From robovacs for small homes to a Roomba for your lawn, here are 4 things we can expect to see from iRobot – according to the CEO
In mid-December we learned that iRobot – the company behind the iconic robot vacuum brand Roomba – was being taken over by contract manufacturing company Picea, as a result of years of financial struggles.
I caught up with iRobot CEO Gary Cohen shortly after the news broke, to find out what this meant for the brand. He confirmed that in the short term it would be business as usual (including continuing to support the current line of bots), but beyond that, Cohen – who was brought in to help get iRobot back on track in May 2024 – has big plans for the robovac veteran.
Here are 4 things that could be heading our way from iRobot…
1. Technophobe-friendly robot vacuums
Cohen describes how, when opening a Roomba box, he gets “PTSD”: “It’s not a consumer-friendly experience. It’s like I’m scared of connecting it – is it going to connect to the Wi-Fi? What is 2.4 gigahertz versus 5? Why can’t these things just seamlessly get set up so I don’t have to worry about it?”
The iRobot teams are working on reducing these pain points and, as a result, making robot vacuums more accessible to more people. In fact, Cohen thinks ignoring consumer needs was one of the big mistakes that ultimately contributed to iRobot ending up in this situation.
This is in contrast to the rest of the market, which seems to be geared entirely towards adding more features and increasing robot vacuum specs. While Cohen concedes that iRobot is “never going to win feature wars with competitors”, he also thinks this isn’t the right approach when the robot vacuum category only has 20% market penetration.
“We have to grow the category. That’s how we’re going to grow our business,” he says. “It just has to work, right? And if it works, people will get into the category more.”
2. Robot vacuums for smaller spaces
Beyond improving basic usability, Cohen also wants to tackle different consumer segments. Right now, the trend is for ever-bigger docks that take care of all kinds of maintenance tasks for you. Those have their place – there are a number of excellent examples in my best robot vacuum ranking – but they aren’t right for every customer.
“With my team, I’ve visited small apartments in Japan, where 500 square feet is a typical apartment size,” he recalls. “Well, they’re not putting these multifunctional cleaning devices in the middle of a foyer in a Japanese apartment. So what type of product do you have to develop to grow the category? And by the way, that insight travels to Europe, to large cities, to the US and to dorms.”
3. More innovative robot vacuums
In recent years, iRobot has lagged behind the competition when it comes to innovation, but Cohen says it’s not due to a lack of technology or imagination. “There isn’t one thing that shows up at CES that I didn’t find in our cupboard when I joined the company. There’s no end of ideas,” he emphasizes.
The problem has been figuring out how to get the ideas into products effectively. “Our challenge was – before [the failed Amazon merger], but especially during the Amazon pendency period – we weren’t able to commercialize a lot of the great ideas that the prior team had developed,” Cohen continues. “My goal, separate from being consumer-driven, is to help commercialize some of these great ideas.”
On this front, new owner Picea will be helpful – and not just because it brings plenty of new patents to the table (Cohen puts the number at over 1,000, in addition to the 1,000-plus that iRobot had in the first place). “When you have a manufacturing partner, you can design to manufacture,” says Cohen. “We’ll be able to bring innovative ideas to consumers better and faster than even our competitors.”
4. Robots that aren’t vacuums
Officially, Cohen is saying “nothing” about what iRobot is launching in the immediate future. However, he’s more than happy to drop some quite specific hints.
“We have to be more than just robotic cleaning devices for vacuums and mops,” he says. “There’s plenty of room outside in your lawn for robots. There are plenty of places in your pool or your windows for robots.” He explains that, in fact, moving beyond robovacs was the plan even before he joined, but that they just struggled to execute.
“That’s how we’re going to grow the category and take advantage of the brand, and Picea has the desire and the capability to join us on that journey.” I’ll be watching with interest.
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