We are talking to Justin Emerson, Head of Technical at La Marzocco and Head of Design for Gaggenau Sven Baacke about how two luxury brands respond and embrace the demands for customisation.

Sven opens with a pertinent admission. “I just got a double shot from my La Marzocco Linea Mini two minutes ago and it’s customised with burned black oak handles. The question is, why am I doing this to a machine? It’s a very interesting topic.”

Justin sees it as a service to be provided, akin to the company’s roots of handmaking machines to individual cafes’ and bars’ specifications. “We saw the increasing requests for customisation as an opportunity to get a little bit closer to our customers and respond a little bit more empathetically, or a little bit more creatively, to what people were looking for. So we could actually take a customer on that entire journey.”

Sven references a guiding principle of the brand as well: “So we come at this from the professional kitchen principle. Providing you with the capability to create anything you choose: sous vide, whatever.

For us, the product for the customer is not so much the oven, it’s, at the end of the day, in connection with the house, it is the whole kitchen. The house is done by an architect by a designer, is tailor made and what we at Gaggenau are doing is allowing you, as a designer, as a creator, as an owner, to choose the size of the appliance. You can choose colours. You can choose the way of interacting with the user interface. You can choose the integration of the appliances into the furniture.”

Both see the attraction of customisation, as Justin says: “You get up in the morning and make a coffee. You touch the machine, you turn the knobs and you touch the wood or you look at the colour and go man, how cool is it that my machine is exactly the same colour as my bar top, or the back wall. There’s something about that feeling you get. That’s an amazing piece of equipment that I helped create. I put my touch on that and I think that’s a really powerful thing.”

Sven smiles, “I understand the desire for uniqueness: I want to have this personal note and no-one else really has that. Only I have this burnt wood handle on my coffee machine and they told me it’s not possible because it would burn too much and so on and so forth, but I found a customiser who could achieve this. However, there are some people asking customisers out there to do crazy things, not sure if I like it, to be honest, as a designer. What is luxury? Is it total freedom of choice or is it the considered curation by someone who is creating the best for me? With a tailored suit, of course it is made for me, but I’m not sure if I should get involved in how it is cut.”

We may have touched a nerve here. Justin weighs in, “I like the idea that someone will respect the fact that we know how to build machinery. We spend a lot of time and effort making sure that it makes amazing coffee. The things that I like to see customised are people’s touch points where they actually grab it and feel it and interact with it.” Speaking to Sven regarding his customised Linea Mini, “Personally, yeah, I’m ‘less is more’. I have a feeling, if yours is a blacked out machine, I’m going to like it.”

For Sven it centres around the iconic 90cm wide EB333 with the choice of black controls. “I was fighting to give it the black dials back in the day, to really get it blending in. Now, it’s built in like an art piece on eye level. So you can really operate that in a proper way and then combine this with, for example, one or two 20 inch wine cabinets that are integrated perfectly behind a custom furniture panel in wood or whatever and without a handle, (the choice of handleless door opening) and then you set the illumination dimmed on the presentation mode. Combine that with the new Essential Induction, an invisible cooktop completely integrated under the surface with just a dot and stainless steel control knob. It’s absolute eye-candy on one hand, but the professional kitchen principle without any compromise on the other. Professional tools for cooking, but really harmonise the home.”

Justin conjures up treasured memories from his years at the bench, testing every La Marzocco that comes into Australia, “There was actually two now that I think about it. There was a machine that was black and a very, very dark green. Just a couple of green panels just in the right spot. Really, really, really nice. And then a commercial version, a KB 90 that was matte black, a nice soft black with some accents and a, basically, electroplate gold. So when you say black and gold like that, you’re like, oh, I don’t think I’m going to like it. But when it was sitting on the bench it was one of the best machines. Yeah. One of the best machines and it’s very, almost classic. You know, that little black dress? Very classic. Just worked really well.”