You'll have heard the arguments by now about why retailers should charge for their designs. All that stuff about tackling the time-wasters and putting a genuine value on your work. 

The problem is, every showroom is different. It's all very well for a top end designer like Johnny Grey to charge ten grand for a drawing. But try using the same strategy when you're banging
out simple CAD drawings from a bog standard high street showroom and you'll soon run into trouble.


Maybe it's not so much a question of whether you should or shouldn't charge, but whether you can make it work? Is there a mechanism - a successful system - you can use, or should you simply trust your skills as a designer and use the very fact that you don't charge as your USP? After all, if your designs are free but the guy down the road charges, who is your customer going to end up choosing? Do upfront fees at other stores mean you get more business, or by not charging do you simply betray a lack of confidence?  

Whether you charge for designs or not depends on various factors. In London where the competition is greater, people accept a design fee, but elsewhere there's a more old-fashioned attitude, and people expect it to be included in the cost of the kitchen. Not everyone is a
genuine designer either. If it takes you half an hour to rattle out a 'design' in CAD, can you really call yourself a designer at all? Where do we draw the line between a designer and a salesman?

Let's start with Johnny Grey. Admittedly, he's an extreme example - a truly bespoke designer, far removed from your everyday showroom - but his views carry a resonance for retailers atall levels of the market.


"The question is whether you're upfront about charging and whether it puts people off, that's the issue," he argues. "But there's a whole series of techniques you can use that work. The most helpful thing of all is to actually be in someone's house with them, in the space. Clients always love the opportunity to brainstorm and talk about design. I would make a modest charge for that. Or you could have a system by which there's a standard price. I know people who have a fixed fee of £65 which is very low. But it turns you into a designer straightaway and increases customers' respect for you." 

Bespoke kitchen designer Paul Marazzi agrees. "I'm gobsmacked that many bespoke stores don't charge," he says. "It's not an extra charge if you rebate it against the cost of the kitchen. I ask for a retainer. I don't think anyone gives out plans any more. If they pay the planning fee I don't give them the plans until they make a commitment to buy the kitchen."

Lacking courage

But for every store that does charge, there are plenty more who don't. According to Richard Proctor, sales director of kitchen and bathroom manufacturer JJO, 95% of retailers "don't have the courage to charge for what others, and particularly the multiples would do for free". Accordingly, they are the driver.

So are most stores unlikely to adopt a charging system? "The overwhelming consumer criteria for design is a 'discount deal' and alternatively why should a discerning consumer lock in to
'unknown' ability?" Proctor asks. "Price is no guarantee of good design so how do you sell it? Good design is rarely sited as a buying motive. 

"Maybe we should use the word 'plan' for which there ought to be a charge; time costs money and there are few other services that offer a free facility as part of their tender. Only in a
rapidly expanding consumer boom does it work across a broader base than our 5%."

There's obviously a distinction to be made here between top end stores and the more typical mid-market outlets where customers tend to shop around. Where your average kitchen or bathroom store does charge, the fee needn't be excessive. Lemon Squeezy Kitchens in Keighley, for example, is a typical high street retailer and owner Pete Sherry insists a charge of just £25 works for him. 

"For that they get a picture, not a schematic," he says. That's the way to do it. I won't give them a proper 3D plan, I just tell customers we've had people taking them away to other stores. They can get their money back if they place an order. I'd love to be able to charge for proper 3D plans but I don't think you'd get away with it; you alienate the customer."

Ultimately, every store has their own take on whether charging for design will work for them, and if so what system to use. Importantly, most stores don't charge and that situation seems unlikely
to change in the short term. There aren't any real design qualifications to separate good from bad designers, so consumers often don't feel there is anything special about the job and therefore don't place any real value on the work.

"If we can get the industry interested in validated qualifications, then we would be on stronger ground for charging the design fee," Robert Laurie at Poggenphol concludes. "But at the moment, it's very much down to individual businesses and people - and there are a number of factors in striking the balance between safeguarding your work and keeping the client happy. Generally, designers build quite a strong relationship with their clients, but there are also a growing number of 'smart shoppers' who are out for the best deal, and will take up the opportunity of free expert planning if offered, without feeling obliged to purchase."