‘We always enjoy serving the culinary world’

Victorinox, for decades, has been synonymous with Swiss Army Knives but its domination in the culinary world is not very far behind. It has been around for nearly 140 years and its original placement as a cutlery business still stands tall, even as it has added multiple products like watches to its portfolio. At present, Swiss Army knives and kitchen knives together account for 60-65 per cent of the sales of the company and among this, the hospitality industry contributes 8-10 per cent turnover of Victorinox across all product categories. 

As part of its expansion in India, Victorinox recently opened its first uni-brand retail store in Mumbai. Against this backdrop, Colonel Chandhoke, Managing Director, Victorinox India, shares more on company’s offerings to the hospitality sector, recent trends, target markets and expectations from the Indian consumers 

Adding value to hospitality

Victorinox has strong offerings on three fronts – professional chefs and culinary world, tableware for customers at restaurants and meat, poultry and seafood processing industry. For professional chefs, Chandhoke informs that factors like quality, weight balance, edge retention and weight of the knife are important. “All these are scientifically developed at Victorinox laboratory, setting it apart from competitors,” he says. As far as tableware and meat, poultry & seafood processing industries are concerned, Chandhoke says the company offers good quality knives that can cut with precision and elegance without needing to be sharpened much, which work in the Victorinox’s favour. 

Expectations from Indian markets

Victorinox is very bullish on the Indian markets, Chandhoke said, adding that the premium consumer base in India was growing very rapidly. He said that India had a premium consumer market of 1 crore households, which was the company’s target base for its premium products. He added that as far as its low-costing household knives are concerned, this target base became around 10 crore households. 

“For our kitchen knives, the COVID years also played a very strong role in making our education efforts easier and more effective, because people were all cooking at home and were investing in good kitchenware and homeware,” he explained.

Adapting to hospitality trends

Explaining how demand in the culinary world has evolved and how the company adapted to it, Chandhoke says, “There was a time when wooden handles were all that a chef wanted. Then came the lightweight grip-friendly knives. Thereafter, Japanese Santoku knives suddenly became very popular, and they still are. In fact, Victorinox’s Santoku knives are one of our best-selling knives. Then, we added style-quotient with our handles and design on the blades. The Swiss Modern Collection was added, which is sleeker and has a more stylish, contemporary feel. There is a special wooden collection also in the range. Evolution with knives and meeting the demands and the taste of the market has always been our biggest priority and we will continue to do that. It is our core product and we enjoy serving the culinary world always.”

Plans for future

The company will be expanding aggressively over the coming years, opening six mono-brand Victorinox stores in the next three years. “Additionally, we will be launching a concept of kitchen knife pop-up stores or kiosks or small-store format, which will be a highlight location in a central part of a mall or a shopping area. It will be a very premium, 100-200 sq ft space and we plan it as our offline offering. This will also expand along with our mono-brand stores, specifically for the kitchen knives,” he says. Over the next five years, the company aims to have 40 multi-brand stores, six to eight mono-brand stores and 30-40 island or pop-up stores especially targetting kitchen knives.