Birkdale Kitchen Company | RETAILER PROFILE
Gokcen takes me into the separate connected room to demonstrate to me what it can do. He admits that it was his kitchen supplier Leicht’s idea to have a separate room, but Gokcen and Dunne decided that rather than make it just another display, they would use it to showcase smart tech. “The idea was,” Gokcen tells me, “to make it a differentiator between us and other showrooms that Mr and Mrs Jones might go to. To show people what you could do, so that when they leave the showroom, they think ‘wow, that was really good, I wasn’t expecting that’.”
Co-owner Neil Gokcen
connection October 2022 ·
And there is an element of theatre as the sliding doors open and a PIR switches on the Philips Hue lights. It is all controlled by a Control 4 system and the first thing that catches my eye is a sign on the wall inviting customers to ask Alexa to open the oven. I do as I am told and lo and behold the oven door opens and a recorded warning tells you to be careful as hot air or steam may escape. And there’s more, as Gokcen explains: “It also works with the Philips Hue lights and we are trying to show that there are a whole load of different ways you can configure it to work with other technologies. You can make the lights turn red when the oven reaches 180°C, which would be helpful for deaf people who can’t hear an audible warning. We are trying to demonstrate what the system can do for people – the art of the possible. “You can also ask Alexa to turn on the coffee machine on the other side of the showroom. There are many different ways to use this technology and people don’t always know you can do these things – and that’s the idea behind this. So they go away saying ‘wow, I didn’t know you could do that’.” But does he feel that people currently understand what connected tech offers? “Not really,” he admits. “The trick is to show that it has a proper value and purpose to someone as opposed to just thinking, ‘oh that’s clever, but so what?’.” And at the time of my visit, Gokcen is already well advanced with plans to take their connected offering “to the next level”. “We are going to enhance this room and we are just in the throes of working with a local smart automation business, Birkdale Smart Home, who have all sorts of clever technology that goes beyond what we currently have. Rather than having people say ‘oh that’s nice’ and walk away, they will see that it could really be of use.” So what exactly will that entail? “We will tailor things to be more relevant to you in your own home,” he explains, “and not just in the kitchen, but the whole home. It can all be set so that when your alarm clock goes off, it will know that you like your shower at a certain temperature and tell you it will be ready in two-and-a-half minutes, and lower the window blind. It will also turn on the extractor as soon as you press the button on the shower and adjust the lighting when you walk into a room. “And the market we’ll be going for will have the kind of disposable income for these big renovation
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