I love my Thermomix. I truly do.
I first went to a demonstration in February last year. The minute I saw that little piece of engineering genius in action, I knew I had to have one.
I hate cooking. My poor mother would spend years trying to instill in me the same love of food and cooking that she had. She had loads of cookery books, would watch endless cookery programs and took great delight in providing us with heaps of taste tests. She so badly wanted to pass the baton, but I dropped it. Big time.
I was lucky. I married a man who wasn’t all that phased by food either. He was happy with my boring meat and two veg display, night in and night out.
But then I saw the Thermomix. Oh dear lord, I knew my food gene had been switched on. I saw the possibilities. No more boring food, no more burnt food, no more food disasters. No more scones that were akin to a brick. I had to have it.
I banged on about it for 10 long months and finally, on Christmas day, my dream had come true.
And it has been worth every single cent of it’s very hefty price tag of nearly $2K.
Our foodie journey has only just begun and I am in heaven. I was, and still am, an evangelical Thermomix convert.
And there are converts all over the place. Thermomix has been going since 1960, but it only reached Australia’s shores about 10 years ago. Its rise has been meteoric. In the last year alone, approximately 50,000 machines have been sold and figures of there being a Thermomix in 1 of every 10 homes in Australia are being bandied about. It has even been called the Tupperware of the 2000s.
The machine’s credentials not withstanding, that is a lot of profit.
So, it was with some dismay that hundreds of people, who have only just purchased their TM31, woke up to Thermomix Facebook forums full to the brim with the announcement of a new machine – the TM5.
This machine looks amazing – bigger bowl, inbuilt recipes, faster, a slow cooker function (something the old machine does not have) and purported to be only $50 more (although that hasn’t been confirmed). Interestingly, despite photos of the TM5 being on the UK website, a quick internet search reveals that no formal announcement has been made by Vorwerk, the manufacturers of Thermomix. In fact, there has been no fan fare at all. It just sort of appeared.
Thermomix opted not to let anyone, not even its consultants, the face of the company, know about the release of its new machine until today. Rumours of a new machine have been circulating for a couple of years. Various mockups have been doing the rounds. Yet, no launch date was announced. We just woke up this morning to find a new machine had replaced the old.
And people are angry. The forums are full of angry people who have just purchased their machines in the last month or so. People are feeling duped by the fact that they have only just parted with $2K yet a new and better machine is on the table.
People are divided. Some say suck it up – that the TM31 is still a great machine, some say that at the end of the day it is a first world problem, that the mere fact we can afford this machine and have food to put in it should be enough.
Unsurprisingly I disagree.
I put this on my Facebook status this morning:
I woke up this morning to FB being full of the news of the launch of TM5 (to be announced in Australia later today).
I do think there is an underhandedness about this.
When new models of other things are coming out (iphone, cars, etc.), there is a lot of hype that is created and also the current models are usually discounted to encourage sales of that stock too. I’ve had mine for a year so I am not phased, but for those who have only just received theirs, I do think this is very poor show.
Judging by all the other TMX forums I have been on, Vorwerk Thermomix has done themselves a great disservice. There is an angry tide out there. A lot of people have only just received their thermomixes (some only this past week). It is a massive investment and I know I would feel completely cheated.
Consultants should have been informed, and old models discounted. Some people would wait, but there are those who would have weighed it up and gone with the discounted version, and Thermomix’s credibility would have been salvaged. As it stands now, they have acted with arrogance and I think that is very very sad.”
I know this will divide some people. It is a company that it is in business to make money. It is perfectly entitled to do business any way it sees fit, to maximise those profits. The only problem is that a lot of people go without to save enough money to buy these machines. Not everyone can afford them, but can see the value in them – the time they save, the health benefits, the ability to feed a food sensitive family, and the list goes on. So they scrimp and save and do without. Only to be informed that a new and better machine is available only weeks after they have purchased theirs.
It is understandable that people are angry. People had no warning. Thermomix releases a new model once every 12 – 15 years. It isn’t like the iPhone that releases a new model every year. There is no predictability with the Thermomix. People did not have the opportunity to plan. New machines, considered the creme de la creme of the cooking world, sold last week are now – by virtue of the fact that a newer model is available – considered inferior. This is simply bad practice.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. I think Thermomix have missed a trick. A lot of hype could have been created for the new machine. Such is the loyalty to this machine, I know of at least 5 people who would sell their old machine to buy a new one. As it stands now, a lot of those people who have only just bought machines won’t buy another one in the future. Their shiny new machine, unfortunately, has left a very sour taste in their mouths and whilst I have owned my machine for a while now, and continue to love it, this strategy has also left a sour taste in mine.
Until next time,
This doesn’t seem like very ethical or smart business practise to me. I don’t own a Thermomix, even though I could afford one I think they are over priced, probably because they don’t have any competition. I don’t like their approach to selling it by party plan, I’m not much of a Tupperware fan either for the same reason. As far as I can see party plan selling seems to elevate the price of things being sold. I do have a friend that owns a Thermomix and loves it and I’m glad it has been good for you, but its not for me.