THE KBBREVIEW INTERVIEW | Dr Miele
he Miele Experience Centre in Edinburgh opened at the end of 2021 and it is, as always, a handsome encapsulation of the premium brand’s values and intent. Miele is a family company (technically two families, Miele and Zinkann) and has built the brand on a platform of quality, usability and reliability. This, naturally, makes it a favourite among premium kitchen retailers and the Experience Centres – three in the UK with Edinburgh as the 100th globally – are there to act as a hub to support its dealers who want customers to see, feel and, yes, practically experience more than they may be able to display in their showrooms.
T But even Miele, which usually happily confirms all
clichés about German efficiency, has not been immune to the logistical storms caused by the wildly high demand and the even wilder supply chain unpredictability triggered by the lockdowns. For Dr Markus Miele, great-grandson of company co-founder Carl Miele, the past two years have been a difficult balance of managing the day-to-day upheaval and keeping the long-term plan on the road. This dual management is perfectly illustrated by the fact that kbbreview went to meet him at the opening of a new Experience Centre to also discuss the status of its current supply chain...
Q & A
Q: The new Miele Experience Centre in Edinburgh is very impressive but why now? A: For us, Experience Centres are an evolutionary concept. Every time we open a new one, we learn a lot and we tweak, twist, and improve things. Now the Edinburgh Experience Centre is the latest one, making it 100 worldwide, and things have changed again, products have changed, and how we explain them has changed. So you see all the good things here that we have learnt from all over the world. Being in Edinburgh is very special for me personally because it’s the first time in two years that I’ve been anywhere to open anything! It’s great to be able to talk in person again, because meeting dealers is always very interesting, as you learn things, you hear new ideas, and you get feedback on what you do well and what can be improved. That’s always very, very valuable.
Q: It’s been a unique couple of years for everybody in the kitchen sector, can you summarise how business is globally for Miele at the moment? A: There’s no question 2020 was a rollercoaster year, we had a great start and then March and April were the worst months I can ever recall. That was really a catastrophe, but we picked up extremely well and the second half of the year was a record one. Everyone was working from home and wanted to invest in dishwashers, laundry and cooking appliances and this trend continued into
2021.That has put us in a situation where we have high demand that can’t be matched all the time. So, after being completely depressed in March and April 2020, we became very enthusiastic and now we have some supply issues. It’s still a rollercoaster!
Q: What is the current status for Miele in fulfilling orders? A: There are a lot of restrictions right now when it comes to [shipping] containers and the availability of certain materials, but the worst thing is semiconductors. We need them for our electronic controls, and even though we produce and design our own circuit boards, we still need the chips to make the machines work. This is really a severe situation – you can get a call on Wednesday telling
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“Even I couldn’t get a dishwasher.”
Dr Markus Miele is the joint head of one of the most iconic brands in the premium kitchen sector, but even his rock-solid company has been shaken by the double- whammy of unprecedented high demand and logistical nightmares. The past two years have been, he says, a ‘rollercoaster’. Rebecca Nottingham went to meet him...
· January 2022
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