After an amazing trip to Como and Milan, we’ve been back in Oz for a few weeks now. But Italy is dear to our hearts and an important part of our future. As there will be many more trips for us to Italy’s north, Fiona is brushing up on her Italian using the “Duolingo” app, and luckily we have lots of Italian friends here in Melbourne.
Trademarks and Patents
You may notice that PodMarket® is now a registered trademark. What you won’t know is that the U.S. and now the E.U. look like granting our Superpod® building system patents too. That represents an incredible amount of technical work behind the scenes.
So our status as “inventors” as well as “designers” is becoming cemented on the international scene.
Design, Build + Cook??
We’ve been incredibly busy since arriving back home. But there’s one particular thing that we’re constantly being asked about ……the frypans!!!
Through our constantly expanding network of industry specialists, the products we now turn our hand to go well beyond our award-winning furniture. Some of you have seen the odd cryptic social media post about our upcoming Frypan gift pack. So what’s this all about?
To cut to the chase, there’s quite a problem with a typical metal frypan handle.
The Problem
The frypan you use may have a metal handle. Many do. Great for transferring food from stove top to oven to table. Better than a plastic or fixed timber handle, right?
Not really. It never feels good in your hand (too thin or too rough), and, quite simply, it gets too hot. You can burn yourself easily, meaning you then reach for the closest tea towel you can find, which then somehow awkwardly finds its way into the food, etc etc etc.
What is actually needed is a removable handle that’s comfortable to hold, and keeps your hands from getting burnt. Pure steel just won’t do. An expert in the industry thought this was a problem that needed a solution.
The Frypan
We were asked to design a special frypan handle for a particular frypan made in Melbourne by a metal spinning specialist. This small, privately owned business has for years made a large range of pots, cake tins, pizza bases, sieves, skillets, paella pans, woks and frypans – specifically for restaurants and industry chefs all around the country.
These pans are not easy to find for the home cook or budding Masterchef.
In fact, in our years of testing out frypans and cookware we had never come across them. They are totally hand spun from carbon steel (black iron). They don’t contain any toxic, non-stick chemical coatings and they don’t weigh anywhere near as much as those hefty cast iron frypans that often sit in the deep recesses of our kitchens.
The Brief
The brief here was to design a better, more useful, more beautiful frypan handle. Let’s call it a “designer handle”. A reasonable request one would think. However, to complicate things, the handle needed to include three key features:
- The designer handle had to be completely removable.
It turns out that many recipes require food to be transferred from the stove top directly into the oven. - The designer handle needed to provide access to the hole at the end of the steel handle – which is there to allow the pan to be hung upside-down on a butcher’s hook hanging from a commercial pan rack.
- The designer handle could only be made from natural materials.
No coloured silicons, plastics or rubber were allowed.
The Outcome
We’re happy to say that our solution ticked all the boxes. In fact we (and the client as well as our industry testers) were incredibly pleased with the result. So much so, that we have decided to curate and offer a very special designer frypan pack for all those home “foodies” out there. We thought we’d offer these packs as potential Christmas gifts – for either yourself, or a loved one. Basically anyone who is into natural cooking and great design.
The Gift Pack
We are only providing this special gift pack as a genuine, one-off deal. We have absolutely no interest into moving into the cookware industry, or infomercials either for that matter. (Having said that, check out Fiona’s frypan video here, we think she could have made it as a TV presenter). But we just love design, and we love sharing it, so we’ve decided to put the curated frypan pack forward as a purchasable item, for one week only (in mid to late October). That way, when the offer closes, we can ensure that everyone receives their gift pack well before Christmas.
The overriding idea is to provide you with the opportunity to give your foodie friends and family something really special and considered this year for Christmas. You won’t find it on the shelves of local stores. You won’t find it elsewhere online. This is a genuinely original, Australian designed-and-made collection!
The V.I.P List
To keep abreast of all the important information regarding the offer (as well as the key dates) please sign up to our Frypan Gift Pack V.I.P. list That way we can talk about all things frypan-related directly with you, and not bother the non-foodies out there. Also, if there’s anyone else you know who might be interested in the gift pack, please forward on this message to them or pass on the link. That way we can expand our reach and offer this really cool gift pack to people who’ll really appreciate it.
Apart from being the portal to all the important information, those people who do sign up will be given the chance to purchase the gift pack with a 25% discount via the special discount code.
Final Words
One of the reasons we love this pack so much is that it showcases many of the things that we actually stand for. Sustainability, non-toxic materials, durability, great design, unique thinking, clever connections, and beauty.
And there’s even a savvy reference to thermal breaks in there – just to get you thinking about buildings, passive house, and Superpod®.
We’re sure you’ll love it as much as we do.