LochAnna has announced it will not be attending the kbb Birmingham show in 2022 and will use that money to create a new trade showroom.
The choice for the kitchen and furniture manufacturer was to either invest in the kbb show, which takes place on March 6-9, 2022 at the NEC Birmingham, or to create a showroom that the company can use all year round.
Sinead Trainor, kitchen category manager, said: “Kbb 2020 was a game-changer for us. It brought in so many leads, which has allowed us to build relationships with customers who perhaps hadn’t considered us before – and it’s still bringing in new customers now. But we want a facility that gives us what kbb did, every day of the year.
“We feel like our new trade showroom will capture that magic and be another step-change for LochAnna. Delivering our other ongoing projects must take priority so, as much as we would like to be involved with kbb 2022, we have had to accept that we’re not super- human!”
The new showroom will open near the Bolton HQ in the autumn. It will be a showcase for more than 15 kitchen ranges from the Form true handleless and Evo trade collections. It will have a working kitchen for cookery demonstrations with branded partners such as Neff, CDA and Quooker. Plus, a conference area for workshops in the showroom.
During all the lockdowns, LochAnna made no redundancies and kept all its staff. Since the end of the first lockdown in spring 2020, the team has grown by more than 25% to cope with the amount of new business.
There have also been several changes with staff in the company, with Scot Greenwood being promoted to national account manager. The team recently welcomed a new sales manager and LochAnna will also be recruiting for Greenwood’s old position, bringing the whole team to six people on the road.
Turnover in the first quarter of 2021 was up by 30% compared with last year and the company predicts that Q2 will be more than 40% up on Q1. Trainor said: “We had a lot of plans in place prior to lockdown, so instead of holding off, we just went for it. March 2021 was our best ever month… then April grew again.
“We see this being a year of breaking our own records. Despite the uncertainty, we seemed to hit the market at the right time when our new brochures launched last August and November, when people were looking for something positive, new, interesting and different. There was pent-up demand initially and that has continued right into this year as well. I’ve never known anything like it.”
According to LochAnna, currently raw materials are hard to acquire and are more expensive during a time when there is high demand. The team is managing the situation and trying to protect its customers from price increases as much as possible.
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