RETAILER PROFILE | Kütchenhaus Sheffield
Homebase stores. But from 2016, Teehan’s focus shifted to looking after Kütchenhaus’s independent retailers, which included his current business partner, Ryan Fagan, who owns Square Kitchens. Square Kitchens has two stores in Sheffield – one in Halfway and a concession in the Ponsford furniture store, and a third in Barnsley. “At the end of last year, Kütchenhaus was interested in speaking to successful independents and I approached Ryan to ask him if he was interested in opening a Kütchenhaus franchise,” recalls Teehan.
“He said he was and shortly afterwards he asked me to partner him on the project.” And so the 60th showroom for Kütchenhaus was born.
Low-risk opportunity What made Teehan decide to open his own showroom? “I wanted to have my own KBB business and when an opportunity came along that was as low-risk as this was, I took it. I really like working with Ryan. “We have different strengths and complement each other. It was an opportunity that it would have been daft to turn down.”
And they had a stroke of luck in terms of location: “We were really lucky,” Teehan tells me, “because once we knew we would go down the route of opening a Kütchenhaus franchise together, Ryan started looking for a property. This property came up, in a relatively affluent part of Sheffield, so we took it.
You are lining yourself up with a product that will genuinely sell itself plus all the administration and logistics are taken care of for you. It’s basically a business in a box
“There is lots of passing traffic, parking outside and it has a total of 3,600sq ft.”
At the time of my visit, though, they had not yet had their official opening. “We are open. We are selling kitchens and we have quite a few kitchens on the go, but we haven’t had a proper launch yet and we will have an event on December 17,” says Teehan. “There is an organisation in the village that stages events for children and all the local business work with them. They approached us to ask if we could do something for them and we agreed. Bora are coming and they will do a cooking demonstration.”
Although it is too soon to say how their chosen location is paying off, early signs are good, as Teehan explains: “The feedback has been very positive and a lot of people have stuck their head round the door to have a nosey. There is a lot of footfall outside the
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store.” And he tells me that apart from Square, they have no other local rivals selling German kitchens.
The store has seven displays on the ground floor, but also has the same square-footage again on the first floor.
As Kütchenhaus also does bathroom, bedroom and living room furniture, I ask if it is part of the deal that they have to
have displays of these products too.
“All Kütchenhaus stores are encouraged to integrate designs for different rooms, but it comes down to space,” says Teehan. “For a proper living room set you need things like soft furnishings, which take up a lot of space. And it’s got to look right.”
Displays
Which may be where the as yet unused first floor comes in. “We had one idea,” confides Teehan, “to turn upstairs into a proper studio flat with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and study. The other idea was to have a games room and play area so that people can bring their kids to the showroom.” I ask Teehan if, as a Kütchenhaus franchise, they had a free hand in deciding exactly what to display. “To be honest, we didn’t have completely free rein because the market dictates what we put on display,”
he says. “Nobilia knows what works. But we also know what works locally, as we have the data from Square Kitchens. While we had free rein in terms of what Kütchenhaus allowed us to do, they had sign- off on everything. But we were probably given a little bit more freedom than a typical new franchise might be given, as we had a lot of our own experience. While I was still at Nobilia, I was responsible for managing displays and having them designed. Kütchenhaus takes care of doing the designs for a franchisee. They do everything for you.” And, as Teehan adds, there is no substantial upfront joining fee to become a franchise.
· December 2022
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