Part
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Part
01
Top Small Kitchen Appliance Manufacturers - Italy
No list of top manufacturers of small kitchen appliances in Italy could either be found readily available or could be triangulated based on revenue, market share, volume, distribution network or any other related parameter. Below some helpful findings are presented.
HELPFUL FINDINGS
General Industry
- The industry size of the 'Small Kitchen Appliances' industry in Italy was $779.5 million in 2018 and is projected to reach $850.5 million in 2023 thereby growing at a CAGR of 1.7% over the forecast period (2019-2023).
- As per Mordor Intelligence report, the category of home appliances in Italy, "amidst the lowest purchasing powers, low year-over-year GDP growth and 12.40% rate of unemployment," is primarily being driven by small kitchen appliances. It is the small kitchen appliances market which is driving the growth in the kitchen appliances market.
- In the small cooking appliances segment, the products which had the strongest growth in retail volume in 2018 in Italy included slow cookers, light fryers, electric steamers, and fully automated coffee machines, especially newly designed pod coffee machines.
- De’Longhi and Groupe SEB Italia are the two key Italian players and combined have the highest volume shares in the overall small cooking appliances segment.
Leading/Major Players in Italian Small Kitchen Appliances Segment
1) Ardes
- Website
- The company is based in Milan and has been in existence since 1962. It operates in a wide range of small household appliances across six categories including small kitchen cooking and preservation appliances, ventilation appliances, heaters, air treatment appliances, insect killers, and personal care appliances.
- The company regards itself as a market leader in the segment of electric cookers and gas cooking, owing to its Italian production and technical know-how.
- One of the key competitive advantages that the company has is that it still produces in Italy as opposed to its competitors. This allows it to fully control its production, manufacture customized products, and conform to the customers’ needs.
- No revenue information could be located.
2) Girmi
- Website
- The company is based in Omegna and as per its website, it has been an Italian leader in the small household appliances industry producing items such as irons, electric ovens, blenders, ice-cream makers, coffee machines, grinders, and toasters since the early 60s.
- The company primarily deals in four household appliance product categories viz Food Preparation, Cooking, Homecare, and Personal Care with small kitchen appliances primarily forming part of the first two categories.
- No revenue information could be located.
3) SMEG
- Website
- The company is a leading Italian home appliance manufacturer based in Guastalla, near Reggio Emilia in the northern region of Italy. The company has subsidiaries globally, overseas offices, and an extensive sales network.
- The company offers ovens, hobs, cookers, hoods, sinks, refrigerators, dishwashers, laundry, barbecue, accessories, taps, coffee machines, and home garden tools.
- The company has estimated revenues of $31.6 million.
4) Groupe SEB Italia
- Website
- The company operates in small domestic equipment in approximately 150 countries and has a unique portfolio of almost 30 top brands which it markets through multi-format retailing.
- The various brands associated with the company include Krups, Original Kaiser, Maharaja Whiteline, IMUSA, MIrro, Supor, Samurai, Wearever, and Teffel.
- The company had total sales of €6,812 million in 2018 with €2,430 million coming from Europe. The company has not provided any specific breakup for Italy or for 'small kitchen appliances'.
5) De’Longhi
- Website
- The company is an Italian small appliance manufacturer based in Treviso, Italy. Historically it produced portable heaters and air conditioners but has expanded to include small domestic appliances in the food preparation and cooking (kitchen), as well as in the household cleaning and ironing segments.
- The company sells its products under four brands namely DeLonghi, Kenwood, Braun, and Ariete. It is specifically No.1 in the world in espresso coffee machines.
- The company had total sales of €2,078.4 million in 2018 with €1,586.9 million coming from Europe. The company has not provided any specific breakup for Italy or for 'small kitchen appliances'.
Research Strategy
Our first strategy was to scour through the various market and industry research reports on the Italian small kitchen appliances industry (from sources such as Mordor Intelligence, Market Radar, EuroMonitor, Deloitte, McKinsey, Forrester Research, etc). These industry research reports are a primary resource for information on key industry players and at times also provide a ranked list based on revenues/market share, hence the idea was to garner any such available list from these reports. However, no specific report apropos of the Italian small kitchen appliances industry could be found. Most of the reports found were apropos of the broader industry segments like home appliances or consumer appliances which did not furnish any relevant data apart from just highlighting that small kitchen appliances form a major part of these. We were able to locate a report on the Italian 'Kitchen Appliances Industry' which included both large and small kitchen appliances and highlighted a few international brands having a presence in Italy. Most of these like Electrolux, GE, LG Electronics, Samsung were huge consumer electronics brands (and not specifically small kitchen appliance brands) operating globally. There was no information on any leading manufacturers or distributors of small kitchen appliances in Italy. Another report from EuroMonitor on Italian small cooking appliances industry also did not furnish any list of key industry players and just highlighted a couple of leading hard pod coffee machines manufacturers. A Statista report highlighted the industry market size, CAGR, and revenue per capita but did not furnish any industry player information.
Our second strategy was to scour through various media articles (from sources such as Forbes, Businesswire, Bloomberg, Reuters, Live Mint, etc), Italian home appliances and consumer electronics specific blogs (such as 'ArchiProducts', 'Home Style Blogs', 'Appliances Connection'), and company databases (such as Hoovers, Crunchbase, Craft.Io, etc) to check if they have any readily available list of relevant industry players. We also scoured through surveys from Pew Research, Nielson, and Deloitte (among others) to check if any information on the best or leading Italian small kitchen appliances brands based on customer perception or feedback could be found. All these are potential sources where key industry players are discussed by various media houses. However, this research did not yield any fruitful results. We were able to locate a list of some kitchen appliances manufacturers in Italy but again there were no criteria to rank them. Also, most of them operated in a variety of segments like kitchen furniture, kitchen accessories, cooking utensils, etc with 'small kitchen appliances' being a small part of their portfolio (as gauzed by scouring through their provided product portfolio) hence no clear identification of the presence of each of them in the Italian small kitchen appliance segment could be stipulated to arrive at a top players list.
Our third strategy was to try to triangulate the information. The idea was to try to organize the list of individual players operating in the small kitchen appliances sector in Italy or related segments found during our research from the various media articles and blogs and then rank them based on their revenues from the small kitchen appliances segment. However, the major stumbling block that was encountered in this was the lack of any detailed financial filings or financial information about these players owing to their private nature. Also, since almost all of them also dealt in other household appliance categories, taking overall revenues from company databases (such as Owler, Crunchbase, etc) did not make sense as a player with overall high revenues may have a smaller revenue share from 'small kitchen appliances'. Alternatively, we also broadened the scope to search for other ranking parameters such as market share, sales volumes, distribution network (no of distributors), customer rating/perception from surveys or review websites but no consistent information across the players could be garnered. Hence, no top players list could be triangulated through this approach.
As an extension of the above strategy, we also looked at the international brands, such as Samsung, LG, Electrolux, mentioned in one of the research reports as having a presence in the Italian small kitchen appliances market and went through their filings, annual reports, presentations, among others, to check if they had disclosed their Italian segment revenue but none of the companies had such information in their filings. Only broad global revenues and revenues from key geographies like Korea, America, Europe, Asia and Africa and China were available. Hence, no information regarding the top players could be garnered from this approach.
Our last strategy was to broaden the scope of the research beyond the standard Wonder's two-year source timeline rule. With this approach, we hoped to look for slightly outdated but useful information apropos of any past surveys or research done around the topic which we could use as a proxy for the top Italian small kitchen appliance manufacturers. The idea was to use the past list as a starting point and check if those companies still hold the leadership positions. However, no relevant past surveys or research reports could be located around the topic. We did not expand the geographic scope of the request to Europe as there is a separate request looking into this region.
In short, while we were able to find a few leading Italian players in the small kitchen appliances segment, there was no information that could be garnered around their revenues/market share or any other comparable metrics to regard or rank them as the top. All the leading players broadly deal in the home appliance industry with large and small kitchen appliances as their operating sub segments and they have not provided any revenue/market share/volume information specific to these sub segments. Hence, in the absence of any ranking parameter, it was not possible to triangulate the list of leading manufacturers of small kitchen appliances. The primary reason for the information to be missing can be its niche nature and the fragmented and unorganized nature of the industry due to which many small key players operate in the same. Also, most of the players are private in nature, therefore, limiting access to the financial filings and financial information and making it impossible to create a ranked list.