Summary
Will anyone iron clothes in the future?
Dough is a new series from BBC Radio 4 which looks at the business behind profitable, everyday products, assessing where the smart money is going now and what that could mean for all of us in the years ahead.
In this episode, the entrepreneur Sam White speaks with experts from the world of garment care including:
Leonor Carneiro - the category leader for garment care at Versuni which owns the Philips brand and is famous for making products including steam irons.
Veronika Kandusova - a consultant with the market researchers, Euromonitor International.
Frej Lewenhaupt - the CEO and co-founder of Steamery, a company which makes garment steamers.
Also joining them is the technology expert and applied futurist, Tom Cheesewright, who offers his insight and predictions on what might be coming beyond the current production pipeline.
Together, they explore the products that are replacing traditional irons, explain why fewer people in the UK tend to iron today and chat about their own choices for game changing and least effective ironing innovations.
We hear why clothes iron manufacturers are yet to crack battery power and get a tantalising glimpse of how even more of us might avoid ironing in the future.
Produced by Jon Douglas. Dough is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in August when Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread.
In the meantime, Dough is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before this BBC podcast kicks off, I'd like to tell you about some others you might enjoy. |
| 0:05.1 | My name's Will Wilkin and I Commission Music Podcast for the BBC. |
| 0:08.7 | It's a really cool job, but every day we get to tell the incredible stories behind songs, |
| 0:13.5 | moments and movements, stories of struggle and success, rises and falls, the funny, the ridiculous. |
| 0:19.1 | And the BBC's position, at the heart of British music |
| 0:21.7 | means we can tell those stories like no one else. |
| 0:24.5 | We were, are and always will be right there at the centre of the narrative. |
| 0:28.6 | So whether you want an insightful take on music right now |
| 0:31.3 | or a nostalgic deep dive into some of the most famous and infamous moments in music, |
| 0:36.1 | check out the music podcasts on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.9 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:45.4 | Hello, you're listening to Doe, the BBC Radio 4 series that checks out profitable everyday products |
| 0:52.3 | and considers how they might evolve in the future. |
| 0:55.7 | In every episode, we hear from industry insiders on game-changing developments in the life of our |
| 1:01.6 | chosen product, get a glimpse of the business behind it and discover where the smart money's |
| 1:06.3 | going to take it to the next level. I'm Sam White, an entrepreneur who's always well turned out, and that's |
| 1:13.1 | what today's product is all about, because wrinkle clothes are not a good look. And if you care |
| 1:18.2 | about that, you might feel you need an iron. Tom, hi. How are you doing? Hello, Sam. Hoping we can avoid any wrinkles in today's recording. |
| 1:31.4 | Tom Cheese Right is our resident technology expert, an applied futurist. |
| 1:36.1 | I'm looking at what you're wearing, Tom, and I have to say, the jury's out on whether you actually possess an iron. |
| 1:42.2 | You know, whether or not iron really depends on the occasion. |
| 1:46.7 | Given that we're not on camera today, I've gone what you might call weekend dad chic, |
... |
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