Kitchen retailer Stephen Graver tells Rebecca Nottingham how winning the designer award in the kitchens over £25,000 category at last year's kbbreview industry awards has helped boost his handcrafted kitchen business...

Like many kitchen retailers, Stephen Graver has built his eponymous business off the back of customer recommendations and trust. What makes the company so different from more typical dealers is that not only does it design and handcraft its own kitchens but, until recently, it didn't even have its own showroom.

A carpenter by trade, Stephen Graver established his business in the mid 1980s, hand crafting original kitchen and furniture designs from a workshop in Bristol. Over the years the company grew organically, eventually settling in its current position, a three acre site on a disused airfield in the affluent village of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire, 10 years ago.

Once part of Keevil airfield, Stephen Graver's offices, workshop and newly built studio occupy a series of refurbished outbuildings, which, for those of you interested in war history, were once home to American Air Force officers during the second world war. Despite its near derelict state, Graver, drawing on his experience of the construction industry, recognised its potential and bought it anyway, without the support of his bank manager.

"It was an absolute bomb site when we bought it but I could see it had so much potential," he says. "Because of the state it was in I struggled to get the funding to buy the place, so I took a chance, bought it on the house mortgage and then worked hard to generate the income to pay for it. The best thing about buying this site is that I knew there'd always be plenty of room and we'd never outgrow the site."

The Stephen Graver business is split into two; on one side the company manufactures hand made furniture and on the other is a construction business specialising in projects of around £300,000. This, Graver believes is one of the main reasons for the company's success, with both concerns marrying together to help boost business.

"We have our own construction team and our own furniture makers, so it's quite a unique little business," he says. "The two elements marry well together because both sides have a knock on effect on the other. Whenever we do a construction project there's always a request for some sort of joinery work to be done or requests for furniture and on the other side, whenever we sell a kitchen there's always building work to be done."

The company remains a relatively small concern, with a total of 16 employees, including himself, which Graver insists allows the company to offer the personal touch and high quality service it is known for.

"Every piece of furniture is traditionally made by English craftsmen, who see individual projects through to the end," he explains. "This allows us to offer a truly personal service something we're very proud of here."

Being able to rely on one company to organise and complete entire projects is something today's consumer is increasingly interested in. This 'one-stop-shop' kind of approach takes the pressure off consumers and boosts customer confidence by allowing them to rely on one expert to arrange the entire project. A trend that Graver has certainly seen among his own clients.  

"More and more people these days prefer to deal with just one company for the entire project, because it takes the pressure away from them and it means that if something goes wrong they only have to deal with one person," he says. "And actually in our case things don't go wrong because the route of communication is always through us. When you start having to deal with additional sources all of a sudden communication gets a bit woolly and that's when things start to go wrong."

Because Stephen Graver makes all of its furniture to order, the studio is not like most kitchen retail outlets. Instead of a series of displays, the newly developed studio has been laid out like an open plan living space. You enter directly into a New England style kitchen, flanked by a Sub Zero and Wolf larder style fridge freezer on one side and a wine cooler on the other. The studio then opens out into an open plan living space featuring a boardroom style dining table and chairs.

At the far end a living room area featuring clever ideas for office spaces and other living room storage, demonstrate just how flexible Graver's designs are. A cleverly designed cloakroom area with original Stephen Graver furniture completes the studio.

A prominent feature of the studio is the new media centre, from AV specialist CoolVision, encased in a Stephen Graver, mecassa ebony unit. Through this, the user can watch HDTV, DVDs and Bluray and also has full internet access. Graver has linked the media centre through to the company's computer server so it also doubles up as a client presentation area.

"Showcasing CoolVision's media centre demonstrates how flexible we are. There are no real boundaries for us, apart from the client's budget," he explains. "By offering this kind of home technology we've extended our market opportunities. From a business perspective, what we've found particularly useful about the media centre is that we can link it up to our own computer system and are now able to do all of our client presentations through it."

Kbbreview asks how Graver managed to build such a strong business model without a studio to showcase his designs and quality of workmanship the company is capable of.

"Should we have opened the studio sooner? I think there's always a right time to do things. Everything just kind of fell into place and it felt right to open the studio when we did," he explains. "Before the studio, all of our business came through word of mouth but the business has been getting stronger over the last 12 months. Winning the kbbreview design award was a big confidence boost and really helped push the decision along. Obviously I want to see the studio generate an income but I've no doubt in my mind it will work."

Business
Kitchen projects by Stephen Graver cost, on average around £70,000 and as this sector of the market has remained relatively unaffected by the recession, you'd expect Graver's answer to the inevitable 'how's business?' question to be about as positive as you can get, but he is in fact, refreshingly honest.

"The last few years have been tough I won't lie. We used to employ 30 people, but like most we've had to make some serious cut backs," he explains. "As soon as the market showed signs of dropping off, we made decisions that would help secure and protect the future of the business. We've been through some serious pain, but there's probably not one business out there that didn't go through a similar situation."

Despite his frank comments on the subject, he's keen to point out that despite the uncertainty of the economy and market in general, business at Stephen Graver is well and truly back on the right track. "Now I feel the marketplace has changed and there is more confidence, certainly at the top level, and those people are spending money," he says. "The construction side of the business is still quite quiet but the high-end furniture side is not. In a recession, it's all about managing a business and you have to stand by your products and services. You can't go cheapening your product."

And there's even talk of some ambitious expansion plans in the near future, to cope with the growth in demand they're experiencing, following the successful launch of the studio.  

"You have to spend your way out of a recession, you cannot stand still and shrink," he explains. "Equally, in the good times, you have to save so that you have the provisions to be able to do that. We're planning to more then double the size of the workshop, which will extend our capabilities massively on the manufacturing side. Obviously it will mean a big investment on our part but I'm confident that the rise in demand generated by the studio will balance it out."