Final scenes of tussles before going to the cash register and then goodbye?
Lidl France will put on the shelves this Friday in 400 stores units of Monsieur Cuisine Connect, its low-cost food processor that has become a real social phenomenon.
It will be sold at the ultra-competitive price ... of 279 euros against 329 previously.
The timing of this offer may come as a surprise.
Rare and one-off replenishments have been part of the marketing strategy that has been generating buzz since marketing began in 2019. Silvercrest-branded devices traditionally appear, as if by magic, in December and June.
"It is an ephemeral sale of the rest of the December stocks to liquidate it", assures Lidl "This has no relation to the current procedure", hammers one officially at the German discount giant.
The brand is indeed facing a complaint for patent infringement brought by Vorwerk, the German manufacturer of the Thermomix (1359 euros), as revealed by Europe 1 at the end of January.
A very long legal procedure
After being convicted of having copied his German competitor by a Barcelona court, Monsieur Cuisine Connect could well experience the same fate on this side of the Pyrenees: a complete withdrawal from in-store sales.
"This court decision is specific to Spanish courts and cannot be applied in France," Lidl France insisted at the end of January.
The legal battle concerned certain components a little too close to Thermomix technologies such as the balance, interactions with knives and the cover of the device made in France.
As many patents that independent experts will have to verify one by one.
Directed by the German management, the legal proceedings for plagiarism and counterfeiting actually began in March 2018, as soon as the first robots made in China were put on sale under the name Monsieur Cuisine Plus.
According to Capital magazine, Vorwerk then seized in June 2019 copies of the new version, called Monsieur Cuisine Connect, to have them appraised and compared in order to establish a potential violation of its patents filed in France.
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According to our information, a hearing is scheduled for the end of March before the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris in order to hear the two parties.
“We are hopeful of asserting our rights country by country,” says Pierre-Yves Buisson, the new CEO of Vorwerk France.
"We sell a repairable device with a lifespan of 30 years while our competitor has a sales strategy which is mainly used to attract customers to its stores for their shopping," he asserts.
"Many former customers disappointed with their entry-level product come from elsewhere," says the boss of Vorwerk.
Lidl France is staying the course and ensuring that new sales of Monsieur Cuisine Connect are well planned for the month of June.
The decision of the French justice should not intervene for several months.
