Expensive look without the budget

by **Jinko** on Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:51 pm

I have seen several Stoneham kitchens in magazines that I have really loved but unless I win the lottery they are way outside my price range.

I have heard comments on Property Ladder and similar programmes that you can make a cheaper kitchen look expensive. we are building a new house and I would like the kitchen to have a bit of a wow factor.

I have no real idea how much kitchens cost so don't know if our anticipated budget is realistic. We were looking at spending £15k in total i.e. including units, appliances & worktops.

Any advice on design tips and also kitchen ranges to consider would be gratefully received.

by **timfoley** on Wed Jun 11, 2008 3:53 pm

Firstly, welcome to our forum and I have to agree with the comments you've heard although I prefer to use the word "affordable" rather than cheap.
To offer some further insight, the huge majority of cabinets available to a kitchen buyer are manufactured using Melamine Faced Chipboard.
Although there are varying degrees of quality, and some well known manufacturers products are know as "weetabix" in the trade, the fact remains that high quality carcasses are now more readily available at a more affordable cost from suppliers who keep a low margin with an aim to increase volume. Granted that you are not receiving a similar srervice, such as endless cups of coffee whilst sitting in lavish surroundings but at a time when the credit crunch is hitting people hard and when cost effectiveness is becoming the main criteria, it pays dividends to take time researching the high quality components for your design that don't have an ultra expensive price tag attached to them.
Strangely enough there are a number of consumers who actively seek a high cost kitchen design as a means of maintaining status among their social group but they account for a only a small percentage who are willing to pay a premium for their designs.
The goal of this website from the outset was to educate people on the differences of the components available to them and to point them in the direction of high quality yet affordable kitchen products be they, appliances, cabinets and doors, worktops, lighting or anything related to kitchen design.
To this end we embarked upon a new business model with a selected number of partners who were prepared to assist us in achieving this goal and in March 2007 we partnered with a fabricator of Corian and Quartz surfaces to offer a nationwide service to our visitors seeking such surfaces for their designs. Shortly afterwards we partnered with a stainless steel fabricator of kitchen components to offer a similar service and in the first year of business we generated over £400,000 worth of business via our website.
I found it astonishing that some of the costs offered to our clients by some of the major players in the kitchen retail sector were, in some cases over twice the costs we were quoting on the same specification of materials. As for service, our partners, like every business in the country, have issues, yet they act on them speedily and efficiently when they occur and fortunately they account for very few and all are resolved to ours and the clients satisfaction.
We have the advantage of working closely with our partners and they are not some distant provider that we pass leads over to in return for making huge profits on deals that we are not actively involved with. As it happens, we are offering a far more hands on service than a number of retailers who are charging clients far more for the same quality goods and the utilisation of our website as a shop window for those we partner with is seen and proven to be successful and valued by the companies we work alongside to achieve our goal of offering high quality goods at affordable cost to our visitors.
In the long term we aim to broaden this model way of operating and already, a number of quality providers will be offering their goods in a similar partnership with our website.
I have to add that many of those who do approach us in a similar regard do not, in our opinion, offer sufficient levels of service to our clients or the products they offer are not of a high enough standard for us to consider and I suppose it is an entirely personal choice as to who we work alongside based on my own opinion of the quality of goods. For partners to work with us they must offer high specification products at the most affordable costs and they must be able to offer the goods to all our visitors nationwide.
We do not offer trade discounts yet are happy to arrnge client accounts and a growing percentage of our clients are retailers.
A budget of £15k for your design is certainly feasible dependent on size and although you can achieve a result undertaking research and sourcing high spec products yourself. our long term aim here is for www.kitchensfitted.co.uk to be the shop window and the central hub of high quality and affordable kitchen components available to our visitors through lesser known yet reputable manufacturers with an ambition to broaden their business offerings.
Sorry for rambling on a bit here but in short you are correct in your assumption and with our partners we can offer our visitors an affordable solution for their worksurfaces, stainless steel specifications, kitchen design and kitchen furniture requirements at present.
In the short and long term our aim is to provide a one stop shop for kitchens and we are already speaking with potential partners who may meet the high criteria we ask.
For the record, we have recently stepped up our tecnological offering with the recent launch of our new worksurface quote calculating website, www.kitchensfitted.com and are currently redeveloping this website to reflect the changes in our business.
If you need any fiurther information or indeed wish to learn more about the process then by all means contact me at t.foley@kitchensfitted.co.uk

by **Jinko** on Wed Jun 11, 2008 7:09 pm

Many thanks for the detailed response. I am very interested in using the services you provide and will be in touch. I have already e-mailed with regard you the design service.

Expensive look without the budget

Expensive look without the budget

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