Fed up with user–hostile kitchen gadgets, retired cookware entrepreneur Sam Farber did more than just complain about them. He started OXO International and produced a line of ergonomically superior kitchen and garden tools, under the brand name Good Grips.

When Sam Farber started OXO International in 1989, he knew he could count on at least one thankful customer—his wife, Betsey, an architect who suffered from arthritis in her hands. Her difficulties and his own personal frustration with existing kitchen gadgets, many of which he considers "functional disasters," convinced him that consumer needs weren't being met.

At the time, Farber had recently retired as CEO of Copco, a successful cookware company he founded in 1960 (best known for its colorful cast–iron and enamel tea kettles with teak handles). Renting a house in the South of France, the Farbers looked forward to pursuing their passion for art, cooking and entertaining. But noting Betsey's difficulty gripping a potato peeler one day caused him to wonder if anything could be done for her and the other 20 million Americans with arthritis.

"As a cook, I've been furious at the lack of decent food prep tools," Sam Farber comments. "They're terrible when you try to hold them. In my 30 years in housewares, no one has done anything about gadgets. Companies go abroad, put different packaging on the same junk and call it new."

That got Farber thinking. He asked himself, "Why do ordinary kitchen tools hurt your hands, with painful scissor loops, rusty metal peelers, hard skinny handles? Why can't there be wonderfully comfort–able tools that are easy to use? If you made tools like that, wouldn't everybody want to have them?"

Investigating the matter further, Farber developed a list of best–selling kitchen items and started interviewing merchandise buyers. "I heard a lot about better packaging and displays, assortments that were too large, the need for larger retailer margins, but nothing about the failings of the products," he says. "I asked what faults they found with products on the market and received answers like 'Some are good and some are bad' or 'They've always been like that.'"

Convinced he had a winning idea, Farber approached Smart Design, a New York–based industrial design firm he worked with at Copco, and asked them to develop a line of ergonomic kitchen tools. Davin Stowell, president of Smart Design, recalls the meeting. "Sam said, 'I've spent my life making better–looking houseware items. Now I want to make something that's really meaningful.'" To keep initial overhead costs down and give the designers a vested interest in the products' success, Farber persuaded Smart Design to waive its usual design fees in exchange for a 3% royalty and a small advance.

Smart Design's first assignment was to come up with tools that were comfortable in the hand, dishwasher safe, high quality, good looking and affordable. "I didn't want a $20 peeler," Farber comments. Farber also asked that the product be a universal design. "We wanted to appeal to the broadest possible market, not just a very specific market of arthritics and the infirm," he explains. "Why shouldn't everyone who cooks have comfortable tools?"

With Farber's objectives in mind, the design team immersed itself in field research and consulted with Pat Moore, an industrial designer and gerontologist they had collaborated with on other universal design projects. Best known for her book Disguised, Moore has been deeply committed to understanding issues related to age—even to the point of having a professional makeup designer transform her face and body to the wrinkled skin and physical limitations of an elderly woman. In this disguise, she experienced for herself the life of a poor old woman, a middle–income old woman and a wealthy old woman. Like Moore, Smart Design was eager to demonstrate that attractive design could be "multi–generational," easily used by people of all ages.

The design team talked to consumers, examined and used competitive products, interviewed chefs, and spent hours with volunteers from a New York arthritis group to learn the problems of hand movement. They delved extensively into the range of manual limitations, from serious permanent disabilities to the limited mobility and declining strength associated with aging. They also noted gadgets with rusting metal and cracking plastic, dull peeler blades and can openers that didn't cut. Like Farber, their passion and belief in the project grew.

The designers divided tool types by wrist and hand motions: twist/turn (used to scoop, stir and peel), push/pull (graters and knives) and squeeze (scissors, garlic press and can openers). And from there, they created hundreds of models for testing and determined that most tools required a combination of motions. The project would narrow down to three functional groups: gadgets and utensils with a general multipurpose handle, squeeze tools and measuring devices. The designers determined that the basic handle had to be large enough to avoid hand strain. It had to be oval to keep it from rotating in the hand. The short round end had to fit comfortably in the palm and evenly distribute the pressure in use. It had to have an over–sized tapered hole so that hanging storage would be very easy, even for a shaky hand or dim eye.

"We wanted the material to be soft and flexible, but it had to be easy to mold and dishwasher safe," Farber adds. The answer was Santoprene, a polypropylene plastic/rubber material made by Monsanto and used for dishwasher gaskets. Not only did it offer a warm non–slip handle, Santoprene could be made with Fingerprint softspots, flexible fins that bend to an individual finger grip, giving the user more cushion and control, even when hands are wet and soapy. OXO now holds a utility patent on this flexible fin design as well as for other unique functional aspects of various new designs. OXO's hand tools are sold under the name Good Grips, chosen because "it communicates the major advantage of the line quickly," explains Farber.

OXO, on the other hand, doesn't stand for anything. "Sam liked it because it read the same rightside up and upside down," reveals Stowell.

Stowell adds that while "Sam is really good about letting designers do their thing," he also brings an astute understanding of consumers to the design. As an example, Stowell cites the fins on the handle. "We could have completely covered up the fins and just made a softer, spongy part in the handle," he says. "But Sam drove home the point that when people look at the fins, they immediately know what it's all about. Their hand picks up the handle, their fingers go to those fins and start playing with them. It registers in their minds what we're saying: This is a better grip. Covering up that detail wouldn't have done that. Many people overlook that psychological connection. They think, if we make it work better, we can leave it there, but you can't. You've got to make sure that your customer understands right away."

Farber also appreciates the importance of involving the designer in every aspect of manufacturing. "It's essential that the designer be familiar with the factories that are going to produce the designs," he says. "He must be aware of their production capabilities, what they can and cannot do. You can't accomplish design innovation in a vacuum. All the players have to participate and feel that they're partners all along the way."

Farber's son, John, who was then a vice president at Prudential Bache in mergers and acquisitions, was excited about the project and joined his father as a partner, handling financial matters. Betsey became design director. The three of them, with the help of a secretary, formed the initial OXO staff. Farber also convinced a former colleague to sign on as sales manager and consultant for "a percentage with a small advance."

Together the team developed a three–year marketing plan, with the initial merchandise slated for upscale distribution outlets, followed later by lowerpriced lines, Softworks(tm) and Basics, geared to mass merchants and supermarkets.

The strategy was to knock off their own product before a competitor did and, at the same time, provide budget–conscious consumers with tools that adhered to OXO's principles of universal design, focusing on user comfort. In every case, Farber has been adamant about providing good value to customers and "keeping competition from undercutting you."

"Sam's always been concerned about keeping the price of good design at affordable levels," says Stowell. "He says, 'Why shouldn't you be able to buy products at K–Mart that are just as nicely designed.' That's something he is insistent on in everything we've done for him. It's easy to design something beautiful and expensive, but challenging to bring costs down to something that's still beautiful and can sell for a reasonable price. You feel you've given something to a lot more people."

Farber also believes that customers are loyal to an innovative company and has kept the product pipeline filled with new offerings. Another benefit, he says, is that while a competitor can knock off a single product, it's harder to knock off a broad product line. "We're constantly innovating. I think our customers know that and stay with us."

Since the first 20 Good Grips products debuted at the Gourmet Show in San Francisco in 1990, OXO has introduced nearly 100 products, including a line of garden hand tools sold under a licensing agreement with the Sierra Club(r). Part of the proceeds from each garden tool sale goes to preserving the environment, which Farber emphasizes must play a role in design. "In packaging, we try to use less plastic." He adds, "Extending the life of products is ecological. Good quality and good design and universal design, when done right, are ecological. If you make a product that lasts a long time, you are reducing the amount of junk that gets thrown into the environment. As someone once said, 'We are all only temporarily able.' So we should use design to extend the useful life of both the object and the user."

The design quality of OXO Good Grips has won both customer approval and critical acclaim, garnering almost every major design prize. In addition to the Tylenol/Arthritis Foundation design award, it has been selected for the 1991 ID Annual Design Review, the 1992 Industrial Designers Society of America Gold Medal in a competition sponsored by Business Week, the 1993 Corporate Design Foundation Design Leadership Award and Metropolitan Home's100 Best, to name a few. It has been chosen for the permanent collection of several museums, including the Smithsonian's Cooper–Hewitt National Museum of Design and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Its financial success is equally impressive. OXO operated in the black during its first full year, with over $3 million in sales in 1991. Its sales have increased by 50% each year since. In 1992, Farber sold OXO International to General Housewares Corporation, remaining on as the principal of the firm.

Although OXO now has a broad base of products in the marketplace, it still devotes at least 10% of its annual revenues to ongoing design efforts—an indication of just how important design is to OXO. Marketing savvy and understanding of the consumer's needs are key to OXO's success, Farber acknowledges. "But user–centered design is our main competitive advantage."