sector. And so at different times with different challenges and different areas, you can rely more or less on one of those to deliver growth. So to be able to grow in all three consistently through the last two years is is really encouraging.

What would you say sets Smeg apart from other brands?

I’d say a real strength of ours is that breadth of range. From a competition point of view, if we can bring them in with a water bottle or breakfast set, then actually we can meet them at whatever price point they can afford at that moment. I think that’s a massive strength for us and not many brands can say that. But cooking and coffee are areas of very deliberate focus at the moment. In fact, my family holidayed through northern Italy last summer, just to really try and embrace the culture, which was amazing. I think Italy is a land built on stories, all around cooking and having coffee and time with family. We can really build on that heritage from northern Italy as a massive springboard for our success into the future. 

How do you balance innovating products visually with staying true to the iconic style that’s helped make Smeg so famous? 

The way I look at it is we have deep heritage. So if you rewind to the mid-nineties, when we launched our FAB fridges, they became iconic over time for their curved edges. Now, we’ve gone into a category that is traditionally very square and we’ve taken our playful approach to curved edges into that. And I think if you looked at MUSA, you’d still know it was a Smeg product. But as well as being beautifully designed we also do genuinely want to be inspirational with technology that will inspire beautiful cooking, too. So we’ve taken that curved design language that we’re famous for and put it into, frankly, a category that hasn’t had much design change until now.

You’ve previously mentioned plans to invest further into supporting retailers this year, but what will that actually look like?

Marketing support is increasingly important for us. We’re seeing a real omnichannel approach from consumers now. And if they’re walking into an independent store, they’ve probably done their own online and offline research on what appliances they want to put in their kitchen before coming in. And I want our retail partners to be really well educated on the brand. I’d like people to really feel like they’re making their own consumer choices, and you get there by delivering a more premium range, which we are doing, and that will support growth for independent retail studios. I’ve got the utmost respect for our team here that get in their cars and go and speak to retailers every day, because that long-format relationship is increasingly becoming lost. Retailers invest a lot in their stores, and we should support that and really help them. But I think what’s also important is that their store is theirs. Of course, I want our brand to be very well displayed, but we’re sympathetic to their approach to their store, rather than enforcing any kind of forced branding, because it shouldn’t be the same thing for everyone. We’re all working in the kitchen industry together, so suppliers and brands need to co-create kitchens, right? 

Finally, what’s next for Smeg in the UK?

So we’ll be eighty years old next year, which is huge and you can bet we’ll be doing some celebrating around that. My passion is really allowing Smeg to build on its heritage, but also being quite playful with a new approach. You’ll see more colours coming to market because self-expression is only getting more important. We’re also going to be innovating more with our smaller appliances. We’ve just launched an air fryer this year but we’re also looking at more playful designs for microwaves and coffee products. So to answer your question, it’s colour, it’s cooking, it’s coffee. And you can expect more investment in marketing and our retail partners. But all of that is to display beautiful products that can inspire results at home. And if we can do that, then I feel like we’re fulfilling where our mission needs to be.