Jason Grinton from Pronorm takes issue with some opinions of a rival...

I read your article on Rational and the comments from UK national sales manager Craig Burgess-Allen with both interest and wry amusement at his inaccurate generalisations.

In the article he states Pronorm and Häcker are not brands, unlike Rational, yet we are clearly pricking his consciousness enough for him to go to some length to mention both of us several times. Thank you Craig.

It's also a wholly inaccurate statement to claim that Pronorm do not have the flexibility to make a 'special unit' and that we have to 'turn the order away'. This is complete nonsense because in my 18 years of handling UK sales we have never turned an order away. Nor do we offer a 'fixed concept'. Pronorm offers numerous different permutations of cabinet size, along with the capability to offer a whole range of special sized units, with complete flexibility to offer increases and decreases in width, height and depth. Hardly a 'fixed concept'.

As for MD Robert Wambach's sweeping statement that our dealers are not specialists, I bring to his, and Craig's, attention that Pronorm has 80 retail partners across the UK, all of which are independent and none of which are in 'huge furniture stores'.

Having just returned from the Living Kitchen exhibition in Cologne and seen the wares on show from the cream of the kitchen industry, I am more confident than ever to assert that Pronorm is indeed a brand that is capable of delivering innovative ideas in a totally flexible, design-oriented manner.

As it's seven years or so since Craig left our former sister company Poggenpohl, then he can be forgiven for not keeping his market and product knowledge as up to date as he might. But with so much new and dynamic about the Pronorm brand for 2011, I extend him an open invitation to meet up for a coffee so that he can catch up.

Jason Grinton, UK & Ireland business manager, Pronorm