THE world is a beautiful place, and it's never more beautiful
than when you think you see an opportunity. Frank Yang saw one
three years ago when he surveyed the lucrative universe of the
residential kitchen and realized that there were a few holes in
the sky.
The biggest was the garbage can. It lived under the sink, unloved,
undesigned, plastic or worse. Even the celebrated few, like Garbino,
designed by Karim Rashid for Umbra, were miserably cheap - they
usually hit a polypropylene ceiling of $10 or $15. The kitchen
was the most remodeled room of the house: according to the 2000
census, an $8 billion paradise of improvement. You had your Viking
range, your Sub-Zero refrigerator, your Miele dishwasher, your
Boffis and your Bosches.
But the culmination of the Epicurean experience was an ugly dead
end, a throwaway. The garbage can. An open pit of unactualized,
unprofitized desire.
Mr. Yang, 32, is the founder and chief operating officer of Simplehuman,
a 17-month-old company based in Los Angeles.
Simplehuman's principal products, stainless steel kitchen garbage
cans, cost $39.99 to $179.99 and have 5- to 10-year warranties.
Simplehuman's designs have won awards, including the Industrial
Designers Society of America's silver and bronze awards. They
are sold next to the $1,999 coffee makers and $299.95 toasters
by retailers like Williams-Sonoma, which will feature Simplehuman's
garbage cans in a two-page display, with an editorial paean to
the company, in the fall catalog.
In short, they are receptacles for cash as well as trash. With
sales of $33 million last year, Simplehuman is projecting sales
of $55 million for 2004.
Mr. Yang is not alone. Two European companies, Leifheit and Brabantia,
make versions of what the housewares industry now calls "upscale
trash cans." OXO International, the Good Grips kitchen utensil
company, introduced a trash can in March, to arrive in stores
in September.
"It's a new challenge, a moment of truth for this type of
product," said Ravi Sawhney, the founder of RKS Design in
Thousand Oaks, Calif., and the head juror for the 2004 Industrial
Designers Society of America awards. "I have mixed feelings
about it. How rich can you make the experience of putting trash
in a receptacle?"
Mr. Sawhney explained that consumers appreciative of design were
now appreciably cynical about its much-heralded pervasiveness.
"Imagine going in for surgery," he said. "And
the surgery room is highly designed - Philippe Starck - beautiful.
I would never in a million years allow them to do surgery on me.
I would be so skeptical about a lack of substance, from all those
highly designed knickknacks in my kitchen."
Mr. Yang, speaking from Hong Kong, where he was attending a brother's
wedding, said that he walked the aisles at stores like Bed Bath
& Beyond, where his garbage cans now reign supreme, comparing
the large shelf-space allotment with the lack of exciting designs.
"There was an opportunity for innovation," he said.
"It's easier to get people excited about the latest cellphone.
But everyone needs a trash can."
Mr. Yang has revived the fashion for step cans, garbage cans
with foot pedals that raise the lids. Simplehuman's lids occasionally
do fancy things like open in the middle in a double-winged butterfly
motion instead of the classic lopsided pop-up - the stand-up routine
of the kitchen.
In other words, you can drive the cans for pleasure. No pedestrian
thump and dump, but zero to trash in one Italian-moccasined second.
The lids have dampers on the springs so they close slowly and
softly, like an expensive car door. You can buy gloves, Simplehuman's
microfiber sponge mitt, to polish the cans ($4.99), and special
garbage bags ($3.99 to $6.99 for a roll of 20). The cans do not
accommodate standard bags without an "overhang" out
the top. (Your new can's instructions include a kind of napkin-folding
lesson on how to avoid the overhang; the instructions were probably
the first thing you used the new can to discard.)
Rubbermaid, which estimates that there are $15 million to $20
million worth of plastic step cans sold every year, at $15 to
$20 apiece, is investigating the "stainless option,"
said Doug Thompson, senior product manager, because of the ?current
trend.
Alex Lee, president of OXO International, explained of his move
into trash: "We look for pet peeves in existing products.
Most cans are geared to the way they look -beautiful stainless
steel and a plastic bag sticking out the side." Asked whether
OXO appeared to be reinventing the
wheel three years after Simplehuman reinvented it, Mr. Lee replied,
"I don't think they've addressed all the problems."
But with an aggressive brand-awareness campaign that includes
development with companies like Williams-Sonoma, Simplehuman has
its patented foot pedal pushed to the floor.
"They've been very successful from a market penetration
standpoint," said Perry Reynolds, the vice president for
marketing and trade development for the International Housewares
Association, a trade organization in Rosemont, Ill.
Mr. Yang's family is in the housewares business and owns factories
in Taiwan and mainland China that manufacture Simplehuman products.
Mr. Yang, a political science student at the University of California,
Los Angeles, who graduated in 1994, dated a design major and took
a design class, which led to an interest in designing housewares.
He started CanWorks, his first garbage can company, in 2001.
With the help of NameLab Inc., a San Francisco-based communications
specialist that names products and companies (including Acura
and Compaq), CanWorks became Simplehuman in 2002, because of Mr.
Yang's conviction that the accuracy of a brand's identity could
corner a particular market - in Simplehuman's case, the kitchen
renovators and cooking enthusiasts who were the design-driven
demographic behind other houseware successes like Williams-Sonoma.
Michael Barr, president of NameLab, said of the decision tomake
"Simplehuman" a single word, "It's taking two natural
language words and making them a `thing' - making the brand name itself a design object."
Mr. Yang also worked with design firms and freelance designers
to brainstorm about the silhouette, mechanics andsocial message
of the cans.
"It used to be that a company designed a product and then
hired Ogilvy & Mather to come up with an advertising campaign
and the marketing," said Mr. Reynolds of the housewares association.
"Now the whole branding thing starts with the look of the
product."
Mr. Yang concurred.
"Branding is part of the design," he said of the Simplehuman
line, whose supporting sales motto,with a similar genetic-sounding
perfection, is "Tools for Efficient Living." (Simplehuman
also uses a lowercase "s" in its logo, to advertise
an appealing modesty in its own achievement.)
Sally Geller, senior buyer for Williams-Sonoma's catalogs and
Internet site, where Mr. Yang's garbage cans are sold, explained
that the brand, as well as the garbage can, was what made Simplehuman
appropriate for her customers.
"If they had been CanWorks, we probably wouldn't have tagged
it," she said, referring to identifying the products by name
in the catalog. "If they had been called `Porsche Trash Cans'
we would have been suspect too - more hype than function."
Ms. Geller described their "core customer" as someone
with an income of $150,000 who likes to entertain and who has
multiple homes.
"That's the kind of person who's going to invest in a can
like this," she said. "They spend for their kitchens."
And, as Mr. Yang, the would-be king of disposable income, observed,
"If you're spending $1,000 on a stove, what's $179 for a
trash can?"
Phillip Spinelli, a waiter shopping for a trash can on Wednesday
at Bed Bath & Beyond on Sixth Avenue in New York, was unmoved.
Mr. Spinelli, who chose a plastic $16.99 step can, said of the
towering wall of Simplehuman products next to him: "They're
out of my price range. And you have to polish them. And you have
to buy the other stuff, the bags - it's all strategized."
Mr. Spinelli is buying a step can because he has mice.
"We're not talking about Trump Tower here," he said
of his kitchen.
