Fellow Competitors

Smeg is an Italian home appliance manufacturer based in Guastalla, near Reggio Emilia in the north of the Country. Smeg has subsidiaries worldwide, overseas offices and an extensive sales network. For over 75 years now, Smeg appliances have come to be seen as tasteful and elegant solutions to the demands of contemporary living as a result of the company's partnerships with world famous architects. Not only does Smeg have a unique profile in terms of domestic appliances, it is also renowned in professional business sectors. The Professional and Instruments divisions specialise in the area of large-scale restaurant/catering appliances and electro-medical instruments respectively. The Smeg Group, thanks to a corporate culture which dictates that maximum emphasis be placed on product quality, technology and design, is consequently known all over the globe as one of the key representatives of "Made in Italy" standards.

The company Bodum was founded by Peter Bodum in 1944. He is the father of Jørgen Bodum who is currently running the Bodum group and who is living in Switzerland. The Bodum group is a 100% family-owned business and has approx. 300 employees worldwide. In the beginning Bodum imported glasses from East Europe in order to sell them in Denmark, but in 1958 the first Bodum product was launched. People celebrated the Santos coffeemaker like a sensation. Bodum is still producing this item in the original design by Kaas Klaeson. In 1974 the Bistro coffeepot was introduced. It was the first Bodum product from the Presso coffeepot selection. These were also the first steps to the cooperation between Jørgen Bodum and Carsten Jørgensen, whose ideas showed us that good design doesn’t have to be expensive. At the same time, the Bistro coffeepot was the basis for the Bodum design line. The principle of the Presso coffeepot was developed by the Italian designer Calimani in 1943. In 1986 Bodum opened the first shop in London; actually as a presentation shop. Shops in Copenhagen, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Zurich and Lucerne followed. Today, there are 52 Bodum shops worldwide and many more shop-in-shops. The Bodum shops serve as a kind of marketing to popularise the brand Bodum and its products all over the world. Bodum includes a holding company in Denmark as well as in Switzerland.

Ritual Coffee Roasters opened in May 2005 with the intention to share amazing coffee with San Francisco and it was only a matter of weeks, or maybe just one, before Ritual had a line out the door. Many of our customers asked what we were doing to our coffee to make it taste so good, while the connoisseurs simply wanted to know what took us so long to get here. Since then, we've devoted ourselves to sourcing the best coffee in the world by creating unique partnerships with groups and individuals throughout Central and South America. Our focus on sourcing allows us to offer seasonally fresh coffees throughout the year.