Toulouse: Jacques Ravinet designs “100% sustainable and repairable” household appliances
The Toulouse-based company Kippit is the only one in France to design household appliances that are 100% repairable for life, largely manufactured in France. She imagined household appliances that can no longer be thrown away, through products that reconcile innovation, performance and design as well as social and environmental requirements.
Do not speak to Jacques Ravinet of planned obsolescence in Toulouse, this word horrifies him. He fights it every day in his office workshop, located in the Arnaud – Bernard district, in the heart of Toulouse, by developing 100% “durable and repairable” devices. Baptized Kippit (for Keep-it, keep it), his company now employs three people, in the city, and an office in Paris. All of them are working on the development of “appliances approved by the future”, as it is written on the window.
The idea of designing everyday objects that could be repaired indefinitely was born in the early life of Jacques Ravinet, when he was still running a polling institute. “My partner’s washing machine, Karen Maya-Levy, had broken down. Changing the electronic card cost him more than buying a new machine ”. It was the blackout too many. The click!
Jacques Ravinet and Karen Maya-Levy then study the possibility of creating household appliances for life with engineers from ICAM. From there, they set up the company Ineloo (now renamed Kippit), sell their polling institute and throw themselves body and soul into this new adventure. “To set the mark, we started by working on a kettle to replace this thing that breaks after a few years and that we throw away without even trying to repair”, continues Jacques Ravinet. Baptized the Jaren (mixture of Ja[ques] and [Ka] ren), this multifunction kettle allows, thanks to its various baskets, to cook pasta, rice, eggs, preparations in a bain-marie… “and to be able to put the jug in the dishwasher”. The Jaren prototypes were presented at the Made in France fair in 2019 and Kippit won the innovation prize.
Followed by a strong community of Kippers, “favorable to a sustainable world”, the Toulouse company launched a crowdfunding campaign and obtained € 250,000, in the form of a pre-order to support the industrialization of the kettle. “We have been ordered 1,100 Jaren. It was market proof that the bank is waiting for. Suddenly, she lent us money in turn. Then we created an investment company that contains Kippers. There, we raised an additional € 250,000, ”continues Jacques Ravinet.
With these funds, today, Kippit is in the process of manufacturing 2,000 kettles, mainly in stainless steel produced in Grenoble and with the help of the small hands of Aéro XV-Ymca Services, based in Colomiers. “Our goal is 20,000 per year,” announces the co-founder of Kippit. For now, the multifunction Jaren is sold for € 314. Should follow a toaster, a washing machine …
At 58 years old, one can wonder what motivates this Toulousain to work for the environment through his 100% repairable products? ” My children ! I wish they weren’t living in a rotten world. “