Out of the blue - Bigblue

Designing range cookers has been exactly the experience Chris Parker and Andrew Longfield of Bigblue needed to make them successful retailers. They applied their design flair to e-commerce with Rangecookers.co.uk and the Chester duo has moved beyond the virtual world to bricks and mortar too

If you ever have to call Dyson about a new vacuum cleaner, it’s a pretty fair bet that it won’t be company founder Sir James Dyson who answers the phone. But call Chester-based Rangecookers and the salesperson you speak to is likely to have come up with some of the most successful cooker designs on the market. Product designers who sell? Unusual, certainly.

But perhaps not as surprising as it may seem, given that this showroom and e-commerce business is owned by two men who’ve lived and breathed cookers for most of their working lives – who better to advise on the best cooker to buy? Yet despite having plenty of success to shout about, Chris Parker, 44, and Andrew Longfield, 45, are a softly-spoken designer duo. They started Bigblue Product Design, the award-winning consultancy that put the spark into the Stoves brand and quickly followed this by lighting the fire under Premium Appliance Brands, designing all of its appliances in the early days. Brands such as Creda and Aga also feature in their CV.

Parker, md and Longfield, director and company secretary, are both former Stoves employees, so it’s perhaps no surprise that Stoves’ former sales and marketing director Guy Weaver was an early customer for their fledgling consultancy business in the mid 1990s. Having won a V&A Classic Design Award for their work for Stoves, Parker and Longfield’s drawing boards quickly started working overtime when Weaver later set up PAB in 2002, looking once again to Bigblue to come up with the goods. Bigblue’s credentials are impeccable. Hailed by Weaver as combining keen commercial awareness with unique and innovative design, their recognisably British design has wowed customers across Europe and the Far East looking to make products with definitive Brit appeal.

In 1994, when Bigblue launched, they initially only sold products they’d had a hand in designing themselves. They have since built up their online repertoire, to the point where the website now features cookers from 22 manufacturers, as well as refrigerators, hoods, built-in ovens and hobs, splashbacks, wine coolers and accessories. And given the online interest, it made sense to show off some of the best-sellers ‘in the flesh’. 2007 saw the launch of a 200sq m canalside showroom, which Bigblue calls National Display Centre. It showcases range cookers from Stoves, Britannia, Rangemaster, Cannon, Mercury, Lacanche and Bertazzoni among others.

Not only does the Chester showroom contribute to Bigblue’s £6m annual turnover, but it’s become a live product test centre. By finding out first-hand what turns buyers on to a particular product, they gain valuable information to be salted away for future use. “Dealing directly with the public in this way is the best feedback you’ll ever get on your products,” says Parker.

The website is a model of navigational ease, leading customers quickly and easily to the cooker they’re looking for. But there is also some clever stuff going on behind the scenes to enhance the shopping experience. Customers can see how the cookers look in different colourways, get close-ups of the controls and the hob and see how it looks in-situ.

The site also features the 3D Rangeviewer – a Bigblue-designed visual tool which makes it possible to view a cooker from any angle, open doors, zoom in on detail and view special features, creating a ‘virtual showroom’ that’s proved to be a marketable commodity in its own right.

Longfield explains: “When we started we didn’t see much evidence of e-commerce being done properly. We’re specialists and we worked to show that through the website. We believe we do that better than anyone else. Many manufacturers use our site, and sales departments use it as a resource.”

The site may list fully inclusive prices, with special offers and package prices, but it is emphatically not a pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap outlet. Parker says: “We never set out to be the cheapest. We see ourselves as the John Lewis of range cookers.”

The Rangecooker showroom is in an attractive development of wharf-style buildings close to Chester city centre and has more than 20 cookers on display, but what makes the open-plan showroom unusual is that the office and design department is also on display; tucked in the corner, customers can see the team of young designers-cum-sales advisors at work. “If you call up, the designers are going to be the ones picking up the phone,” says Parker, “so it means you’re immediately talking to a very high calibre person.”

Longfield agrees. “Customers can tell that,” he says.

“They know they’re not talking to a call centre. They realise they’ve found the experts and then they can choose their cooker.” Parker admits that not every designer found it easy to double up as a sales adviser. “A lot of designers find this a strange environment, but combining design and retail really works for us. Most of all – it works for the customer.”

The team know the product well enough to even advise on cooking techniques and are often asked for their opinion on colour. “It’s always a tricky one,” admits Longfield, who says there’s a bit of a herd instinct when it comes to choosing a hue. Green has been abandoned for black with primary colours and cranberry finding favour.

All staff have been on the relevant manufacturer training courses and Parker and Longfield are passionate about training and keen to give up-and-coming designers a chance. They’ve worked closely with the design department at Nottingham Trent University to offer a sought-after third year placement – three of the current team joined the company after graduating from the course. “We don’t have resources to burn, but your people are key,” says Parker. “We treat students as employees and most of them don’t want to go back and do their final year.”

The fresh ideas generated by the students are welcomed, but this isn’t the place for flashy, form-over-function design. Longfield and Parker are men who like heavy metal – the cast-iron sort – and it’s items such as solid cast griddles, knobs or handles that turn them on.

Says Parker: “We dislike anything fake – one material masquerading as another, or anything visually surplus to requirements. If it’s made of plastic, people know it. Materials come way above features for us.” It’s a belief shared with PAB – another reason they have struck up such a productive relationship. “They’re keen not to compromise on materials,” adds Parker. “We have a strong rapport and common aims.”

Despite designing other products such as kettles, medical equipment and mobile CCTV systems for nightclubs, it’s cookers they love. “The idea for us was always about focus and doing one thing well,” says Parker. Certainly there’s no shortage of suitors knocking on the door looking for their product design skills – though some are more welcome than others. “We have a lot of people who approach us to make their product but most of them seem totally flawed to us,” says Longfield. “It was tempting to do everything, but we’ve found our niche.”