Utility + Empathy.
How a potato peeler that found its way into the Museum of Modern Art inspired our rebrand.
Greatest Designs of Modern Times
The Oxo Good Grips peeler was ranked 6 out of 100 by Fortune and the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) amongst the most important designs in history.
In a kitchen in France in 1989, Sam Farber sat watching his wife struggle to peel a potato. Betsey suffered from arthritis in her hands, making the awkward metal kitchen tool that had been around for what seemed centuries a torture to use. She was irritated. This was bad design, pure and simple.
Harnessing her background in architecture and design, Betsey began to model some handles with clay. Sam came over to help.
"Why couldn't there be comfortable tools that are easy to use, not just for arthritis victims, but for everybody?" Sam related to the Los Angeles Times in 2000.
Sam Farber came up with the idea for Oxo after watching his wife, Betsey, using an apple peeler with her arthritic hands.
This simple problem led to a brilliant conjunction of empathy and utility, one that would extend into a decades-long adventure for the Farbers as they completely reinvented kitchen tools through the simple premise of universal design: creating products that are usable by as many people as possible.
They also proved that there is great value to be had in adding some delight along the way.
Passing the Normal Human Being Test.
The Farbers knew that they could do something to truly help people. Not just people with disabilities - everybody. This was their unbendable rule: the implements couldn’t just serve people with special needs. They couldn’t just go into a special catalogue. They had to work for everybody at a price that worked for everybody.
Sam and Betsey had to design a handle that would be better than anything out there, and work no matter how you were using it. It needed to be bigger to be easy to grip, shorter to fit into the palm of your hand, and it needed to be made of a special, tactile and more malleable material - something like rubber.
But it also needed to tell its own story.
Surprise and delight.
You see, to be successful, the new peeler had to seem intuitive. Not just when you held it, but when you first saw it on the shelf. It needed to be handled to sell itself - an incredibly important insight. And an incredibly human one.
Sam had seen thin fins on the grips of bicycle handlebars. That became the inspiration for the now-iconic thumb and forefinger areas on the peeler that are crammed with tiny fins that you cannot help but press.
And once you do, you’re no longer merely holding an object. You’re at play with one.
The OXO Good Grips line debuted in 1990. OXO emphasized their comfort and ease of use: “Hold the tools the way you want to hold them, not some way you’re forced to hold them.”
Even the OXO name had its genesis in universal design - it reads the same no matter which way you look at it.
Uncharted waters.
Initial sales were, well, really slow. The Farbers knew that they had to find a way to get the peelers into the hands of the public, so they pitched the idea to retailers of putting out bowls filled with carrots so that customers could peel for themselves.
With those simple, interactive displays, they founded an empire.
Sam and Betsey Farber succeeded in creating products that made everyday life easier. More importantly, perhaps, they recognized that it’s never really the product that’s important. It’s how it makes you feel. Yes, even a humble potato peeler.
Smart Design / MoMA
The OXO Good Grips Swivel Peeler was inducted into the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) permanent collection in 1994. It inspired brands to relook not only how they viewed the world, but how they interacted with it too. It blazed new trails for inclusive design born of empathy and utility. And it changed the way kitchen tools were designed forever.
Nearly 30 years later, it remains Amazon’s #1 selling peeler. That’s an awfully big adventure for a potato peeler.
