Shopfloor analysis // Business improvements


Every little helps Everyone seems to agree that the businesses that make themselves adaptable and open to new ideas are the ones best


poised to grow in the current market – but where do you start? To find out, we quizzed retailers at last month’s MHK Conference about what they’ve been doing differently to guarantee results.


Words: George Dean Paul Wheeler, Kitchen Lifestyles


We’re in our third year in our second showroom now. The first year was quite tough, and we were constantly second guessing things like marketing, so we to decided use a specialsit marketing agency to help us out with that. When we were starting out, we used to effectively lease our website from a third-party provider, although the company we were using at the time wasn’t really working out for us. I'd also taken on a business partner, and that meant we had to effectively double the revenue to keep us afloat. Originally that was with him handling installation and me handling design, but we transitioned about a year ago to both of us designing, and we’ve seen a lot more enquiries from that. It ended up being a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing, where we needed to do that to realise we really needed to partner with an agency, who then helped us build a new website that’s much more tailored to us and our needs. We had to do a lot of thinking about what we wanted and what


kind of clients we needed, and we decided to focus on finding “lookalike clients”. That involved us looking at the clients we’d sold to in the last 18 months, and trying to find people that were just like that. The agency have really helped us find people that fit that profile, then they run adverts directing them towards our website. It’s all about deciding “are we a victim of the market, or are we


going to try and be in control?”. Because we know there’s always going to be people out there wanting a new kitchen, but you have to be proactive and find ways to put yourself in front of them instead of waiting for them to come to you.


It’s all about deciding, ‘are we a victim of the market, or are we going to try and be in control?'


Paul Wheeler Neil Fisher, NK Interior Solutions


We’re still quite a new business, and until recently, I’d say we weren’t really reaching a very big audience. We got some help from an agency to do our social media and advertising, and that took a few months to pick up, but I’d say from the beginning of December we just took off. It was great for us, because a lot of other people were saying that at that time of year they were actually quite quiet – so we were clearly doing something right! Also, we got two or three jobs under our belt that we made a real


effort to photograph properly, and that meant people could really see what we were doing when we promoted it effectively. Now we’ve had a few of those kinds of projects, it’s really built up momentum for us. There’s a lot still to be done, and I’d like it to move quicker, but there’s only so many hours in a day. Yes, we have to do some things differently, but at the moment, we’re just doing what we can.


Chris Knight, McManus Knight


This time last year, we didn’t really do any social media – it was all word of mouth. As we’ve expanded, we’re doing a bit more of that. We are still predominantly recommendation-based, but through that we’ve been able to expand into opening a new larger showroom. So, business for us right now is good. It’s on the increase. And we’re hoping that with this expansion we’re going to be able to carry on that momentum upwards. The new showroom’s not open yet, but we’re hoping to be open around May or June this year. We didn’t have a specific plan for our social media content – we did just start posting more often. I’m not a massive fan of it myself, but on a few jobs now I’ve been getting my photographer and videographer in, just to do some behind the scenes stuff and walkthroughs. That then gets posted online, and it’s helped earn us some nice local traction.


" 48 kbbreview May 2026


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