By Claire Reilly
Sunbeam has announced the appointment of a new product marketing manager for its coffee division, with former marketing manager for SunRice and Australian Vintage, Tim Anderson, joining the company in the role.
Most recently, Anderson worked as the marketing and innovation manager at SunRice following a stretch as global senior brand manager for Australian Vintage, the ASX-listed company that owns a number of wine brands including McGuigan, Tempus Two, Nepenthe and Sunnyvale.
Despite being a relative greenhorn in the appliance industry, Anderson told Current.com.au that his experience in the wine space has natural parallels with the coffee industry.
“Obviously wine is a great industry to be involved in — being involved with the passion, knowledge and romanticism of wine,” he said. “And I think there’s a lot of synergy with coffee there as well, and especially where coffee is heading. With coffee beans you’ve got some single origins, you’ve got more focus around where the beans come from — in wine we call that the terroir — as well as how they’re roasted and the different styles.
“No longer is it just, ‘I’ll have an espresso,’ but rather, ‘I’ll have an espresso from that bean from that area, created this way.’ So I think there is a lot of synergy there.”
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As with wine, Anderson said that as “people’s palates improve over time, their demand for what they want out of coffee increases, and they become a lot more discerning”. As a result, he said there was a strong opportunity for Sunbeam to cater to discerning customers.
“People want more control over the type of coffee they can make in their home and also the quality of coffee that they get,” he said.
“For me it’s about really helping consumers on their coffee journey. It’s more than just the appliance that we’re talking about with coffee, I think there’s a whole culture around it; the way people talk about coffee, they’re really engaged in it. We’re selling more than an appliance — we’re selling an experience with the coffee.”
While it’s still early days for Anderson in the appliance industry, he has gained a quick grasp of the space, observing that “capsule machines have been exploding” and that retail was having a “fairly tough time”.
Despite this, he said Sunbeam continued to see strong results in the manual segment of the espresso machine market and that the brand was catering to consumers who were upgrading from instant and portioned coffee experiences, looking to “have more control over their coffee” and get a “high quality” result at home.
“I think there are massive opportunities with Sunbeam,” he said. “There is obviously a proud history in Sunbeam as a company as well as in the coffee area. I really want to make Sunbeam top of mind in the world of coffee, so when people are talking about coffee, then Sunbeam is always there.”
Sunbeam's new product marketing manager for coffee, Tim Anderson.