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It isn't digital. It
doesn't connect to the Internet. It isn't light enough to carry around in your
pocket. But the Orangex Ojex Manual kitchen juicer is a thing of beauty, a
purveyor of sweetness, and a marvelous story of the power of design in a global
economy. Venezuelan owners of a foundry that made cast-iron plumbing parts and
big restaurant juice presses turned to Smart Design in New York for help in
cracking the U.S. household market. (Earlier, Smart had devised the original Oxo
line of kitchen implements.)
The designers took
the commercial citrus press and inverted the crank mechanism to save room,
elongated the lever to increase pressure on the oranges, cut the number of
parts, and gave the product a fresh look, using glass and a nonslip, ergonomic
handle.
Smart also went down
to the foundry and used workers' ideas in the design to make assembly more
efficient and less costly. ''It created a whole new market for this Latin
America company, saved jobs, and showed the strength of design from a business
viewpoint,'' says juror Leslie Speer. ''Also, the cast-iron juicer lasts
forever.''
Juice squeezed from
a manual press is especially sweet because the pulp and seeds are strained out.
That bitterness you taste from ''fresh-squeezed'' O.J. in restaurants comes from
oranges being ground up in electric juicers. The Design Firm Smart was
awarded a gold in Business Week's 2000 annual design awards competition for for
the design of the OJex.
We also sell the Orangex mid
size professional citrus juicer, and the Large-Size commercial citrus juicers
from Orangex. |
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Juicers
