If only LONDINIUM I was priced around GBP5000 plus tax it would have been dismissed as a rich man’s toy and the resellers would not have become bent out of shape, knowing that we would shift very few units (we know this too because we have spent years selling domestic espresso machines at and above the GBP3K mark and the air is very thin indeed up there)
The problem is LONDINIUM I gives you Idrocompresso shot quality at an accessible price
If you have an Idrocompresso buy the L1 and send it back for a full refund in 30 days if you disagree with us & our customers who already had an idrocompresso and then bought an L1. Its the L1 that’s in daily use, in every single case. Partly because it is a single group machine and therefore takes up a lot less space and consumes less power, to be fair
Its the same story from La Marzocco GS/3 owners, who are the single most common machine owner that we have sold to
LONDINIUM I has been purchased by many customers who are in a position to buy the latest thing that takes their interest and without exception the feedback is that LONDINIUM I sets a new, higher benchmark
LONDINIUM I isn’t ‘excellent for the price’. LONDINIUM I is excellence at ANY price
Whether you own a Slayer or a Synesso, a La Marzocco or a KVDW, the shot quality and build quality of LONDINIUM I is going to impress you. OK, if you like to have lots of knobs & buttons to fiddle with and adjust then the L1 isn’t for you. But if you simply want consistently exceptional espresso without all the mucking around and frequent bills from the service engineer then L1 may be what is missing from your espresso equation
We happily concede that customers at a distance, such as Australia, have to give up some of that discount (GBP187 to be precise) in paying the premium that single unit express shipping demands, as opposed to the GBP18 per unit shipping cost to Australia if we sent 8 units on a pallet. Even after that they are still hundreds of pounds sterling better off
You’re never going to have an agent in every town with a niche piece of equipment like the L1, so even if we had service agents in say Melbourne and Brisbane its little different from London if you live in Perth, such are the vast distances involved. We can get parts to pretty much anywhere our customers are likely to live in 72 hours, which will usually beat a local agent by weeks as modern business demands that the bare minimum number of parts are held, especially for niche products
Its true, some of our customers have suffered shipping damage. We stand behind our product 100%. Show us a customer who feels they’ve been treated poorly, no matter where they are on the globe. Like it or not, the world has become a very small place
The internet is a two edged sword. It has allowed us to quickly connect with a very niche market, but any one of those customers can use that very same medium to sink us if we don’t deliver the customer experience that they expect
The proposition that we are about to decimate the established distributor & reseller model for espresso machines is laughable. Our core business continues to be a niche roaster for lever espresso machines. LONDINIUM I paired with HGOne has finally given us the tools we lacked to take our roasting to the next level. We will introduce a 2 and 3 group version of the LONDINIUM I (they are identical to the L1 in terms of how they work – why would we change what works so well) in the near future which i expect will sell in very modest numbers, but that is it. There will be no expansion beyond that.
As the business has developed we have reduced the number of activities that we are engaged in so we can focus on a few specialist activities and deliver those to the best of our ability. Almost all my business experience is working in multi-national corporations. I left that to create the antithesis of that environment. It is a primary goal of mine that LONDINIUM does not become a large enterprise
I have read that one of the reasons that fewer women fail in entrepreneurial activities is they generally don’t start businesses with a view to building a Fortune 500 company (unlike many men). From day one I have tried to keep that in mind. Growth beyond a certain size can very quickly spawn an organisation of the kind that you once left to create your own enterprise. There are many examples of this, but one that springs to mind is the Coffee Republic story (UK). It is a quick & easy paperback read and well worth your time if you are considering an entrepreneurial move
The HGOne grinder paired with the LONDINIUM I gives you an espresso microscope that reveals so much of what has previously remained hidden in the roast. It’s a very niche market and proudly lies at the opposite end of the coffee spectrum to the Nespresso approach. So lets ease up on the hysteria