Stirio
Who
Enklere Liv
What
An automatic pot stirrer that stirs food for you so that nothing gets burnt
Under extreme time pressure, we conjured up a complex kitchen utensil that became the Christmas gift of the year, won a prestigious design award and was demonstrated by the one and only Gordon Ramsay on BBC.
The Assignment
The founder of the Enklere Liv retail chain came to us with an idea for creating an automatic pot stirrer. He was tired of standing at the stove, stirring the porridge and wanted an electric stirrer that could take over such a boring task.
The Challenge
The challenges were lined up with this product and it was just a matter of jumping in with your sleeves already rolled up.
Time was the most urgent and pressing aspect. We had 12 months until the product had to be delivered to Nordic retail chains in order to be in time for the Christmas trade. If we didn’t make it, the whole deal would go down the drain.
Just to make it a little more interesting, the brief was rather complicated: The stirrer had to have the ability to be adapted to suit different saucepans in both height and diameter. It had to be able to withstand heat, to not spoil the surface of the saucepan and have a motor that was powerful enough – but not too powerful – because then everything would end up like mushy peas.
The Solution
There were a lot of hiccups, bumps and burnt porridge along the way and there were many of us who barely slept that year. But we didn’t give up and instead came up with the required technical solutions.
Among other things, we “stole” a clipping solution for clamping the stirrer securely to the saucepan from a walking frame that we had previously developed. And when the prototype made too much noise, we switched from metal gears to plastic gears – and it worked a treat.
If we say yes, we will always deliver. To meet the deadline for the 100,000 units, we ended up donning overalls ourselves and took part in the assembly with hundreds of other workers at the factories in Taiwan.
We hit the deadline with a ‘cri de coeur’ and Stirio hit the stores in time to become one of the best-selling Christmas gifts of the year.
«Without Framti, it would have been impossible to create one of the best-selling Christmas gifts this year, that went on to sell more than 100,000 units in the space of two months.»
Sverre Steensen, Enklere Liv founder
