By Patrick Avenell
SYDNEY, NSW: Sunbeam’s parent company, GUD Holdings, will be launching a new small appliances brand in July to sit at the lower-to-middle end of the market. The first batch of products will be traditional kitchen smalls. Business manager Ros Anderson explained the thinking behind this decision.
“We did a lot of analysis of the market and there’s a big segment there of that lower-to-middle end that Sunbeam doesn’t capture — it’s a completely different customer essentially — so we felt the time was right,” Anderson said.
The first batch of Novo products will be toasters, kettles and food preparation smalls, such as slow cookers. There are currently no plans to release irons, heaters or electric blankets. Anderson, who was previously the small appliance buyer at Target, said these products will be clearly targeted at non-Sunbeam customers to avoid cannibalisation.
“We are targeting a younger demographic with these products — we’re not seeking to in any way to engage a Sunbeam customer,” she said. “We have a different price pointing structure and a different space in the market. The basic premise is it’s simple, it’s clean, it’s easy, it stands out, that’s the tagline: it’s easy with Novo.”
Anderson would not single out exactly which retailers, or what type of retailers, would stock the Novo brand. She did say, however, that the focus was not solely on the mass merchant retailers, such as Big W or Target.
“We’re fairly open as to where the product is ranged so all comers, whoever wants to give me an order essentially.”