INTRODUCTION

Valcucine is an Italian kitchen manufacturer of sustainable kitchen solutions for the high end market. Founded in 1980 in Pordenone Italy, the four founding partners have taken the company on an evolutionary journey. Where they started by competing on the innovative merits of their technical solutions, today they compete on the ideological merits of their design solutions.

But the Valcucine evolution has not been driven by market share or customer research. Rather, it is a company that time in and time out has made decisions based on a coherence of an ideological vision that is not just deeply meaningful, but critical, to the company itself and the culture at large.

It is this primal preoccupation with the ideological coherence that makes this kind of design practice particularly empowering. Their competitive advantage is in their ability to build kitchens that move beyond the promise of a technical and efficient kitchen, beyond the promise of a fulfilling and meaningful cooking experience, to deliver on the promise of a better vision of a shared tomorrow.

Their challenge as they grow in their success is to do so without succumbing to the orthodoxy of traditional capitalism and to do so by nurturing a complete “360 ideology” of their solutions.



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An evolving kitchen: From sustenance to ideology

The kitchen has –throughout the ages- generally responded to two basic needs: to provide nutrition and fulfill social needs. Its early development can be characterize as primarily technical, transforming what was a single multipurpose space into a dedicated food preparation space that was highly efficient, hygienic and time saving in its design.

But as the standard of efficiency was met, the bar was set to a new standard: what to do with all the newfound efficiency? To what end?

And in came the notion that if you had an efficient kitchen, you could focus on what was most important; the joy of cooking.

This was one of the new found goals of efficiency. But just as we are savoring the new design imperative, the bar has been raised yet again: By what means?

This is the story of the evolving nature of design in the kitchen, but it could just as well be the evolution of many other product types: an evolution from sustenance, to utility, to experience, and its latest challenge; an ideological mission, built around ethical responsibility. Valcucine represents this new cadre of companies, competing on ideology.

A hierarchy of needs

Although histories don’t always evolve linearly or follow rational patters, examining them through frameworks can help organize ideas and identify possible patterns of change.

While not without controversy, Maslow’s broad notion of a hierarchy of needs is a helpful framework in examining the changing competitive imperative in kitchen design. In this context the evolution of the kitchen starts with providing basic sustenance, evolves to utility, efficiency, and to experience: not just preparing nourishment for the body in an efficient manner, but taking pleasure in the process. But if every kitchen can provide the basic need to sustenance efficiently in a way enabling you to enjoy cooking, what is the next differentiating factor? Or, from a moral-ethical perspective, what are the human-social needs that have yet to be fulfilled? The answer I propose is that when the hierarchy of needs has been fulfilled, competition is based on the ability to fulfill ideological needs.

Manufacturing a network

To understand how a Valcucine product is born you need to look at the complete network of know-how that feeds the creative entrepreneurship of its model. One of the keys is the relationship with their subcontractors.

Subcontractors

Shifting production and storage responsibility to subcontractors may give you flexibility, but how do you ensure that the product they deliver is of a high quality? This was resolved through collaboration, working with the subcontractor, developing a common culture and allowing the subcontractor to grow. Three keys Valcucine focused on in identifying the right partners:

1. Reliability: was the manufacturer reliable? This happened easily through word of mouth, and a shared community of entrepreneurs: one of the great advantages of having an industrial cluster with a deep shared culture.
2. Value: Having a detailed knowledge of costs- this allowed them to help understand where subcontractor improvements could be made and enable them to “restore” a competitive drive between subcontractors in producing better quality product. One of the downsides of much of the industrial cluster culture is the over-reliance on certain suppliers based on old family or business ties. This can lead to slacking of standards and quality improvement efforts. Being able to restore a degree of “healthy” competitiveness within (as opposed to competing for an outside market) the cluster was a key in enabling them to empower local know-how.
3. Ideology: was the manufacturer willing to “buy into” Valcucine’s ideology, willing to change and adapt? Being a design innovation focused company, the need for continual improvements and adaptation was a prerequisite for many of their sub-component needs. In an industrial cluster, a lot of time, energy and resources (direct and indirect) are spent building shared knowledge and culture. Valcucine wanted to move forward with companies best equipped to build a future along the long road. Key example is Valcucine’s relationship with Biesse where the partnership allowed Biesse to evolve as a premier high quality environmentally friendly supplier of finished solutions. Previously they had –for example- worked with traditional varnishes. In a risk taking partnership they worked with Valcucine to adopt non-toxic based varnishes into production. This enabled them to supply Valcucine with needed components but also made them into the premier supplier for a growing customer base demanding high quality, environmental solutions.