Recruiting and a new, nicely made range of Kitchen Tools from WL

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the awful looking Saunderton Shaker from Cole and Mason and joked that I was half expecting our account to be put on hold, until a suitably worded apology was received. But instead of a retaliatory strike and to show how broadminded she is, Jane Mason the DKB Commercial Director (parent company of Cole and Mason) wrote me a charming email saying that she was pleased that I would write about a product that I disliked and equally charmingly pointed out that my point of view might be considered subjective… You may, if you were paying attention, recall that I’ve already told you all this. So, why go over old ground. Well this week I’m waxing lyrical about another DKB range and I didn’t want you to feel that I might be doing so just to curry favour. I’m not!

Many, many years ago a company called William Levine (WL) came into existence, but I’m afraid I never really knew them that well,  so my knowledge of their company history is a bit scant. Undoubtedly their first claim to fame was to persuade a then unknown fella, called “Ken Hom” to design and endorse their Woks. This they did with spectacular results and still today they are probably the best known low to mid priced range of woks on the market, and rightly so, although the market has become much more challenging for them with likes of Dexam’s Jeremy Pang School of Wok, vying for position.

Anyway, back to WL. They were an innovative firm by anybody’s standards and another design first was the ground breaking “Magican”, the first can opener on the market that didn’t leave nasty sharp edges everywhere and was genuinely easy to use. For this they invented a new sub-brand called Culinare, which I think they intended to be an upmarket one. However, as the years have passed I’d say they rather lost ground and we’ve not really stocked anything, other than the Magican, from that range for quite some time. At some point, in the not too distant past, they were bought by the Swiss household brand “Diethelm Keller Brands” (DKB). And so it was, that a few weeks ago Andy Wheeler, our DKB account manager, showed me a new range of basic kitchen utensils that had virtually no plastics in them and instead employed handles made of a type of grass (Bamboo which is very fast growing, a very tough “grass/wood” and is therefore highly ecological) and where the hardware was stainless steel, thick enough to really do the job in a business like, uncompromising sort of way. So much so, in fact, that I found myself taking rather a liking to them.  I thought the pricing was very competitive (almost under priced if anything) the handles very “Green” in short a really good product.

I’ve chosen 8 pieces from the range, which comprises:

If you find yourself tempted by this range, then we’d be happy to offer you an opening deal. Buy any three pieces, and we’ll take 25% off the bill. Use code NATURAL25 this weekend if on the website, tell us who you are if coming into the shops.

Andrew
 
Andrew Bluett-Duncan Director