Samsung heads to Manhattan, LG to Moscow

Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, "big players" in the global electronic appliances market, held events to launch premium products in the U.S. and Russia, respectively. Samsung conducted the event because the U.S. is the world’s largest electronics market, while LG did so in consideration of robustly growing demand for high-end electronics products in Russia.

Samsung unveiled a brand new line up of “Chef Collection,” which is comprised of refrigerator, oven, microwave oven and dishwasher, in New York on Wednesday. At the event held at Meatpacking District, an emerging cultural hub in New York, Samsung also announced recruitment of new members of “Club des Chefs” and a project to renovate its sales stores.

Samsung has teamed up with Daniel Boulud, one of top-rated chefs of French cuisine in the U.S., to gather ideas from chefs and reflect them in the course of new product development under Club des Chefs.

Also at the New York event, Samsung introduced “Center Stage” to allow consumers to view and experience various products at real size without spatial restriction via 85-inch ultrahigh definition touch screen displays. ”This will significantly improve the situation wherein we can only display certain products of our lineups for limited space at stores, and we incur sizable costs due to replacement of products on display,” a Samsung Electronics source said. “We will showcase it in North America and Europe within this year, and expand it to emerging markets.”

Meanwhile, LG Electronics held an event to launch electronic appliances in Moscow on Thursday and Friday last week, and introduced high-end home appliances, including refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and ovens.

“The event was conducted as extension of ‘InnoFest 2014,’ a product exhibition that we held targeting major markets in February and March,” a source at LG Electronics said. “We held a large-scale event in Moscow, because the premium electronic appliances market is growing robustly in Russia, where consumers also prefer LG products.”

According to LG Electronics, the company saw sales of electronic appliances soar by 20 percent in Russia for the first five months this year, compared to the same period in 2013.