Who hasn't been annoyed with her yet?
These hobs that can only be operated digitally by pressing marked points.
But woe betide you, your fingers are wet or greasy, which is known to happen when cooking.
Then regulating the temperature becomes an annoying test of patience.
And why does the thing just beep away?
Just because half of the pan has been pushed onto another heating plate?
Or is it because of the small pool of water in the front right?
Johannes Ritter
Correspondent for politics and business in Switzerland.
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Peter Spirig has also been annoyed about such situations while working on the stove at home. In his case, however, this has a special significance: Spirig has been managing the traditional Swiss home appliance manufacturer V-Zug since September 2020. The company is the market leader in the Swiss Confederation and can best be compared to its German rival Miele in terms of quality and price. In an interview with the FAZ at the company's headquarters in Zug, Spirig openly admits that there is a simple reason why all manufacturers mainly have these switchless hobs on offer: They are very inexpensive to produce. You only need a glass plate under which so-called induction sensors are hung.
However, because of the comparatively poor usability, these standard models miss the needs of many customers, as Spirig explains with reference to corresponding feedback. This is why V-Zug also offers models with classic rotary switches, but for a surcharge. The example shows: Technical progress must not be an end in itself. This also applies to networked refrigerators that check food expiration dates and independently reorder anything that is missing.
These have been around for a long time. But they are still not a best seller. "In our industry there are many innovations that are not really needed in the market," says Spirig. At the same time, it is clear that V-Zug cannot afford expensive gimmicks. With a recent turnover of 570 million francs (526 million euros), the company is much smaller than competitors such as Miele (4.5 billion euros) or Bosch-Siemens home appliances (13.9 billion euros). Accordingly, the budget for research and development is also significantly smaller. “We have to be disciplined and not get bogged down,” concludes Spirig. A lot of time is spent ensuring that the devices remain as easy to use as possible despite the growing number of functions.
V-Zug also has one or the other technological flagship product on offer, such as a 5000 franc device that includes all types of preparation - from steam and hot air to grills to microwaves. The “Refresh Butler”, a refrigerator-like cloakroom cupboard in which items of clothing are gently cleaned and refreshed overnight with ozone and UV radiation, is a luxury item that costs more than CHF 15,000 for people for whom money does not matter. The bread-and-butter business, however, consists of the sale of washing machines, dishwashers and combination devices such as a convection steamer, including a "guarantee of success" for frying, as they say.
In the past Corona year, V-Zug benefited from the fact that people spent much more time at home due to the pandemic. Many took this as an opportunity to upgrade the kitchen. This brought the company an unexpectedly strong increase in sales of 5 percent. Sales outside of Switzerland even grew by almost 10 percent. Despite this current push, the group's foreign share is a meager 12 percent.