When Refrigerators Go Retro - Page 2

"We came up with our first refrigerators in 2001," said Tony Dowling, vice-president of sales and marketing for Elmira Stove Works, another company with unusual roots. Elmira was founded in 1975 by Tom Hendricks, owner of a hardware store in Elmira, Ontario, where Mennonites and other hardy souls purchased parts for their wood-burning cook stoves.

"We're like Big Chill. We're both small companies," Dowling admitted of Elmira's Northstar line of six retro refrigerators. "We're kind of in lockstep with them."

As their names suggest, of course, one company started in refrigeration and the other in stoves. In fact, Elmira used to build ranges for Big Chill before the latter was purchased by the parent company of Blue Star Cooking in 2007.

Both companies literally retrofit Whirlpool Frigidaire models to their styles, although Dowling said Elmira sometimes uses Amana or KitchenAid refrigerators. They both offer at least eight standard colors and about 200 custom colors.

"We have some models they don't do," said Dowling, also contrasting Big Chill's door indent with Northstar's smooth face. "We've been building appliances for 41 years, so we've been in the game a while."

While Dowling maintains the two North American products are superior, they certainly have no great edge in experience over Smeg in some respects. Smeg is actually the acronym (Smalterie Metallurgiche Emiliane Guastalla) of a small-town company founded in Northern Italy in 1948 and currently owned and operated by a third generation of the Bertazzoni family. Christian Boscherini, marketing and events coordinator for Smeg USA, said it is Italy's largest appliance manufacturer and the third largest in the European Union.

"They didn't introduce the retro part of the line until the 1990s," said Boscherini, noting the addition in 2007 of one refrigerator in eight colors. "Here [in the U.S.], it's our principal driver. It's been growing steadily."

"We tend to make products that are chef-friendly, that chefs actually want to use," he said of Smeg, which now offers ten colors of retro refrigerator plus a vertically positioned Italy flag pattern. "We're definitely a luxury brand."

All three company's spokesmen said that there are few really consistent demographics for their customer bases.

"Different people like them for different reasons," said Big Chill's Creamer, contrasting groups like his aunt and uncle, who were furnishing a second home, and young people. "They just think it's cool. They are not trying to replicate something from the '50s. There's just not that many places where you can get a hot pink refrigerator or an orange refrigerator."

Also of note for the MCM home is Big Chill's snazzy line of retro induction cooktops.