When he was UK MD of Ariston, Giuliano Gnagnati brought you those mesmerising TV ads (“Ariston… and on… and on…”). Ariston was an obscure Italian brand ? sales and brand awareness soared. These days he’s running his own equally unorthodox online whiteware store Whitebox. You can buy a pretty good selection of the big brands plus Giuliano’s own Whitebox brand of economy machines and there’s a comparison feature that rates the machines honestly (for instance, there’s no attempt to push the Whitebox machines and they’ll often rate below competing brands). There’s a whole layer of really good survivor etailers out there ? no bullshit and no hard sell. Whitebox is one of them.
In which I try, after 25 years of blogging, to drop my ironic stance a bit.