In mid-December, we learned that iRobot—the company behind the iconic robotic vacuum cleaner brand Roomba—was taken over by contract manufacturing company Picea following years of financial struggles.
I caught up with iRobot CEO Gary Cohen shortly after the news broke to find out what it meant for the brand. He confirmed that in the short term it will be business as usual (including continuing to support the current line of bots), but beyond that, Cohen — who was brought in to help get iRobot back on track in May 2024 — has big plans for the robovac veteran.
Here are 4 things that could be coming from iRobot…
1. Technophobe-friendly robot vacuum cleaners
Cohen describes how opening a Roomba box gives him “PTSD”: “It’s not a consumer-friendly experience. It’s like I’m afraid to connect it—will it connect to Wi-Fi? What’s 2.4 gigahertz versus 5? Why can’t these things just be seamlessly configured so I don’t have to worry about that?”
The iRobot teams are working to reduce these pain points and, as a result, make robot vacuum cleaners more accessible to more people. In fact, Cohen believes that ignoring the needs of consumers was one of the big mistakes that ultimately contributed to iRobot ending up in this situation.
This is in contrast to the rest of the market, which seems to be solely geared towards adding more features and increasing robot vacuum cleaner specifications. While Cohen admits that iRobot is “never going to win feature wars with competitors,” he also believes that this is not the right approach when the robot vacuum category only has 20% market penetration.
“We have to grow the category. That’s how we’re going to grow our business,” he says. “It just has to work, right? And if it works, more people will come into the category.”
2. Robot vacuum cleaner for smaller spaces
In addition to improving basic usability, Cohen also wants to address different consumer segments. Right now the trend is towards ever larger docks that take care of all kinds of maintenance tasks for you. They have their place – there are a number of excellent examples in my best robot vacuum cleaner rankings – but they’re not right for every customer.
“With my team, I visited small apartments in Japan, where 500 square meters is a typical apartment size,” he recalls. “Well, they don’t put these multifunctional cleaning devices in the middle of a foyer in a Japanese apartment. So what type of product do you need to develop to grow the category? And by the way, that insight travels to Europe, to big cities, to the US and to dormitories.”
3. More innovative robot vacuum cleaners
In recent years, iRobot has lagged behind the competition when it comes to innovation, but Cohen says that’s not due to a lack of technology or imagination. “There’s not one thing that comes up at CES that I didn’t find in our closet when I joined the company. There’s no end to ideas,” he emphasizes.
The problem has been figuring out how to get the ideas into the products effectively. “Our challenge was – before [the failed Amazon merger]but especially during the Amazon dependency period – we weren’t able to commercialize many of the great ideas that the previous team had developed,” Cohen continues. “My goal, separate from being consumer-driven, is to help commercialize some of these great ideas.”
On this front, new owner Picea will be helpful—and not just because it brings lots of new patents to the table (Cohen puts the number at over 1,000, in addition to the 1,000-plus that iRobot initially had). “When you have a manufacturing partner, you can design to manufacture,” says Cohen. “We will be able to bring innovative ideas to consumers better and faster than even our competitors.”
4. Robots that are not vacuum cleaners
Officially, Cohen is saying “nothing” about what iRobot will launch in the near future. However, he is more than happy to drop some very specific hints.
“We need to be more than just robotic cleaning devices for vacuum cleaners and mops,” he says. “There’s plenty of room outside on your lawn for robots. There’s plenty of places in your pool or your windows for robots.” He explains that actually the plan was to move beyond robovacs even before he came on board, but that they just struggled to execute.
“That’s how we want to grow the category and capitalize on the brand, and Picea has the desire and ability to be part of that journey.” I will watch with interest.
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