News

Chefs on Stage

British cooking brand Stoves has renewed its partnership with cookery theatre provider Chefs on Stage, which will see its appliances used at food and drink festivals across the UK throughout 2021.

Stoves will provide built-in cookery appliances for the live cookery theatres at more than 40 of the biggest food and drink festivals in the country.

The Stoves branded stages will feature live cook demonstrations from some of the UK’s best known celebrity chefs and bakers. Stoves will also be promoting the events throughout the year and supporting them with competitions to win tickets, pop-up activity at some shows and via social media. The chefs featuring at the events will also be providing recipes and content for the Stoves website.

Nina Harrison, Kitchen Campaign Marketing Manager for Glen Dimplex Home Appliances, the parent company of Stoves, said: “As a nation, food and drink plays a huge role in how we spend our leisure time and these shows are phenomenally popular. Obviously none of the events took place in 2020 so there is likely to be even more demand for tickets this year, giving us a great platform to show off our Stoves products. And, as ever, we are excited to be working so closely with some of the nation’s best loved chefs.”

We love…Bespoke recycling

EKO Home have launched the new Morandi recycling solution. Available in three sizes and a choice of colours to suit your home and your style. With 20, 30 and 40L bins, any bins of the same size will interlock securely together. All the bins have a slip resistant base and cleanliness can be maintained with a soft damp cloth. Morandi enables you to mix and match colours to create the ideal solution for your household waste and recycling.

www.ekohome.co.uk

New business development manager at Horwood

Farook Mota has joined Horwood as their new Business Development Manager, covering their South West territory and Key Retail accounts. Farook will re-join the housewares industry in August from the Welspun group and is an experienced addition to the Horwood independent sales team. This further demonstrates the ongoing commitment and support as Horwood continue to focus on their traditional and emerging customers within the channel. Farook said, “I am really looking forward to returning to the homewares industry and reengaging from my time at Le Creuset with former customers and building new relationships.”

Pure Table Top partners with Kew Gardens

A new homewares collection featuring illustrations from the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is about to hit retail. Pure Table Top has partnered with the iconic British institute to create an inspirational new series called Bloom. The collection – which launches in October – features eight mug designs along with placemats, coasters, tea towels and oven gloves. Proceeds from the collection directly support the vital plant science and conservation work of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The collection’s illustrations have been selected from the botanical art library and archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew with Bloom showcasing the stunning beauty of botanist drawings with some dating back over 300 years. They have been reimagined and reproduced to create this distinctive collection.

There are four designs in the collection: Midnight Floral, Floral Butterfly, Fruit & Floral and Bee Floral offering a range of colours to complement kitchen décor – dark navy, pale pink, duck egg blue, and sage green.

Samuel Groves have launched Britannia, an all-new handcast, Cast Iron Cookware range designed and manufactured in the heart of the Midlands. The essence of any Samuel Groves product is its environmental impact, and this range is no different, Britannia utilises Samuel Groves waste material from their Carbon Steel Bake and Cookware production lines, to produce Cast-Iron pans with a conscience. The range is pre-seasoned, free of cadmium and lead, PFOA and PTFE free. Each pan is made from 70 per cent recycled material and is essentially 100 per cent recyclable at end of life.

Britannia has an artisan feel with desirable elements of skilled hand-casting and handfinishing to create the perfect item of cookware that will be a joy to use for a lifetime. This autumn’s warm shades on EM77 invite you to slow down and enjoy a well-earned break with a great cup of tea or coffee. The coming season’s colours were inspired by nature: autumn leaves, sand and azure-blue sky.

Rust goes brilliantly with the orange and brown retro look, but has a warmer, deeper glow. Dusty Blue evokes Scandinavian twilight, when the sense of calm sets in, while Army is reminiscent of beautiful grasses that last well into the autumn.

The colours are a perfect accompaniment to current interior decoration trends with dark woods in the kitchen and fabrics and rugs in warm shades. The names of the new colours are Rust, Sand and Dusty Blue.

Albero Forte joins BHETA

The PlasticForte brand from manufacturing company Albero Forte is the latest housewares name to join the British Home Enhancement Trade Association (BHETA).

PlasticForte is known for multiple use home organisation products and the range includes garden pots, storage, laundry products, waste disposal, cooking and kitchen goods and petrelated items. Albero Forte is a family business founded in 2012 and based in Alicante, where it designs and manufactures all its products.

Marketing manager Steve Richardson commented, “We have seen a significant growth in engagement from members and non-members during the pandemic, which can be attributed to several factors. We have run a huge volume of webinars, addressing the needs and opportunities of supplier companies. Subjects have ranged from retailer networking with leading players such as Homebase, eBay, Mano Mano, Ocado, Blue Diamond, Lakeland and John Lewis to advice from business service providers about everything from online marketing to HR to freight costs to sustainability and packaging legislation. Plus, we’ve seen the successful transition of the popular Meet the Buyer series to a digital format, with events held with Homebase and Ocado and more planned for the autumn. And of course, BHETA has been marketing its premier housewares and gift show, Exclusively, to suppliers, so I know BHETA has benefitted from the surge of interest that that is creating.

“Like many companies and organisations, BHETA was concerned as to whether the events of the last fifteen months would adversely affect membership numbers, but the opposite has been the case and levels of engagements are higher than they have ever been.”

Let your kitchen shine

Surveys have shown we spend about 12% of our lives in our kitchens, so it should be the room we put the most effort into designing. But without great lighting, even the most beautiful rooms look dull. Kitchens often fall victim to this, with most people leaving existing light fittings in place even during a renovation.

Clean, safe, and modern lighting solutions are simpler than you think. In areas of the home most at risk of water damage from steam and splashing, like kitchens, downlighting is the best option to create modern lighting solutions that are safe, functional and beautiful.

Using overhead spotlights, downlighting creates light, airy rooms with a modern feeling. The versatility of spotlights mean they can be installed anywhere, lighting everywhere from the main expanse of the room to individual countertops.

Smart downlighting can also be a great addition, adding a warm, yellowtoned glow to your home for when you want to relax, or brighter white light to wake you up and get you ready for the day ahead. Smart lighting offers both, along with many other functions, via your Smart phone, voice control, schedules and much more, without having to crack out the stepladder and change bulbs. Your kitchen and bathroom don’t have to be utilitarian spaces, fill them with life and colour with beautiful, modern lighting solutions.

www.4liteuk.com/connected

Don’t’s miss…

Haden’s Dorchester range of appliances. The range includes a variable temperature kettle, digitally controlled four-slice toaster and a matching microwave, all contemporary designs in a quintessentially British style with wood effect details. The collection is available in Pebble Grey and Sage Green.