The Costa Mesa theater district, home to Segerstrom Center for the Arts and South Coast Repertory, has added another showroom to its repertoire—the Fisher & Paykel Experience Center, where a reference to a high note is more about a 36-inch stove’s British thermal unit output than about a vocal range.
The 6,500-square-foot space opened last month next door to Vaca restaurant, showcasing luxury appliance manufacturers’ latest offerings, as well as complementary brands.
Fisher & Paykel Appliances Ltd.’s neighbors include high-end cabinet maker Leicht USA, a Sub Zero and Wolf West Showroom that opened one street over on Anton Boulevard in 2015, and Monark Premium Appliance Co., which opened its multibrand store at South Coast Plaza in 2016. BSH Home Appliances Corp.’s Experience & Design Center is two miles down the road in Irvine, supporting in-house brands Bosch, Thermador and Gaggenau.
The area’s “turning into a little design hub,” said Fisher & Paykel strategy director Scott Davies. “When you get other manufacturers around you that are drawing people, they can come see us, as well … so it’s perfect.”
Roots
The New Zealand-based company entered the U.S. by acquiring Huntington Beach-based Dynamic Cooking Systems Inc. in 1996, and moved its North American headquarters to Costa Mesa in 2014. The lease included the next-door showroom space, which stayed empty as it focused on creating a presence in the Architects & Designers Building in New York. The Manhattan showroom “was absolutely the right move,” Davies said, adding that its sales at nearby dealers picked up 15% to 25% since it opened in 2016.
“It allows the consumer to be fully immersed in our brand. We can control the experience so they really get to understand what Fisher & Paykel is all about.”
The Orange County showroom features several kitchen designs outfitted with its contemporary and pro appliance lines, including refrigerators, cooking surfaces, steam ovens, espresso makers, drawer dishwashers, washers and dryers. Prices start at $3,500 for a stove and go as high as $7,000.
The experience center also has a full-time chef—Rob Wilson—previously executive chef at Montage in Laguna Beach. He demonstrates products to architects, designers and end-users and helps train dealers’ salespeople at the center’s eight cooking stations.
Fisher & Paykel employs 130 in the U.S., 3,000 globally. It plans to open another 10 to 15 showrooms within five years in major U.S. cities, according to Davies.
“We are a small brand right now in a big market, but we’ve got really lofty goals to grow really quickly,” he said.
“What I love about the space—the size of it and the scale of it—it shows to us internally, as well as to the customer, that we’re dead-serious about growing quickly in this market place.”
The expansion push is likely coming from China-based home appliance manufacturer Haier Group, which acquired Fisher & Paykel in 2012 for about $766 million. It picked up General Electric’s appliance division for $5.4 billion in 2016, helping it capture 10% of the global home appliance market.
“We are investing heavily in North America,” Davies said. “[Showrooms] are expensive places to build, but there’s payoff in a pretty short space of time.”
Other Players
Faucets and sinks by Irvine-based Rohl complete the premium look of kitchens at the Costa Mesa showroom. The cross-promotional partnership makes sense to both brands—they’re after the same consumer segment and don’t offer competing products.
“Anytime we can be in an environment [like Fisher & Paykel’s showroom] it’s an absolute honor,” said Vice President of Marketing Greg Rohl, whose father, Ken, founded the company in 1983. Rohl and his brothers, Lou and Mark, grew the company to $70 million in annual revenue before selling it in 2016 to Deerfield, Ill.-based Fortune Brands Home & Security Inc. for about $160 million. Rohl’s manufacturing partner, Perrin & Rowe, was also part of the deal. The move enabled Rohl to “go to the next level,” backed by additional resources—last week Fortune Brands’ market value was nearly $9 billion.
Rohl employs 70 workers and sells high-end faucets, shower heads, sinks, soap dispensers and drains through a network of distributors, including Monark at South Coast Plaza and Pirch at SoCo Collection in Costa Mesa.
It competes with California Faucets Inc. in Huntington Beach and Brasstech Inc. in Santa Ana, though Pirch Senior retail director John Mansfield referred to the latter as “more accessible” than $17,000 “water appliances” offered by others.
California Faucets is “just shy of 200 workers” and manufactures products in OC. Fred Silverstein founded the company in 1988, focusing on a quick turnaround time on custom orders, premium materials and above-average customer service.
“We doubled in size since 2013, and we are on an aggressive growth path,” said Fred’s son, Jeff, who declined to provide company revenue figures. “We have 80,000 square feet of manufacturing space, and we are profitable.”
Father-and-son team Ross and Geoffrey Escalette founded Brasstech—better known as Newport Brass—in 1987, and sold it to Masco Corp. in Livonia, Mich., in 2002. The company, which has 1,000 OC employees, according to data the company supplied to designguide.com, makes “kitchen and bath fixtures, accessories, lighting and mirrors ranging from mid to luxury price points.”
Relationships
The Fisher & Paykel Experience Center and similar showrooms don’t compete for sales with manufacturers’ wholesale partners—it’s all about marketing and helping consumers visualize what’s possible.
“Dealers will send clients to our place because more is available,” Davies said. “We can give them a full rundown of what they can have, and they can go back to the dealer and make the purchase, so it’s a win-win for us and the distributor.”
