Foodie, PR Practitioner and Le Creuset devotee Brian Berkman discovers what’s behind the brand’s meteoric rise.
During March this year, foodies will be hooked to our screens watching MasterChef South Africa on DSTV. For those who don’t yet covet the range of colourful, premium cookware, they will as Le Creuset is official cookware supplier to the show.
Named after the cauldron in which it is formed, the now global kitchenware brand began, like most global stories do, with committed artisans. Armand Desaegher, a casting specialist, and 
, an enamelling expert, seized an opportunity in Fresnoy-le-Grand, France, in 1925 where they began with a single pot in a single colour.
The Cocotte or French Oven with an orange pigment that coloured the porcelain glaze which they romantically noted reflected the colour from deep inside the fire remains remains their most popular style while Flame orange remains their most popular colour. At the time, it was revolutionary as most pots were grey or black.
Jamie Paine, Head of Retail and Marketing, Le Creuset South Africa (pronounced Leh Crew Say or Leh Crew Zay if you are American) says the founders struggled through the war years but then, in 1957, purchased major competitor, Les Hauts Fourneaux Cousances, a famous name then as its chief designer, Raymond Loewy, was feted for designing the Coca-Cola bottle.
Fast forward to 1992 and Le Creuset expands further globally. “We created global products like the Moroccan Tagine, the Risotto Pot, our cast-iron wok and Indian Curry dish as we expanded our footprint,” she says adding that the brand’s global owner since 1987, Paul van Zuydam, has South African roots.
“Le Creuset had been available in South Africa for over 30 years but via agencies through stores such as Stuttaford’s, Boardman’s, Adam’s and Sheriden’s but, when South African managing, director Ben Paine came on board, he pushed for stand-alone brand stores.
“I’d had a lot of experience in retail after many years at The Body Shop in London and in South Africa so I knew that we needed our own shop. Our strategy was simple – we knew that our customers were the same people who shopped at high-end malls so we wanted to be there too.
Cavendish Square in Claremont, Cape Town was the first branch – then about 40m2 and now nearly double that at 70m2. I knew that to get the brand out there we needed to be in top, high-traffic centres.
“I had a clear idea that we needed to hire the best personalities and to empower them to take ownership of the store. We still push customer service as our differentiator.
At head office in Somerset West with me are Erin Goodchild, also ex Body Shop and Gillian McGregor, who comes from a magazine background and understands media intimately. I try to surround myself with people who are equally as passionate, and erratic, as I am,” she laughs.
“Our product speaks for itself – the majority of items we carry in the store have a lifetime guarantee so all I need to do is to build sales teams that love our product. It helps if they love to cook too.
I learnt lots of things about customer service from The Body Shop and, frankly, it is easier to wow with customer service in South Africa, because no one else is doing it.
Our Online Store keeps growing and free delivery is a plus but having a customer in the shop means that even if we are out of stock of the product they want, we can offer them something else.
The one thing we try to do is to respond quickly and learn from any issues raised by customers. If you email [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> that email comes to Ben, Erin and I so we really make an effort to address issues quickly and work hard to resolve things.
At store level, we teach things as simple as maintaining eye contact and smiling when a potential customer comes into the store.
It is a pity in South Africa that Retail isn’t seen as a proper job that people aspire to but rather something en route to another position. We hire people who want a career with Le Creuset and we always promote from within first, to build loyalty, and to ensure that everyone in the business understands every aspect of the business.
“Following our success in Cavendish Square we wanted to expand to Gauteng. Killarney Mall then was the only one who would have us but in November last year we opened our store in Sandton City, a goal we’d dreamed from day one.
“I think opening 14 stores in the correct centres is the most powerful thing we have done to support our brand. We have also just opened in the V&A Waterfront and we’re opening a 90m2 store in Nicolway Centre, Bryanston. Two of our new stores will be properly equipped for cooking demonstrations. We want to bring a sense of theatre into the shop. We have tried to demonstrate products in the stores before until we realised there were health and safety issues (like filling the store with smoke) so now we will have purpose-built spaces.
We have a limited advertising budget so we select titles that add to the brand and who were open to added-value promotions. The Elle Decoration Cooking evening, at Silwood Cooking School, is still very successful and a good example of the added value we look for when partnering with magazines. We’re busy now looking for a suitable cooking school partner in Johannesburg.
In the January issue of House & Leisure Food, for example, we have a 15% discount coupon on the cover off our most sought after cast-iron items which we rarely discount. The coupon offers real value for the consumer.
We have no budget for television at the moment but you will find us in titles such as Taste, House & Leisure, Elle Decoration, Conde Nast House & Garden and Sarie as we’re experiencing big growth in the Afrikaans market.
We try to link what’s happening in the media with what we are doing in store. Over Christmas we ran a competition where a “Xmas tree” of Le Creuset casserole pots could be won. We ran the visual in our magazine adverts, built the “trees” in our stores and used the same images on Facebook. We have also been very lucky that media have responded well to our product and often request to use them in shoots and run news of latest colours and new ranges in their new product sections.
When we meet, Jamie is wearing white on white, with a green stone in her ring from the Island of Symi, Greece as the only colour accent. She speaks with a British accent and has a lot of energy. With all the colour she is surrounded by in her stores, I’m not surprised that she is wearing white. Later she tells me that a shade of green is planned for a new colour. Perhaps punters who want to bet on future Le Creuset colours should notice the colour of the ring she is wearing.
“People assume that our competition is Staub, who also make cast-iron casseroles, or Fissler who make excellent stainless steel cookware. Truth is, our competition is actually AV shops or a Travel agent, as most people who spend R8000 with us might rather spend that on a big screen TV or ticket to London. People who are upgrading their kitchens, for example, will have done their homework, made the decision to buy and then purchased the entire range, rather than one at a time.
Consumers are familiar with the Le Creuset brand as TV chefs use it, Nigella Lawson, Ina Garten and other international recipe book writers carry photographs of their dish in our cookware and, with the success of films like Julie and Julia, and the uniqueness of our colours, we are easily recognized.
We pushed brand association in store with recipe cards of Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon and for a while we had the DVD of the film for sale.
I understand that our cast-iron range, which makes up 65% of our business today, is costly and heavy which is why we also have a large stainless steel range and more recently stoneware which has proven very popular.
Le Creuset Cast Iron is a world-renowned range of enamelled cast iron cooking pots. These can be used on all stove-top surfaces, as well as inside the oven. The properties of cast iron allow for excellent heat retention and even heat distribution. This means that cast iron pots are energy efficient. The enamelled surface ensures that the cast iron is easy to clean, hygienic and does not absorb odours or flavours. Cast iron is also very stable and durable, which means that they are long-lasting and hence the lifetime guarantee.
Le Creuset Stainless Steel consists of a layer of aluminium sandwiched by 2 layers of 18/10 stainless steel. The aluminium core allows for excellent heat retention and even heat distribution, ensuring that your food is cooked through evenly, without any hot spots.
The stainless steel range can be used on all stove-top surfaces, as well as induction hobs, due to its exterior magnetic stainless steel layer.
Our stoneware range has introduced a new market to Le Creuset. It has meant that a person can gain confidence in the brand when buying a Mug or a Salt Keeper (which make popular and inexpensive gifts. We recently expanded further to include a range of branded wine accessories. I think it is wonderful that you can have the full Le Creuset service experience and own one of our products for as little as R50 for our Champagne Cork opener, as an example.
Our best-selling colours are Flame followed by Cherry but more and more people are collecting ‘Smartie box’ and want a different coloured product each time they shop. The blues are also very popular with Cobalt Blue as the biggest blue seller. Newly introduced blues such as Coastal Blue and Caribbean Blue have also captured the imagination. The popularity of blue is a little confusing as, other than bubble-gum ice cream and blue berries (which are more purple) foods don’t come in blue.
Social Media represents another way that we can have conversations with our customers. We run Freebie Friday giveaways on our Facebook page which is extremely popular. We have 3000 Likes and are growing. We have 18 000 subscribers to our email newsletters and a vibrant engagement with our customers on Twitter. It is hard work, as we manage everything ourselves, but there is none more powerful sales tool than an endorsement from a friend or family member.
There is a big push online with the launch of our new website and blog that will give customers yet another way to interact with us as well as our partnership with Yuppie Chef, the on-line kitchen shop.
Recipe Cards work well for us. With every purchase we stock our customers with the latest recipe cards. Their high production values communicate our brand ethos. When we first introduced the recipe cards they’d be pretty complicated and costly recipes. We partnered with a French preserve maker Bonne Maman but now are also exploring local partnerships like with NoMu products who gave us access to their customer base through the promotion too.”
While she won’t commit to new colours until they’ve been launched, Le Creuset fans who are obsessive about having the latest, can look forward to Fennel, a rich green and to Marseilles, a new blue. She says to go “Like” Le Creuset SA’s Facebook page and you’ll be among the first to know. “Expanded Stoneware ranges in Cassis, Stone and Kiwi continue to make it exciting. We’ve had lovely successes with our Strawberry Teatime range,” she says.
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