Hoover hopes to clean up in the white goods market

Hoover is planning to make a serious entry into the white goods sector this summer with a range of 70 built-in ovens, hobs and fridges created by its in-house design teams in Scotland and Italy.

Hoover’s Scotland-based designers James Hastie and Knuk Ankjell were first briefed to explore initial concepts for the range in October 2002. The pair, in turn, liaised with Hoover’s Milan-based design and engineering team, led by Hoover director Eden Fumagalli for the design prototypes.

Exhibition designer Simon Mitchell has been appointed to oversee two launch events for the built-in range, scheduled to take place in June, but further external design appointments are not on the cards.

Though the Hoover roundel will be applied to the range of kitchen products, Hoover-Candy Group marketing and sales director Maurizio Severgnini says he is unlikely to appoint consultancies to look at brand packaging, or on-line work for the launch. However, a small team of consultants headed by Tim Leyland has been overseeing the design of a summer trade campaign.

‘The Hoover built-in range will be aimed at the mid-upper market, to compete with manufacturers such as Bosch,’ says Severgnini, who adds that the range will be ‘classically styled with a contemporary edge’.

‘We deliberately used designers who did not have a kitchen appliance background to generate a large number of initial designs,’ he says. ‘We wanted the designers to have a fresh perspective and they created some pretty off-the-wall concepts. From the conceptual stage we went to our engineering team based in Italy and France.’

The range of designs will be unveiled at two three-day events in June. One will be held at The Lowry in Manchester and the other at the Imagination Gallery in London.