Leicht KDC North London | KITCHEN RETAILER PROFILE
F
inchley Road in London is often called kitchen alley. Take a look at the row of
shops where Liam Hopper has opened his latest Leicht Kitchen Design Centre and you begin to see why.
He has taken over what was the Poliform showroom run by Neil Lerner, who ceased trading in April last year. This means next door is Brandt Kitchens, which took over the other part of the Neil Lerner showroom. But in the same run of shops there is also Poggenpohl, which has been there for many years, as well as Valcucine and Binova, not to mention the empty space that was Hampstead Kitchens before it too failed. Hopper, of course, already has a
string of three showrooms to his name. The fi rst was in Sevenoaks and there are also branches in Tunbridge Wells and Battersea. So, my fi rst question for Hopper was simple. Why does he believe he will succeed where others have failed? Hopper tells me: “The business model is kitchen showrooms that have failed. I take them over because they have been showrooms for probably 15, 20 or 30 years. Whatever the name was on the front of the door, people forget. It’s the kitchen studios that people remember. And that’s the situation. I know it is, because Tunbridge Wells was the same. Sevenoaks was. Battersea was and we have been successful from there.
“And this is kitchen alley, but the rents and rates are within our business model. They are well within our business plan. It is the same plan that we have in all of the other shops.” Isn’t he worried about the competition? He counters: “OK, so we have competition next door, but they should be more worried than I am. I’ve got four shops, so they are the guys who are probably more scared. We’ve
got good marketing, good advertising and a slick business model, so in reality
I
feel safe, because there is work up here. For me, to open up other kitchen shops is a tag-on. We have already got the infrastructure.” He adds: “With every shop we open, it becomes easier, because we’re bigger and better and our systems are built for the next thing, because we have the infrastructure and we’re not heavy on employees. All of our employees make us money. We have no dead weight. We outsource a lot of our stuff – logistics, accounting, IT. It scales down with the market.”
Market data
He points out that he uses RSM for his accounting – “the seventh biggest accountancy fi rm in the country”. Hopper places
great store on
reliable market data and the ability to make predictions.
“Our numbers are correct all the way through. Our systems are updated daily. I can predict what’s coming through using Microsoft Power BI [Business Intelligence], so I can foresee our trends, what’s happening in the business,” he explains. “I have real-time information. At any one point of
time, I can look at the system from my phone. I can
from Poggenpohl Wigmore Street. Hopper comments: “We have taken on someone who is strong, someone who knows the industry and is used to selling at that standard and quality. She can handle the situation. If you take someone with lower-end experience, they could be eaten alive. This is tough competition, this road. If you want to play with the big boys, you’ve got to be one.” He continues: “It’s a simple model – the same model that has worked for all my other shops. And the market is OK. As long as your running costs are under
control and you’re not
overspending. The fi t-out wasn’t too expensive and also we do a lot of project work.”
With every shop we open, it becomes easier, because we’re bigger and better and we have already got the infrastructure
run the business from wherever I am in the world. Unlike some other guys, I can anticipate it. And the last quarter was renowned in the industry as being a big problem, but we could predict that. We’re not as heavy as some of these guys were. This showroom is rents, rates and one person.” That one person is designer Rita Alves Pinto who joined Leicht KDC
Of course, Hopper previously ran a Leicht concession in the Woodalls department store on Finchley Road, when he was “a lot younger and not as wise as I am now”. So he knew he wanted a presence in the area again and regarded north London as a better alternative to south London or Kent, and to be more central would have been too expensive. He could see that Battersea was working well for him. “This is not my fi rst rodeo,” he tells me, smiling. “I protect everything. Landlords don’t like high risk, but when you have multiple shops, they are more likely to cooperate. I told them ‘these are my terms, take it or leave it’. I pulled out of this originally because it was the wrong time. We toyed with the whole thing back in June/July [2019] and then I got some really good advice from an industry friend of mine and I decided to give it a three-month break. I didn’t want to open in the summer, because of the [Leicht] factory shutdown. We could see that the run-up to an election would be a problem, so I decided to sign in November.
Then I would have a
two-month fi t-out and open in January, after the election. Having my rent-free period at that time meant that my
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