Gorenje Group Premium Touch Washing Machine
Posted on 12/03/2005 5:28:55 PM PST by voletti
Forget stoic, sexless Soviet-era shoes, furniture, and cars. From Latvia and Estonia to the Czech Republic and Poland, design is taking off in Central Europe. Thanks to trade links with the European Union and motivated by ever-cheaper competition from China, the region is embracing creativity as its ticket to moving up the global economic food chain. According to the Bureau of European Design Assns., Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic alone have 8,700 professional designers, compared with barely a handful only 15 years ago.
As finalists in a design competition go, you don't get more varied than the snazzy Apple (AAPL ) iPod and an unassuming water-purifying bottle from a tiny Croatian design studio called Parabureau. The odd pair were lauded by judges in the international design show INDEX 2005, which took place in October in Copenhagen. Thanks to an ingenious filtering process that purifies water with a squeeze of a small blue bottle, the Personal Water Cleaner won accolades for its two-man design team. "The market economy has opened up much more space for design [in Croatia]," says Igor Stanisljevic, one of Parabureau's founders. "We now have a vibrant design community."
The region's design shops are beginning to garner international attention. In Slovenia, appliance maker Gorenje Group won Germany's Red Dot Design Award this year for its futuristic Premium Touch washing machine. The curvaceous appliance boasts a sleek, easy-to-use touch screen for laundry settings. The company says its emphasis on style has helped it boost global sales by 16% since 2004, to $859 million. Gorenje not only employs 10 in-house designers but is also recruiting top international names. For instance, it tapped Paolo Pininfarina, whose family is famous for its Ferrari car designs, to develop a kitchen range.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
On a better note, yup, these guys are showing how to compete against ever cheaper Chinese imports...
Yeah New Europe!
Gorenje Group Premium Touch Washing Machine
An improvement on "Evening Wear"? Good for them!
The Gorenje washer sells for 372 pounds in the UK...($643 American dollars.)
With French and European style about to be replaced with neo-Muslim, these people are in the right place at the right time with the right stuff. Right?
I'm an Electrical Design Engineer (born in Croatia) and I can tell you that in the auto industry at least, we of Central European descent are vastly overepresented in the design engineering field.
Why? Because these jobs are the status jobs in that part of the world and the talent is there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.