It instantly dawned on him, here’s an opportunity to make a product. She recognized: “This is something that could be made better, and my husband used to be a housewares executive, and he should do something about it.” She was very involved in looking at things, trying things, and giving her input along the way. She initiated the idea of, “Sam, can you do something about this? Make a better handle.” She grabbed some clay and started on her own. Her background was in architecture and design. He was cooking with Betsey, she had arthritis, and she was complaining about the peeler, complaining that it was hurting her hands. in the morning, and he’s incredibly excited. One night I’m in Davin’s office, it’s 7:30 p.m., and he get’s a call from Sam. He and his wife Betsey spent a month cooking and enjoying the French countryside. That stuck in his mind during his annual vacation in Southern France.
It was a great idea killed by retail, and it made him realize, he’d spent his life developing housewares products, he knew that well, and it’s what he should stick to. They said it’s not a toy, it’s juvenile furniture. The juvenile furniture buyers said it wasn’t furniture, it was a construction toy. Sam and Davin got patents on it, developed prototypes, started taking it around to buyers at stores who would take it. He thought that was a fantastic thing to start a business around. It was this giant-scale construction toy. We came up with this idea of a toy that was basically crates, and you could add wheels to it, make into cars, bookcases, toy boxes.
At the time he had grown children and thought we could design something for kids. So he wanted to develop a product that he could go back into business with.
He absolutely could not stand to be retired. He came into Davin’s office, and was ranting on about how he absolutely needed to be making and selling things. When he sold the company, he was retired for about six months. He started a company called Copco, which made tea kettles and designed housewares. –Mark Wilson, senior writer, Fast Company. What follows is his lightly edited story–an insider’s account of the world’s most famous vegetable peeler. But talking to Smart’s founder, Davin Stowell it became clear on how rich the history was, including cameos from Monsanto, samurai sword makers, and retail magicians from another era. Over the years, abridged versions of the peeler’s origin story have been shared in design museums and even business schools. How many consumer products are truly that lasting? And nearly three decades after its release, it maintains 4.8 stars out of 5 on Amazon yet still costs less than £10. It was inducted into MoMA’s permanent collection in 1994. Created by Smart Design, in conjunction with OXO International’s launch in 1990, it raised the bar for accessible consumer products, and changed the way kitchen tools were designed forever. The Swivel Peeler was the collection’s flagship product. To this day, these tools are the best articulation of the potential of inclusive design: Developed for people with arthritis, Good Grips had thick rubbery handles that were also better tools for everyone to use. One of the most important moments in the history of industrial design occurred in 1990, when the kitchen brand OXO defied the traditional, knuckle-bleeding tools of culinary tradition, and released its Good Grips line. Smart Design’s Davin Stowell shares the origin story of the OXO Swivel, one of the great icons of 20th-century industrial design.
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