roscan adds chef-branded products
A new line of chef-branded bakeware and tools is just one example of the way Roscan’s 2,600-item product offering has been constantly adapting since the company started up in 1976 with a Hibachi. The latest happens to carry a prominent name – that of Canadian cookbook authors Janet and Greta Podleski – but plenty of Roscan products are out there more quietly, as private labels.
In the beginning
Peter Corrado is executive vice president of Roscan today, but back in 1982 when he started, he was a pharmacist whose enterprising brother-in-law made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He and President Gunter Rosenthal now lead the family business.
“I came up to Canada and what we were going to do was start the business in the United States,” Corrado remembers. “After six or eight months we decided that with the border so close, because we’re literally only 40 minutes from the border, it was actually easier and more profitable for us to keep it in Canada and ship our US customers through Champlain, New York. We were able to keep everything under one roof.”
That roof now covers about 100,000 square feet full of containers. All the orders are “picked and packed” in Saint Laurent, Quebec by a team of employees who have been with the company for years, if not decades.
“When I came up there was a line of kitchen gadgets, a small line,” Corrado continues. “We decided to revamp the line, and go very heavily into kitchen gadgets.” They modified packaging, built planograms, and branched out to the 20 or more categories Roscan carries today.
“Besides kitchen tools and gadgets, we do bakeware, cutlery, cookware,” Corrado says. “Pretty much anything that’s non-electric, and non-tabletop.”
Turning points
Corrado looks back and sees the development of the private label business as a major milestone for Roscan. “Though people don’t necessarily see our brands out there, people see our products at some of the biggest retailers in North America,” he says. “We’ve been doing that for close to 20 years.”
At that time, he continues, “No one was really into private label. We started doing it and became probably the best at it. Now it’s sort of in vogue, and it’s old hat for us.”
Roscan has grown in a new direction lately, with licensing. What started out as a “dabbling” interest has become a full-fledged line of bakeware, kitchen tools and gadgets under the “J&G by Roscan” label. Corrado explains to United States residents who might not have heard about them – yet – that Janet and Greta Podleski’s three cookbooks “have outsold pretty much any other cookbook in Canada. They have signed a deal with Canadian Readers Digest where in every issue they offer recipes and cooking tips. They even now have a half- hour cooking show on the Food Network in Canada, which is doing incredibly well, and they sell a ton of cookbooks on QVC in the U.S.”
“The bakeware is doing unbelievably well,” Corrado says. He points out that the nonstick, metallic products are 0.8 mm in thickness, with silicone handles in a “funky green.”
The tools and gadgets are just as bright, in pink, orange, yellow, green and blue. “The handles on the kitchen tools and gadgets are sort of rubberized,” he says, with “zinc alloy tips where the hanging holes are to give them balance, and most of the tools are in grade-18.8 stainless steel.”
Looking ahead
“We’re always sourcing something new,” Corrado says. “We’re looking at product almost on a daily basis always trying to be innovative and come up with the next best thing.”
Whatever’s next for Roscan, he expects it will happen with the company’s characteristic efficiency. “We’re really not top-heavy,” he explains. “If someone needs something, there’s no committee. There’s basically a couple of us at the top of the company who say ‘Yes, that makes sense,’ or ‘We’ll let someone else do that.’ By the time we make a decision we can get product out on the market quicker than anybody.”
Roscan will be exhibiting at the Frankfurt show this year for the first time, to help answer its many recent international inquiries. “We’ve done business with various countries over the last 25 years on smaller levels,” Corrado says. “Now we’re going into it with two feet, jumping right in and seeing what happens.” It’s a formula that’s worked for Roscan for over 30 years.
