Stoves Special 2020 ertonline.co.uk


It’s all the range


The range cooker sector has been a real success story for Stoves, which has grown its share of the sector and put its individual stamp on a crowded marketplace. Jack Cheeseman chats to Sarah Whitfi eld, Product Manager for Range at Stoves, about how the brand has approached the sector and what the future holds.


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Q: This year marks Stoves’ centenary year. The brand started its life making oil-powered gas cookers, tell me more about Stoves’ history with the range sector? SW: Although the Stoves brand has changed hands over the years, the one thing that hasn’t changed is that it has always been very good at tracking the market and responding to changes and trends. In the 1990s the range cooker sector really started to


take off in the UK and Stoves was quick to capitalise. At the time the brand had a range of freestanding products – the New Home collection – and this was expanded in 1996 to include 100cm range cookers across a number of fuel options, including a highly sophisticated (for the time!) electric multifunction product. Stoves quickly made its mark with a wide range of designs and colours; just 12 months later, it added a larger model – 110cm – and had achieved a signifi cant share of the range cooker sector. From there, momentum grew and customisation became popular; this was supported by a clever national advertising campaign which said: ‘Who makes the best range cookers? You do’. No other brand was able to compete with that.


Q: What are your highlights from over the years? SW: Well, in 2001 our Stoves 1200 Dfa was presented with The Prince’s Medal for Contemporary Design by Prince Charles himself at his home in Highgrove. It was then chosen to be in an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London – so it quite literally became part of history.


Also, by the mid noughties we were enjoying considerable success with our Stoves Sterling and Stoves Richmond range cookers, and then we decided to launch ‘Flavours’ – a collection of exciting new colours, from Pomegranate (pink) to Sushi (teal). We even had Keith Floyd as our brand ambassador and there are some fantastic stories about his wine-fuelled cooking demonstrations in our showroom! The other memory that springs to mind is our collaboration with the Women’s Institute, which asked us to support the diamond anniversary of its Denman College, so we produced a specially developed ‘diamond-effect’ sparkling silver paint fi nished with a half-carat diamond inlaid into our logo. It raised a lot of money for charity and was a fun project to be part of.


Q: What changes have you seen in the marketplace? SW: Undeniably it’s been a tough few years for retail,


Quad oven on new Stoves Deluxe collections, 2018


with many well-known brands vanishing. New technologies are both driving and reinforcing a change in the way consumers shop and staying competitive is vital. Alongside this, there have been signifi cant changes to the demographic of who we would regard as the ‘typical’ range cooker buyer. Consumer


research we undertook last


year showed that more than a third of range cooker buyers fall into the 25-34 age group and 35 per cent said their household income was a combined £35k or less, whereas the accepted wisdom had previously been that range cooker buyers were older and affl uent. Understanding this change has been crucial for us and has really driven our product development strategy.


Q: How has Stoves adapted to these changes? SW: As you would expect from a younger customer demographic, connectivity has grown in importance, so we’re proud that we launched our Stoves Deluxe


Launch of Elite retailers scheme, 2019


range cooker – the fi rst with Bluetooth connectivity. And, because we know the structure of UK families has altered, we introduced the Quad Oven and became the only brand to manufacture range cookers offering four ovens, including a three to four ov en converter – the Profl ex cavity splitter – on our 90cm models. This product development came hot on the heels of a £1.5m investment in our UK manufacturing facility; we also introduced new features such as one-piece, tempered steel frames on all range cookers, elevated pan supports, precision control knobs and one-piece hotplates made from catering grade stainless steel.


Stoves Sterling Deluxe, 2018


Q: What’s next for Stoves in range cooking? SW: We have ambitious plans – we want to be the market leader. Our independent retailers are a big part of our plans and that’s why we will be using our Centenary year to really drive consumers into stores. We’ll be undertaking a national media campaign, promotions and brand-building exercises, including support of nationwide food festivals. In terms of technology, range cooker brands have been slow to capitalise on the advances made in the built-in appliances sector, but this is changing – particularly at Stoves. We have a number of interesting developments in the pipeline. So our message to both retailers and competitors is – watch this space!


HRH Prince Charles with the Stoves 1200 Dfa, 2001


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