BSH Appliances North America has partnered up with a wine-appliance maker Plum to create “next generation kitchen appliances,” according to an announcement made by the two companies this week.
From the announcement:
BSH Home Appliances Corporation, the manufacturer of home appliances known across North America for high quality and superior innovation, and Plum, the creator of the first fully-automated appliance transforming wine by the glass, announce they have entered into a strategic partnership to explore potential smart appliances for the kitchen.
The headline of the announcement makes it sound like this could be something big. After all, the term “next-generation kitchen appliances” sounds important. My guess, however, is that the two companies are basically working on a wine dispenser for the Thermador brand, which is part of the North American division of BSH Appliances Group.
Why? First off, Plum makes wine chillers and dispensers. That’s it. Up to this point, it hasn’t appeared to actually have any bigger appliance aspirations.
Second, this looks like it’s a strictly North American effort, not part of the broader smart appliances efforts driven out of the BSH’s global headquarters in Germany. The global holding company, BSH Home Appliances Group, has its own smart home platform in Home Connect, an investment in Chefling (a smart kitchen software platform), and partnerships with the likes of SideChef. None of those, from the looks of it, are involved in this effort.
Not that a wine appliance for Thermador isn’t interesting. While there are a few appliance brands like Samsung and LG that have built wine refrigerators for the home, no big brand has yet to make a smart wine dispenser.
And the Thermador brand makes sense since it’s both a purely North American-centric brand and also a high-end appliance for people who, most likely, drink some wine.
As for Plum, the deal is interesting in that it looks like the first partnership for the company with a larger appliance brand, and when you look at the company’s leadership, BSH North America makes sense. Company CEO, Michael Traub, joined Plum last year after heading up mattress company Serta. Before that? He was president and CEO of . . . BSH Home Appliances North America.
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