Daniel Bertuccio is the marketing manager at Eurolinx, suppliers of ILVE and De Dietrich. Eurolinx markets integrated fully automatics and, in a move that stands them out from the crowd, recently unveiled a new built-in manual machine.
He spoke to Appliance Retailer about the coffee machine market and how Eurolinx’s new products.
What’s your view on current issues and future trends in the coffee market?
Coffee is very much a personal taste product that many consumers cannot start the day without. It has become a necessary item in the kitchen of today and this needs to be capitalised on.
There are definitely two types of coffee consumers: the connoisseurs and those who just need a caffeine fix. The competition is intense and the key to ILVE and De Dietrich’s success in this sector is the simplicity of the range, which is why we have one machine per brand in this category, catering for the coffee connoisseur.
What are some real life tips for retailers on selling hot beverage makers?
The most important real life tip for retailers is to identify your customer early. Are they a coffee connoisseur and coffee lover or are they just someone who loves that morning coffee fix? Of course they are equally important but it’s important to make the identification straight up in the selling process.
Talk us through your latest products in this category…
With ILVE, we have our new ES645TK machine that is a manual machine and compatible with coffee pods, along with pre-ground coffee of the customer’s preference. The De Dietrich DED1140X coffee maker is an automatic machine that has an in-built grinder and milk frother with auto pre-sets.
Do you have any marketing initiatives to promote these machines?
Our marketing plan in this category is to sell the ILVE and De Dietrich coffee machines not only as standalone products but also as part of the complete offering of the ILVE and De Dietrich range of cooking appliances.
What’s your message to your retailer partners?
With the ILVE and De Dietrich coffee makers, we understand that they are usually a purchase that is made along with a range of other items for the kitchen, and they can be a higher-priced purchase than other products in this category, such as standard freestanding benchtop machines. We encourage retailers to send customers into our showrooms to receive full demonstrations on these products to get a real feel for the product, so they can feel confident with making the purchase ultimately at a retail level.
This author is on Twitter: @Patrickavenell