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Excitement abounds about the introduction of a new cookware line utilizing the latest in nonstick technology or an updated home espresso machine equipped with all the bells and whistles to enable the consumer to make barista-quality espresso with the touch of a button. With all the hype centering on new technology designed to make consumers' lives in the kitchen as effortless and convenient as possible, is there any room left for something less than space-age technology?

Amidst all the hoopla surrounding today's kitchenware introductions stands a category whose basic nature lies in its simplicity. Nothing is high tech about a wooden spoon. No buttons must be pressed to use an olivewood salad bowl. And nothing is as straightforward as a wooden carving board. Yet each continues to serve as part of a home cook's core assortment of kitchen tools.

The quest for high-tech, industrial, even commercial-grade kitchen tools has dominated the kitchen equipment scene for quite some time. In many homes today, commercial-grade cookware hangs from pot racks and shiny stainless steel gadgets dangle from wall displays when not in use. On the counters, home coffee roasters agitate green coffee beans, transforming them into a preprogrammed shade of brown, while one-touch coffee grinder/brewers wait to execute their functions. The aroma of bread wafts from bread machines that effortlessly mix, knead, and bake 9-grain breads.

But alas, surrounded by all this technological sophistication, wooden spoons rest in spaghetti pots. On the counters, carving boards stand ready to receive breads from electric breadmakers. Close at hand, vegetables await their fates on butcher blocks, while wooden salad bowls occupy the centers of dinner tables.

Wood in the kitchen is an enduring classic, even while today's kitchen designs lean toward a high-tech stainless steel style. Wood is functional, comfortable to use, great to look at, and brings a warm, homey feeling back to the kitchen.

"For any consumer, even those with high-tech stainless steel kitchens, there is something so basic about woodenware that it can't be replaced by stainless steel," explained Simone Mayer, owner of real.life.basic, a kitchenware store based in Miami Beach, Fla.

Commodity vs. Quality

Historically, woodenware has been a second-thought category for most retailers, and therefore, has often been treated as a commodity. And, to some extent, they may be correct. With the flood of imports appearing on store shelves, it's unlikely the average customer can tell the difference between one wooden spoon and another.

From a retailer's standpoint, woodenware is time consuming to maintain, especially with the myriad of shapes and sizes available for each different tool. Although woodenware may require diligence in maintaining, stocking, and merchandising, specialty retailers have proven that woodenware, when merchandised properly, can be quite profitable.

Retailers can make the category more exciting by offering true variety and quality along with a bit of romance. If the retailer treats woodenware like a commodity, the consumer will do the same. "Retailers must realize that customers will pay more for woodenware if they understand it is no longer a commodity," explained one importer. "The result will be more retail dollars from a category they might have otherwise carried just for the sake of it."

Wood is plentiful in the kitchen: from basic wooden spoons, to Italian spaghetti spoons, lemon reamers, and chopsticks, to the more decorative Springerle molds and plaques, maplewood bowls with fluted sides, multiwood cutting boards, pastry boards, cheese boards, and butcher blocks.



Deep into the Woods

The type of wood used to transform an item transforms an otherwise single item into a deep category filled with options. The diversity of woods — beech, olive, maple, cherry, and beyond — allows for a whole new look, each type evoking a different feeling in the kitchen or on the dining table.

At the most fundamental level, the raw material and its availability determines how it is used, as well as its price. Beech is very popular for kitchen tools and is often considered a benchmark in terms of its hardness and ability to be finished. It is relatively nonporous, allowing it to be used in a variety of items, but most commonly in making spoons. The beech used for many woodenware pieces is found abundantly throughout Europe, making it a somewhat low-cost wood to use for this purpose. Beech is also found in other parts of the world; however, several importers caution that some of these "beech" items might not have the same durability qualities as those grown in Europe.

Other popular woods include maple and birch, both found in the U.S. Maple is used for flat pieces such as cutting boards because it is a very hard wood and resists absorption, while birch is a bit softer, making it a popular choice for turnery items such as rolling pins.

Helping create a diverse range of options, olivewood and cherrywood varieties have proven popular with consumers as they offer not only durability, but beauty as well. More exotic woods from throughout the world such as acacia, mango, Kamani from the South Pacific, rosewood, or hornbeam grown in the Pyrenees are also being used to create unique and eye-catching serveware items. Even wooden plates, once all the rage in the 1970s, are again becoming popular.

Also affecting price is the amount of hand work necessary to complete each piece. For some items, there are more than 10 hand-work processes required for finishing, thereby increasing their end prices. A birch rolling pin, for example, is made from a single wooden block that is virtually 85 percent complete once it passes through the shaping machine. Compare that to an olivewood spoon which is only 30 to 40 percent complete after passing through the cutting machine. The latter requires a greater amount of hand work since the worker needs to use a belt sander to hand finish the shaping process.



All Spoons are Not Created Equal

Specialty retailers most often cite variety, quality, and uniqueness as necessary qualities for making this category profitable.

A core assortment of woodenware is necessary because regardless of the sophistication of the consumer, certain items are requisites in the kitchen. Mixing spoons, serving spoons, cutting boards, and bowls make up the core assortment of woodenware at real.life.basic. The same is true at the 31-year-old Cookery Ware Shop located in Lahaska, Penn. "Woodenware has always been a good category for us," explained Barbara Orphanides, owner of Cookery Ware Shop. "Certain woodenware items are a necessity in the kitchen, and because we carry a huge variety of high-quality items, we have always enjoyed strong sales in woodenware," she added.

Woodenware items, from utensils to butcher blocks, represent at lease 15 percent of store sales at real.life.basic, taking up that much in real estate as well. "We have a huge variety," explained Mayer. "And that has been the key to our success in this category. We offer customers everything from a small cutting board to an 18-inch wide, 3-inch deep board. Prices range from $6 to $150, yet they all sell. Customers don't often realize what they need until they see it."

Lifestyle trends help bolster multiple sales in the woodenware category. It may be the home entertaining trend that has led to increased sales of serving bowls at Cookery Ware Shop. "Every home cook needs a basic round 12-inch bowl, individual wooden bowls, as well as the more decorative chip-and-dip serving bowls," added Orphanides.

The necessity for depth in the category is further illustrated in the cutting board segment. "One is not enough," said Orphanides. "The customer needs a cutting board for vegetables, another for meat, one with a drain ridge around the rim for carving meats, another to be kept on the wet bar to cut lemons at your next party, still another to cut and serve bread upon." Variety in styles, shapes, sizes, and uses enables this segment of the woodenware category to grow.

A spoon is a spoon is a spoon. Or so the customer might think. However, there is a distinct difference between a $2 spoon purchased in a supermarket and the $3.50 spoon you're selling in your specialty store. But how does the customer come to understand the difference?

For most specialty consumers, it is the quality, craftsmanship, and even the story behind the item that makes the sale. There is an almost spiritual bond between the consumer who loves to cook and the utensils he or she uses. And that love includes their woodenware. If the customer picks it up and it feels good in his or her hand, he or she will buy it. For this reason alone, the quality of the product must speak for itself. Consumers are wary of buying items, especially woodenware, that fall apart and split only a month or two after purchase. They expect them to last even if they are only $3.50 slotted wooden spoons.

In creating her store's product mix, Orphanides focuses more on the quality of the woodenware than on striving to hit a certain price point. Most specialty customers understand that they will pay more for higher quality. However, in a category like woodenware where the products appear to be the same as those sold at mass merchants or mainstream grocery stores, education is required to explain why the price point of your wooden accessories are higher than elsewhere.

"We simply explain to our customers the benefits of an olivewood spoon over a cheaper wooden spoon with a fuzzy-edged finish, plus the difference in the wood, as well as the construction and finishing," said Orphanides. "After all these years, our customers have come to expect quality from us."

More often than not, customers can feel the difference by simply handling the piece of woodenware. "It's much like the feeling we experience when we pick up a pencil and it doesn't feel quite right. On closer examination, we realize that it's a bit lighter and smaller in diameter, yet we expected a No. 2 pencil," explained one importer. "The same is true with a woodenware accessory. The consumer knows what feels right in his or her hand, and when it doesn't — perhaps the handle is a bit thinner or the weight doesn't evoke a sense of strength, then the customer will not be happy."

For woodenware utensils, there are a multitude of options. Wood type, shape, and construction all play important roles in developing the woodenware category, and can be important variables that make or break this category for the retailer. It becomes a matter of offering something unique: the basic $2 beechwood spoon versus something more striking in a darker cherrywood, or a salad bowl made of several woods glued together compared to a one-piece 18-inch olivewood bowl.

Uniqueness draws consumer attention, whether the item is for personal use or as a gift purchase. As the customer feels the weight of an 18-inch bowl, explain that it was made from one piece of wood, highlighting the fact that others of lesser price are made using several woods glued together. "Get them thinking about the size of the tree the piece of wood must come from to make that bowl," suggested Mayer. Continuing her sales pitch, Mayer focuses on transforming the purchase of a bowl for a utilitarian purchase to something more personal. "It then becomes the family salad bowl," she said.

Retailers can be especially creative with the serveware category, where appetizer trays, for example, can combine materials (different types of wood or wood-and-metal duos) to create something the customer will love to showcase while entertaining. With unique designs helping set the specialty mix apart from everyday woodenware offerings, retailers need to establish a good relationship with suppliers who can ultimately find unique items.



Setting Yourself Apart

Merchandising is the final component of a successful retail strategy. The warm feeling a piece of woodenware evokes leads to a merchandising approach that allows customers to touch and feel the items. Massing out tools in a variety of ceramic or stoneware crocks promotes impulse purchases. Altering displays and moving around different pieces of woodenware amongst the total product mix improves the likelihood that customers will purchase woodenware pieces.

Retailers have made woodenware statements not only by carrying a large breadth and depth of items, but also by merchandising them together. "That's one of the reasons I think we do so well with the category," said Mayer of real.life.basic. "Having all the wood items together makes a strong statement to the customers, and it looks great!" she said. Beyond merchandising woodenware items in a single area, Mayer uses wood items in nearly all of her vignette displays. "So much can be done with wood," she added. "A beautiful wooden serving bowl is perfect for promoting extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar." Likewise, a wooden pastry board can be paired with a mixing bowl and a pastry cookbook, or a pasta fork with all the pasta essentials. Even the butcher block carts serve as a display at real.life.basic where they are used to hold other woodenware items, or in the merchandising vignettes. But, cautions Mayer, the customer must be made aware that the butcher block cart is for sale. Space consuming as they may be, your sales staff needs to be up to speed on cost and delivery times for butcher block carts. If customers are spending nearly $800 on a butcher block and an additional $65 on freight, they might not be interested. "But if you have them in stock," said Mayer, "you may be surprised at how many you will actually sell."

Retailers can also increase wood sales by bringing wooden utensils out of their usual spot and cross-merchandising them with food items in their natural habitat.



Wood: A Lifestyle

Spoons and spreaders, cutting boards and knife blocks, cheese platters and salad bowls, the popularity of wood in the kitchen runs the gamut from being very utilitarian in nature to fulfilling lifestyle trends, making it a category that offers great potential to the specialty retailer.