RETAIL | Business check
HB How’s business?
Windermere and Kendal
These popular Cumbria towns, nestled in and around the beautiful Lake District National Park, draw tourists and walkers from all over the world, with some choosing to make the area a second home. This in turn creates a healthy market for KBB retailers in the region
HB Windermere Kendal Leeds Manchester Liverpool
Birmingham
PARTNER BRANDS
›› Special Spaces Crown Imperial, Kesseler, Neff, Siemens, Franke, Perrin and Rowe, Samsung, Fisher and Paykel
›› Webbs of Kendal Häcker, Ashley Ann, Franke, Blanco, Perrin and Rowe, Miele, Neff, Siemens, Sub Zero and Wolf. Local stonemasons for worktops, mostly quartz, and Corian
›› Alexander and Sancto
Duravit, Laufen, Acquabella, Radox radiators, Stone Earth, Gessi, Cifi al, William Holland, Ashton and Bentley and Arblu
›› District One
Zucchetti Kos, Thomas Crapper, Catalano, Burbidge, and GSI
Special Spaces Andrew Smith, managing director
The Special Spaces side of our business is not our main source of income – it’s a sideline that sits alongside our joinery business. The reason we opened a showroom was to give us access to appliances and other products to go with our bespoke, hand-built kitchens. We’re not a huge retailer of kitchens – we average about one a month and we don’t advertise really, but we have just landed a massive contract job to fi t 40 properties with kitchens, utility rooms and bedrooms – but that’s supply-only. So we’re a bit different in that we don’t really rely on kitchen sales to keep us going, but we have to have a retail premises to have the appliances and so on, and it also gives us a place to showcase our bespoke furniture, which is our bread and butter.
Business has been steady, but we’re looking at an absolutely amazing eight months ahead. We like to promote British-made product. We are UK suppliers using timbers from the UK, and we try and work locally, too – our delivery van only did 3,000 miles last year – we literally work within a fi ve- to six-mile radius. We focus on quality rather than quantity – we don’t really get involved with smaller jobs. I also fi nd that some designers tend to focus on the design rather than the function of the kitchen. We get a lot of customers coming to us with crazy ideas and I have to tell them that they just won’t work. I would hate for someone to
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We’ve just landed a massive contract job to fi t 40 properties
spend their money and the design just not work. We’ve invested heavily in the showroom over the past eight years and will be here for the foreseeable future. Our joinery business specialises in fi tted and freestanding hard wood furniture – predominantly bedrooms and commercial work for hotels, and then the high-end kitchens.
kbbreview · December 2019
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