Smart Appliance Design

Smart appliances perform better and use resources more efficiently. The challenge is often to deliver the best features by developing the optimal solution, protecting it, and to implementing it in a form that can be mass produced at the right cost.

Working with Laurastar, we helped create the world's smartest iron by developing a new automatic steam feature, which applies steam during the forward sweep of the iron but then switches to a dry heat on the return sweep. This smart steam feature removes creases and sets the fabric in a single ergonomic action, dramatically reducing the time required to complete the task.

The novel system was patented and then successfully transferred to production with the full support of our engineering team.

Whether the motivation for the smart appliance design is eco innovation, higher performance or lower cost, it is the market impact that counts.

Based on our market surveys and inside market knowledge, we estimated that
ca. 30% of our products sold would be with the intuitive iron. In reality we note that in the last 12 months almost every second product sold has been the intuitive iron.

Jan Beekman, LAURASTAR's Chief Operating Officer