The company also established new accounts with gourmet specialty stores. By 1989, Cuisinart controlled 12 percent of the market, and its revenues fell to about $50 million. Though Cuisinart maintained its image as a high-priced product for serious cooks, consumers more and more perceived its products as too heavy, too complicated, and too expensive in an arena with too much competition. Highly leveraged, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, with $43 million in debts and $35 million in assets. In December the current owners sold the company to Conair Corporation, a national manufacturer of home appliances and personal care products based in Stamford, Connecticut.
Though professional chefs long had been using food preparation machines for slicing and shredding, the device largely was unknown to the American public before its debut in Chicago. Marketed to department and food stores, the Cuisinart food processor appeared to retailers and consumers to be nothing more than a high-priced, revved-up blender. The Sontheimers first saw restaurant food preparation machines manufactured by Robot-Coupe while visiting a housewares show in France in 1971. Certain that they could create a home version of the device, the Sontheimers launched their own housewares business–Cuisinart.
The new designs were larger and more expensive than earlier models and proved to be the company’s testament to product diversity. These models featured more powerful motors, more blades, more attachments, and higher prices. Cuisinart also excited the high-end appliance sector with hand-mixers and toasters. In particular, the company introduced a long, extra wide slot toaster in 1996 that was one of eight preferred toasters Good Housekeeping magazine selected from a field of 25. Without its contract to manufacture and distribute Cuisinart’s food processors, Robot-Coupe launched its own model in 1978. In 1988, the Sontheimers sold Cuisinart to a group of investors for $60 million.
If you’re on the go, you’ll never have to skip your morning shake or smoothie again. A Hamilton Beach® Personal Blender lets you mix hamilton blender a quick, tasty drink, and then grab and run. Each single-serve blender cup has a no-spill travel lid integrated into the top.
In 1984 and 1985, Cuisinart began promoting culinary education and awareness through cookbooks and other media. Anne Greer’s American Southwest, published by Cuisinart, won the Tastemaker Award presented by the R.T. French Company as the best American cuisine cookbook of 1984. The following year, Cuisinart began a cooking videotape series to enhance the culinary education of consumers. The year 1996 marked Cuisinart’s 25th anniversary in culinary appliances. To commemorate the occasion, the company adopted “Your Kitchen Resource” as a new advertising tag line.
Cuisinart Corporation is a well-known manufacturer of small kitchen appliances. Best known for its food processors, Cuisinart established this home appliance as a market segment in its own right. The company eventually expanded its product line to include coffee makers, hand blenders, hand mixers, and toasters, among other housewares.
Consumers liked–and purchased–competitors’ smaller and cheaper machines. They complained that Cuisinart models were too big and bulky to keep on kitchen counters. Frequently stored in closets, Cuisinart food processors had to be lugged out of hiding, which made their use inconvenient. Six to eight blades often overwhelmed the average cook, who saw uses for maybe one or two blades. In 1972, Sontheimer engineered the redesign of these restaurant food processors for home use.
Owning a Cuisinart, Pomice observed, “was tantamount to wearing a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. You could hardly boast of a gourmet kitchen if you didn’t own one of these.” hamilton beach smoothie blender The following year Cuisinart continued to plan for a product line beyond food processors. In 1993, Cuisinart introduced its first hand-held and countertop blenders.
In addition, Cuisinart was required to clarify for retailers that compliance with any suggested pricing was purely voluntary. Nonetheless Cuisinart impressed the industry with a line of coffee makers introduced at the 1995 Gourmet Products Show. These hamilton beach smoothie blender coffee makers reduced the acidity common to many home models. In addition, Cuisinart models responded to consumers’ tangible needs such as color and design. Moderately priced coffee makers started to look like Euro-styled top-of-the-line models.