Invites global executive team and retail partners.
To celebrate the launch of the Electrolux Experience Centre (EEC), Electrolux hosted two events – one VIP event for its global executive team, and one for key retail and media stakeholders, with approximately 80 guests at each event. The EEC is a new custom-designed space which features dedicated experiential hubs for each brand within with Electrolux Group – AEG, Electrolux and Westinghouse. It will be used for filming, photography and for key stakeholder masterclasses, including hosted retailer events and classes for post-purchase customers.
The opening night featured cooking demonstrations from renowned chefs and Electrolux Home Products brand ambassadors; Mark Best (AEG ambassador), Massimo Mele (Electrolux ambassador), Nelly Robinson (Electrolux Professionals) and Lauren Di Marco (Electrolux food demonstrator and recipe developer for the Westinghouse Kids in the Kitchen cookbook). Each cooking demonstration showcased the key products and functionality of each brand.
There are other interactive appliances from the fabric care and floorcare categories plus a full working Electrolux Professional kitchen, originally designed by the company’s first brand ambassador Tetsuya Wakuda, as well as a Vintec and Transtherm wine cabinet display.
Addressing attendees, Electrolux Home Products sales director, Michael Doyle (pictured above) said, “On behalf of Electrolux, I would like to welcome all of our trading partners here tonight – it is an absolute honour and a privilege to have our partners here for this opening and we are extremely excited about the future of what we can do with this Experience Centre and working with you.
“When I first started at Electrolux, you would walk through the building and smell food and always find your way down into the showroom – where staff were cooking for themselves, perhaps having a team meeting or having a lunch, conducting training or even having some of our chefs in the building – so it became evident very quickly to me that the DNA of Electrolux is cooking. Moreover, the passion of this team in Australia is cooking and particularly as you would continually smell great stuff coming from this area and people were continually eating from the big long table.
“Like any good family house, the heart and soul is the kitchen and it is exactly the same here at Electrolux. With that in mind, the decision was made that we would invest in this space and really raise the bar in terms of what an Experience Centre will be and can be. However, we wouldn’t do that without including our trading partners so what we do want to use the Experience Centre for is to really change the way we connect with your customers and our customers and really change the way we connect with your staff and bring them into this environment and use it to create remarkable experiences with them.
“What we are going to do is really challenge each of our partners to ensure that we work with you to bring in your customers both pre-purchase and post-purchase so that we can engage with them and create that experience for them to go home and decide how they are going to purchase a product and what product they want. We also want them after their purchase to come in here and whether it is during the night or during the day or on the weekends, we are going to open this centre for them and for you so they can come in and learn more about the product and go home, talk about the product and tell their friends how good it is and then together let’s create new customers and new experiences.
“We have a great group of chefs who help us continually lift the bar in a sense of how we can use our products and how we can demonstrate our products. It really is an exciting time for us.”
Electrolux marketing manager, Michelle Rossier added, “What’s paramount is that this will be a place where our consumers can come and experience our appliances and use them first-hand. The Experience Centre will be a multi-purpose space allowing for a variety of premium activities to complement the brand stable. It will be a training centre, a place for master classes and it will also be a function centre where we will host functions for the various brands and meetings.”
The project took about three months from demolition to completion and was overseen by an internal team comprising Rossier as Project leader and EHP staff representing work, health and safety; marketing; design studio; and finance. EHP first occupied the site in December 2007 after the move from Riverwood.