Design inspiration

Long a fixture in the cookware sections of discount stores with its Wearever line, Mirro Company wanted a unique, new product that would give it an entrée into specialty and department stores. The Manitowoc, Wis.-based firm got just what it wanted with the debut of its Allegro cookware, thanks to a pinch of innovation, a dash of design ingenuity, and a heaping portion of marketing research.

The plan was to begin marketing Allegro via infomercial and then expand to retail outlets later. But for now, the infomercial approach, which began in late 1998 and has been wildly successful, will do.

What’s all the fuss about? Allegro cookware is round on the bottom and expands to a square at the top, which not only makes it easier to handle and store but also lets it hold more food than a round pan of similar height. The pots and pans have a non-stick surface, developed exclusively for Mirro by DuPont, that withstands contact with the dreaded metal utensils. The lids have two side-mounted handles for easy pouring and transportation and a vent that allows boiled-over liquid to drain safely back into the cooking vessel. The vent also eliminates the need to remove potentially hot lids during cooking. Plus, the pots and pans stack with lids in place or can be easily nested without them.

The inspiration to combine all of these features came from in-home research, during which observers watched consumers struggle with every aspect of the task of cooking, from storing the pots and pans to pouring with and cleaning them. It was a series of needs crying out to be met.

Clean sheet of paper

After Mirro decided to create a product for the department and specialty store market, it turned to Metaphase Design Group, St. Louis, for help with the design work and the marketing research. “Mirro asked us to start with a clean sheet of paper,” says Kent Ritzel, director of Metaphase. “They said, ‘Forget everything you know about cookware, and let’s see where it takes us.’”

Metaphase began by examining consumer product safety information to find out more about cookware-related injuries and general kitchen safety issues. Not surprisingly, spills and boil-overs were major culprits. Metaphase also conducted a general examination of the task of food preparation. “We tried to understand the whole process, from how people store cookware to how they work with it during meal preparation and clean up,” Ritzel says.

With those issues in mind, a three-person team (a videographer, a Mirro representative, and a Metaphase representative) went into the homes of consumers in Boston, San Francisco and St. Louis and videotaped the meal-making process. The researchers made sure to conduct the interviews in a variety of kitchen sizes and include consumers from diverse incomes and ethnic backgrounds.

“In simplest terms, we found that the American public is very accommodating of their cookware,” Ritzel says. “They have all kinds of things that they struggle with but people make do, or work around it or put up with it.

”The sessions produced a lot of valuable findings, says Gerry Paul, Mirro’s manager of future product development. “We noticed that people use metal utensils in their non-stick cookware, which is a no-no. They used forks to stir and turn items. Everyone had the spatulas you’re supposed to use with non-stick coatings but there’s nothing like a good old fork. Some of them caught themselves and said ‘Oh, I’m not supposed to be doing this, am I?’

“Pouring was another problem, as was moving food in and out of the pan. And people didn’t know what to do with their lids while they were cooking. They complained about the mess that lids leave when you have to set them on the counter or on the stove top.”

And then there were the problems with non-stick surfaces. “People have had a lot of bad experiences with non-stick,” Ritzel says. “They like it but it either didn’t last or it didn’t really work. And basically what they said was, give us non-stick that works or get it out of there.”

Stay out of the way

For the observational interviews, respondents were given a specific meal-making task. As much as possible, the observers tried to stay out of the way and let the respondents do what came naturally. “When they did something out of the ordinary we would ask questions,” Ritzel says. “It was funny to see them do some of the things that they did routinely, which flew in the face of what cookware people think they do. Typically the first question we asked was, ‘Could you open up where you store your pots and let us see inside there?’ They all had a fit. Each one of them said, ‘I have the messiest cabinet in the world!’”

After the cooking observation, the interviews were expanded to what Metaphase calls Buddy Groups, for which friends and neighbors of the respondents were invited over to discuss cooking-related issues.

“From that we learned some of the variations of how people do things and we also had a questionnaire for them to fill out and an interview process to walk them through to obtain more information,” Ritzel says.

Embody the learning

Armed with the consumer product safety data, findings from the in-home interviews and videotapes, and information on usability and ergonomic issues, Metaphase set to work. “The first pass was just developing concepts that came from all of the information we had. The key was to funnel it all into a product that embodied all we had learned,” Ritzel says.

It was during this phase that inspiration struck, leading to Allegro’s unique round-to-square shape. “One of the thoughts that came up was to look at this thing from a real functional perspective,” Ritzel says. “In most cases, the heat sources on a stove are round. The cookware is, for the most part, round. Yet for efficient use of space you think square. My idea was to use space more efficiently. Because you could make something that was a little shorter and take up a lot less room if you did something that was square. All of the other benefits came from that initial thought. It enabled the user to pour more easily. And the addition of a second handle gave better stability in transportation.

”Making the cookware usable for cooks of all ages was high on the priority list, with the ranks of older cooks swelling as Baby Boomers age and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, growing numbers of younger cooks who may have to fend for themselves before mom or dad comes home from work. “Certain elements of the design came easily. Knowing that the average 65-year-old has 25 percent of the strength of a 25-year-old, we knew we wanted to make the cookware lighter. Aluminum proved to be the perfect material. The handle design was tapered so that it fits over 95 percent of the population and accommodates different grip styles,” Ritzel says.

Once prototypes were developed, they were also tested with consumers. Mirro’s Gerry Paul says that’s when things got exciting. “You could see that consumers understood the cookware intuitively. They figured things out without being told.”

Replaced traditional focus groups

Ritzel says that Buddy Groups have replaced traditional focus groups in many of the projects Metaphase works on. “We have always been disappointed with the performance factor of focus groups and the lack of comfort people can feel if they are in a room full of strangers. Nobody wants to look stupid. In traditional groups you get some people who figure out what the moderator wants them to say or people who fall in line with the talkers. And there are some you have to shake to make sure they are awake.”

“With traditional focus groups you get the dominant person and a few who are there for the money, and a couple who are in between,” Paul says. “With [the Buddy Group approach], there’s no need to break the ice, everybody knows each other. We got information out of everybody. Nobody was afraid to speak.”

Topped expectations

Allegro sales have topped expectations, and production has finally caught up with the overwhelming demand generated by the early infomercials. “Consumer reaction is very good,” Paul says. “Acceptance by potential retailers has been phenomenal. They’re waiting in line to get Allegro on their shelves. The ratio of sales dollars to media expense is very positive. We’re very happy with the numbers.”