The pace of innovation within the kitchen industry is phenomenal and this is never more obvious than when visiting the big trade shows such as CES in Las Vegas, LivingKitchen in Cologne or Eurocucina in Milan.
In its truest sense, innovation means providing ideas out of the blue, leading to significant discoveries and achievements, and it is tempting when seeing all these new, interesting and exciting devices and inventions to find a way to include them all in your own R&D programme.
But how many of these new ideas will really appeal to your target market, the UK householder?
The Trend-Monitor approach is to take a more focused view and our starting point is always the societal shifts that will influence the way we use our kitchens in the future.
For example, we look at the impact of multi-generational families all sharing the same kitchen and noise levels in open living spaces, consumer concerns over food wastage and air pollution, the lack of space and increased working hours facing the average homeowner, and much more …
From this focused viewpoint, we can put new innovations and technologies into a better context and from here we can assess how manufacturers, designers and innovators are reacting to these shifts, not just within the kitchen industry, but also with an eye on the wider environments.
Our latest report features seven key design and innovation trends that are directly relevant to changing consumer attitudes which impact on kitchen behaviours. And what is really is interesting to see is the way in which these trends interact with each other and how really clever innovation has the ability to address more than one trend at a time.
