TOP SELLERS ENTERING PROJECT
From across Amazon and other online retailers such as Food and Wine Magazine and Total Wine, the top three corkscrews out perform the rest by a large margin. Pulltap and Le Creuset are the most popular among the wine specific retailers. Pulltap had an expired patent and is the most affordable corkscrew while Le Creuset we would later find, utilizes an ongoing design patent for the levers. Craighill has a well reviewed corkscrew, however with a retail price of $98, this would not fit the intended KitchenAid demographic.
A key design flaw that we found online and in our own testing with Oxo's corkscrew, was that the first step would consistently damage the cork. For this reason, we decided to move away from a similar functioning mechanism.
2 STEP CORKSCREW PROCESS
STREAMLINED
BRUSHED ACCENT BOLSTER
SMALL MATERIAL BREAKS
CURVATURE CONTINOUS FORMS
Early prototypes focused on designing for function. This included internal geometry as well as determining the appropriate amount of bevel relief for the user to comfortably gain access to the worm.
It was at this point that we had identified that the Le Creuset had been using/licensing a patent from a company in France called Coutale. We flagged this to KitchenAid where they also requested the plastic body to fully encapsulate the metal framework. We took the design cues and developed them further to what would be the final design.
We continued to utilize the soft curves from KitchenAid's new Classic line of tools to create a soft top profile view. Expanding on top of those lines, we tried to have a seamless connection between the foil cutter blade and bottom of the body.
INTERNAL CONSTRUCTION
COLOR - MATERIAL - FINISH
