Integrate 50 different utensil heads to 3 distinctive body styles while withstanding 40 pounds of pullout force
Lifetime Brands
Boutique Housewares
Diversity in Modularity. By developing one small housewares innovation, Humanfactors provided Lifetime Brands with a wealth of product diversity. To satisfy the fickle housewares consumer within a crowded market, Humanfactors developed a single, easy-to-manufacture, low-cost universal centerpiece—a connector that enabled Lifetime Brands to integrate 50 different utensil heads with 3 distinctive body styles while withstanding 40 pounds of pullout force. This enabled Lifetime Brands to provide their private-label customers with three customizable product lines for the development costs of one, and opened up a world of housewares to companies without the means to develop their own products from scratch.
Market Research
Who’d have guessed that 25 versions of a slotted spoon would each be fabricated and assembled using such different materials and techniques? Lifetime Brands didn’t, which is why we deconstructed such a broad diversity of products from nearly every manufacturer - from high end to cheap, from boutique to mass market - in order to understand what works and why.
Innovation
This is the pivotal component: a universal connector that enables Lifetime to combine virtually any functional head with any handle style, with enough real estate to attach a custom nameplate. This is the singular component that lets Walmart, or Meijer, or Target order a diverse custom line of private label housewares, all technically identical, but visually on brand according to the retailer.
Engineering
The universal connector as a concept seemed intuitive, almost obvious. Engineering it to work properly was another story. This component was required to accommodate dozens of combinations of heads and handles - carrot peelers, ice cream scoops, pasta servers, meat mallets - and perform consistently, after hundreds of wash cycles, without compromise. Conceptualizing various features and assemblies, performing FEA on critical components, testing prototypes to failure - an expert understanding of molding and manufacturing, and knowing where to over-engineer was essential to this product’s success.
Production
Our innovations enabled Lifetime Brands to offer a much greater diversity of products - in quality and aesthetic - to some of the industry’s largest retailers.
