When Trevor Rolls sold his £30m computer business back in 2004, the first thing he did was set about finding someone to build him a nice new house. With a few quid to spend, he understandably demanded the full works - sexy modern kitchen with all the latest appliances, state of the art TV and sound system, automated gate control, automated swimming pool cover... You get the picture.

The problem was, once all the work was completed, he was left hugely disappointed. “I just thought I could do it better myself,” he explains. “The company that did my kitchen were appalling. Forty five grand’s worth of kitchen and they were shocking.”

The whole exercise got him thinking. Unhappy with the top-end home entertainment equipment he’d also had installed (“very complicated and ultimately a waste of money”) he set about looking for a few audio visual companies he could buy out to set up his own high street brand.

“I really fancied the idea of home automation,” he says. “There are very few places where you can see high definition home projection systems for example. I wanted to give them a high street setting.”

With ample reserves of cash to fund the project, Rolls - still only 35 - quickly realised he was on to something. Rather than offer one or the other, why not throw kitchens and furniture together with a TV, hi-fi and home automation business and see how things worked?

He’s the first to admit that the concept isn’t entirely his own. “To be honest, I borrowed it,” he concedes. “One of the companies I wanted to invest in were already doing this kind of thing but they were a bit higher in the market, selling Poggenpohl etc, and they weren’t in London. They were a bit too high end, so they went out of business.

“All we did was take that concept, found a kitchen brand that appealed to the high end of the market but also stretched down to the medium section, and then reflected that in the audio visual side. We’re not looking for people wanting a 10 grand kitchen and a Japanese telly. We’re looking at people who are wanting to spend £15,000-£30,000, maybe more.”

The result is Aveo Home Ltd, a 2,200 sq ft showroom in Newbury, Berkshire, which opened last April. The store displays seven Alno kitchens together with a dedicated section for audio visual equipment from brands like Loewe and Bose. It even has its own home cinema.

The business concept isn’t specifically to integrate the equipment with kitchens but the idea apparently works well. The kitchen display at the front of the showroom, for example, features a TV on a pole from floor to ceiling and can swing through 180 degrees. Its frame comes in seven different colours that match those of the available carcases.
“It’s the way things are going but the technology will be discreet,” Rolls says. “Alno does a TV that actually fits into the door of the unit, as discreetly as possible.

“People want to spend time in the kitchen now. Eight out of 10 kitchens we do are because someone is knocking through.”

Recent research appears to back him up. Halifax Insurance estimates that around 600,000 more dining rooms will be knocked through this year to create open plan spaces. It confirms the idea of the kitchen being a place people are spending more and more time in.

“It’s very rare there isn’t an element of audio visual linked to any of our kitchen sales,” Rolls says. “Usually there’s a TV, or it might just be speakers and a bit of audio. What we say to people is if your budget is £30,000 and you spend £25,000 on a kitchen, spend £5000 on something that will still make you smile in a year’s time, like a crazy telly on a pole.”

The technology has huge appeal to the male side of the store’s customers, a point not lost on Rolls. “The logic was to look at the dynamics of our customers,” he explains. “Typically, the females like the work surfaces and door fronts and the guys like the gadgets. Put those two things together and you’ve potentially got a fantastic business proposition. A guy will justify the 30 grand price tag because he gets his few bits of ‘wow’ in the kitchen as well.”

Rather than offer high priced, but overly complicated equipment, Aveo has gone for the middle ground. “One of the things we’ve tried to do here is to sell things that look nice but that are actually quite simple to use,” Rolls says.

They’re actually a lot less expensive. Anytime a customer wants a little more than the norm they’re going to spend money but it seems like people have almost gone from spending nothing on it to going crazy and we’re trying to be somewhere in the middle of that.”  

The Aveo business strategy basically boils down to three main ideas. Firstly, the showroom appeals to everyone. Secondly, it works well seasonally - they sell a lot of TVs etc in the run-up to Christmas, but not so many kitchens.

Conversely, in the summer they sell more kitchens and less gadgets. Thirdly, in your typical store, once you’ve sold a customer their kitchen there’s nothing left to offer them. Unless of course you happen to supply something else.
So far, the business appears to be prospering. To break even, they need to do two kitchens a month but so far have apparently been selling four or five. The target was to do up to £1m in turnover in the first year and they’re well on track to exceed that figure. As a consequence, a new 4,400 sq ft showroom is planned to open in Southampton in April. The ambitious plan is to open a new store each year for at least the next five.

What Rolls doesn’t want to do is turn the business into a franchise. He’s keen to stress he’s simply an independent retailer who chooses to sell the Alno product. “I wouldn’t sign a franchise,” he says. “I don’t need someone to tell me how to run it and that keeps the relationship healthy. You don’t get the Big Brother effect which I think a franchise has. They can increase their terms at any time. I did a lot of research and I had a good long look at the Bang & Olufsen franchise and I think it’s totally flawed. They’re extremely expensive but if they launch a new product you have to take it on display. As a small independent retailer it might not sell in your region, but you don’t have a choice. Here you can choose what you want and they’re keener to put deals together for you.”

When I ask him whether there’s anyone in the industry he admires, he insists he has good reason for admiring nobody. “Coming from computers I’ve had to market something boring,” he says. “The kitchen industry has got into this classic easy situation that because kitchens look beautiful they take a photo of it and put some words around it, but don’t think past that. It’s lazy. The one advert that wasn’t was Samuel Heath’s with the old people, which is great. Magnet has started to work a bit harder with its adverts but they all need to step up their game because there’s room for more companies to enter the market - Pedini have just done it quite well.”

So is Aveo a business model that might attract other retailers? For the moment, there aren’t many firms doing something similar, and Rolls admits he’s had the funds others might not. He’s also in the happy position of only paying £27,000 a year in rent for the showroom because it’s regarded as office space. A 12,000 sq ft retail unit round the corner costs £120,000.

“I think there’s a logical link between furniture and audio visual,” Rolls says. “It’s still an emerging market, I’d recommend it but go in with your eyes open. McNally in Ireland have done this extremely successfully, not with the audio visual side but with furniture.”

Obvious potential pitfalls are showroom staffing and installation, but Rolls is lucky enough to be able to call on experts from both fields. His sister is one of the company’s kitchen designers for example, but members of his team also have solid audio visual experience. The mix apparently works well.

The company’s installers fall into two distinct camps, those who can fit kitchens and those on the audio visual side. “They might install together but there’s a definite line in the sand that says these guys are carpentry only,” Rolls explains. “One of my guys wouldn’t have a clue on that but he does know how to fit complicated multi-room audio and video systems. On the sales level they’ll have a good broadbrush knowledge and will probably have a specialist discipline.”

As Rolls dashes off to check on preparations for the Southampton store he leaves me with a quick idea of how he hopes to see Aveo further develop. “There are people who want this stuff but don’t want to have to go to London,” he explains. “Bristol will be our next showroom, then we’ll go bigger again. I see it in the long term as being a contemporary lifestyle department store.”