Innovating the Outdoor Fireplace: Part 2

Today I want to add more information to my previous posting on Innovating the Outdoor Fireplace by adding a parallel between the outdoor pizza oven and the outdoor fireplace.

If you were to flash back four years, before Forno Bravo introduced the Primavera series (and later the Andiamo series) ovens, you would see a pizza oven market dynamic similar to today’s outdoor fireplace market. Not only had Forno Bravo not introduced the Primavera ovens, we had also not yet introduced the Casa2G, Giardino and Premio2G modular pizza oven kits that revolutionized the oven industry. Basically the pizza oven market was characterized by moderate quality, very expensive oven kits imported from Europe—that all required custom installation.

This is a true story—we had a neighbor in Healdsburg, CA (where we lived at the time) who spent $20,000 on a custom installation for a 31” “rustic” pizza oven kit from an Italian oven importer. The family was at the leading edge of the trend, and there just weren’t any good choices at the time.

But in order for the industry to move beyond the early adopters, people who were willing to spend $20,000 on what turned out to be just a small pizza oven, we needed offer better and different alternatives. We believed that there was a market for a small, but “true” masonry pizza oven. The design needed to be true to the requirements (really bake 90 second Pizza Napoletana with a wood fire), while meeting some basic rules—could be set up by hand, without requiring any special tools or equipment; required zero building skills, etc. And we were right. We built the prototypes, and I tested the first ovens at my house. And it worked!

We put the Primavera in the Forno Bravo Store and we started getting our first orders within days. It was a great experience. Years later the Primavera oven continues to be a best-seller.

I believe that this dynamic can play itself out again in the outdoor fireplace market. There are many parallels. The design and weight issues are very similar—the product needs to be something that a homeowner with zero building experience can set up without any special equipment, tools, skill or knowledge. Even more importantly, the experience needs to be authentic. Where a small pizza oven needs to actually make great pizza, a small, but authentic, outdoor fireplace needs to look and feel like a real masonry fireplace.

There are other parallels that I could about, such as the philosophical similarities between the “design approach” of the Calore2G and the Casa2G, and the ability of Forno Bravo to create wonderful exterior finishes, such as hand-glazed stucco, in a factory environment—where the cost is significantly lower than the same finish done on a construction site. But you get my point.

This is getting exciting.