GETTING OONI FULLY BAKED
Defending Category Leadership Through Strategic Repositioning
£200M 2024 Revenue - 264% Peak Growth - 5 Years Journey
The Challenge:
Ooni experienced explosive growth during 2020-21, with sales rocketing from ~£57m to £208m (+264% in one year) as homebound consumers invested in cooking and lifestyle products.
The Problem:
By 2022, competitors flooded the category with cheap overseas imitators. Growth stalled, momentum waned, and Ooni risked becoming just another backyard oven brand. The company faced a critical inflection point: how to maintain leadership position against commodity competition while preserving premium positioning.
Our Discovery
As both a strategist and a true fan of the product, I spotted a critical blind spot in their positioning:
"Ooni wasn't leveraging their real differentiator—professional-grade heat."
That high heat didn't just outperform kitchen ovens; it separated Ooni from the knockoffs that could never match the crust quality, cooking speed, or consistency that comes from authentic engineering and R&D.
Key Insights:
While competitors could copy the product form, they couldn't replicate the engineering that delivered authentic professional-grade heat performance.
Solution
We leaned into the oven's most unique feature to turn it into the consumers biggest benefit.
Strategic Shift:
From: Pizza as product focus
To: Ooni as the only oven engineered for restaurant-quality results
From: Generic backyard cooking
To: Professional-grade performance differentiation
Instead of competing solely on product features against cheaper imitators, we positioned Ooni as the professional-grade solution for serious home cooks—making it the engineering choice for those who refuse to compromise on authentic pizza quality.
Results
The repositioning helped Ooni break free of stagnation and re-establish growth trajectory:
Sales Timeline:
2020: £57M - Pre-pandemic baseline
2021: £208M - +264% pandemic surge
2022: £208M - Stagnation point
2023: £157M - -24% market correction
2024: ~£200M - Rebound toward peak
Bottom Line
The right idea at the right moment doesn't just spark sales—it defends category leadership. By reframing around professional-grade heat, Ooni reinforced its authority and re-established sustainable growth against imitators.
CTA Section
Get The Zombie Brain 🧠 Blast
Learn Stuff and Discover Cool Shit
No, this is not your typical marketing opt-in. We're not bribing you with useless content, a free e-book, or PDF for giving us your email. Instead, we’ll send you stuff that makes sense when it makes sense to send it. Never more than 3 times on any given week. We're just too busy to give you any more of us.
So… give us your email, and we’ll do the rest.
If you don’t give us your email, that’s cool too. It’s OK to be a wussy.
Our Promise To You: We won’t sell your info, share it, or consider giving it away for any reason. We won’t even use it as a bargaining chip in a high-profile hostage negotiation situation. Of course, we feel for the hostages, but we made a commitment to you, not them. Therefore some of the hostages may die. 🤷🏻