‘Fitted kitchens have changed beyond recognition’
To help celebrate kbbreview's 40th anniversary, Trevor Scott, CEO of RFK Studio, reminisces about what life in the kitchen sector was like in the idyllic days of the 1980s.
How did you come to enter the industry? What was your role and when was that?
I came to the industry by accident, probably like many, if not most people. After finishing catering college and vowing never to work in a professional kitchen I was picked up by Marks & Spencer as a part of their management training programme. The daily commute from Brighton to London after around 18 months or so got me down so I started applying for junior management administration roles closer to home and the one I picked just happened to be a South Coast-based kitchen manufacturer – Manhattan Furniture – who are still going strong to this day supplying into the Contract market.
At that time they had five retail showrooms and my small department managed the order processing from sale, through production to install and after-sales. It was a great learning experience and taught me a lot, which has stood me in good stead ever since. After a while I was getting bored so asked the Contracts team if they would teach me how to design kitchens and take on some of their projects. I also occasionally did relief worked in the Brighton showroom – my first retail experience. I was 22.
As a company, they laid up their own laminate worktops and made from scratch laminate G-trim flat slab doors in a choice of white, sage green, or orange with white drawer fronts – ring any bells!
Looking back, how have products changed? Is there more choice now in terms of product diversity? If so, was it simpler when there was less on the market?
One abiding memory of my time there was the crazy array of different sized built-in ovens we had to build housings for. Electrolux, Creda, Tricity Bendix, New World, Parkinson Cowan and so on in sizes ranging from around 1067mm tall (that’s 42”) to 1220mm (48”). We had converted to metric by then, so the cross over calculation of multiply or divide by 25.4 was a mantra we lived or died by!
I can clearly remember being invited to see the first Neff oven that Uwe Hanneck hauled in from the boot of his estate car that launched the fan oven revolution and standardised the size of double ovens!
At around the same time Franke brought out the original Compact 1 1/2 bowl inset sink which moved us away from the classic 1000 x 600mm lay-on sink and launched the sink as a work centre that gave designers flexibility in positioning the sink, allowing the washing machine (still freestanding) or dishwasher to sit under the drainer. It also saw the rise in popularity of the waste disposal unit which had been around for many years in the USA as it could be mounted to the small bowl 3 1/2” outlet.
By the time I had moved into retail in the early 80’s, working for one of the founding chairs of the KSA – Alf Norris, at his Leicester Ambassador Kitchens showroom (he called it Ambassador Kitchens so it was the first one you found in the Yellow Pages!) – the microwave revolution was on its way. The introduction of the turntable transformed this difficult to use appliance into a must have in every self respecting British home. Studios like ours even ran microwave cookery demonstrations such was the demand!
I thin it was the National Panasonic Genius that was the ultimate microwave to own, as not only was it loaded with extra features including a grill but came with the first built in trim kit – a godsend to kitchen designers!
Around the same time halogen hobs made their first appearance at the Interbuild exhibition held bi-annually at the NEC, with huge two level stands by brands such as Rational, this was a must visit exhibition in its day.
The live demos on these revolutionary hobs involved heating a pan of milk to the point of boil then turning the heat down, instantly bringing the milk back to a simmer, demonstrating their unseen before controllability.
We had to have one and shortly after ours was installed in a live display, to a crowd of invited prospects, the demonstration began. The milk pan was brought to the boil and with a flourish I turned the heat down waiting for the magic to happen only to see the milk continue to boil over…!
After a flustered apology a phone call was made to the nameless supplier (you know who you are!) we were told ‘the trick’ only worked instantly with skimmed milk!
Nevertheless sales of halogen hobs rocketed and continued to do so for decades until affordable Induction hit the scene.
Since those early halcyon days the fitted kitchen and the products contained within it has changed beyond recognition. Moving on from a closed off room in which dinner was cooked and then brought to, or passed through a serving hatch, the dining room to the open plan kitchen/diner/living space we as designers now help create for our aspirational clients.
Prior to CAD’s arrival many of us worked on full size architects drawing tables with pins set up to create our own two and three vanishing points for hand drawing perspectives. This was hugely time consuming and, of course, designs couldn’t be easily altered once done!
We even had, courtesy of Alno Kitchens, a 3D wood block design tool on which we could recreate our 2D plans as actual 3D scale models for our clients to better understand our designs..!
By the mid 80’s CAD was making its first tentative steps into the industry, but it was frighteningly expensive. I recall when working for Burbidge Doors, in the mid 1980’s, convincing David Burbidge we should invest in the Planit CAD system which cost him a brutal £17k (£64k in today’s terms!) as it only worked on Apple Mac and required a plotter printer, which was all state of the art at the time.
Although I do think consumers really appreciate it when they see hand drawn plans and I know that to this day some (very) high end designers and manufacturers, mostly working in the bespoke sector, still work with hand drawn plans and images, and rightly so. That said, CAD has undoubtedly revolutionised kitchen design with today some stunning photo realistic designs being only a few clicks away.
We always used to try to get a CAD design finished by close of the business day, click the hi res render option, and go to our evening appointment. With any luck the system hadn’t crashed overnight and we’d come back to the showroom the following morning to admire the finished results. Of course, system crashes, gloss paper jams and ink running out often resulted in having to repeat the whole process the following evening as you couldn’t use the computer for anything else while it was processing such a render…!
Joking aside the ability to now render wonderful designs in whole variety of finishes showing clients many options almost instantly is a fantastic sales tool but being able to measure and survey a kitchen accurately and transfer those measurements correctly onto the system is still a vital skill.
How many designers today take a portable drawing board out on survey and draw out the existing kitchen to scale? Not many I’ll bet. But at RFK, I insist we still do this as if you finish where you started you’ve measured correctly and your design is much more likely to fit.
Of course so much of our work is off-plan nowadays as the vast majority of our clients are undertaking much larger building projects on their homes incorporating a large open plan kitchen diner living space looking over the garden through bifold doors and this is one of the major trend changes I’ve seen over the last 40 years.
The late 80’s saw the first introductions of the kitchen island which to this day is the Number one item on most clients’ wish lists. Indeed to such an extent that in order to placate clients who simply don’t have the room for an island we now design ‘connected islands’ – or a peninsular in old money!
Ikea’s mid 1990’s ‘Chuck out your Chintz’ campaign saw a massive rise in the popularity of sleek, modern, Germanic handleless kitchens and finally killed off the medium oak cathedral arch oak door style along with all its associated twiddly bits.
A style I grew to hate so much because we’d done so many kitchens in it that I vowed to retire once and for all from the industry if it ever made a comeback!
Is the customer experience different now, do you think? Are they still shopping in the same way, or have their expectations changed?
Weirdly, I don’t think the customer experience has actually changed that much across the last 40 years. Back then at the entry level of the market we had the sheds such as Texas and retail giants like MFI. Builders merchants were where your builder went to buy a pretty average but British-made kitchen. Today we still have the DIY sheds, but MFI has effectively been replaced by Wren and Howdens, who supply huge volumes of, well, pretty average British-made kitchens to builders…
But consistently throughout, the independent kitchen design studio has held a firm grip on the mid-to-mid-upper market. With personal service, high levels of product knowledge, unique designs and superb products making their offer very attractive to the discerning client.
These clients still contact or visit our showrooms after seeing a more than likely online advert or by way of recommendation. They are guided around, make style, appliance and worktop choices based on honest advice born out of a clear understanding of needs, wants and budget by a professional designer.
What has changed since the rise of the internet is the way consumers pre research the market in advance of making that initial contact. By the time they do they walk through our door that first time it’s not by chance. Clearly the message here is make sure you get your online presence up to date and working hard for you…
The internet also means there is nowhere to hide as one bad review can destroy a reputation that has taken years to develop. Clients are slow to praise but quick to criticise making it all the more important we do our jobs – not just well, but beyond expectations. And when we do well we shout about it. Case studies are the singular most popular hit on our website and we endeavour to add more on a regular basis.
Obviously, a lot can happen in 40 years. But what are some of the best ways that the industry has changed and developed?
Although kitchen styles themselves are transitory, product quality has consistently improved over the years with huge advances in manufacturing technology across the years. Most kitchens are still manufactured using MFC but the board has become much sturdier. The hinges from the likes of Blum and Hettich to name but two are superb, easy to adjust, soft close and clip-on. Drawer boxes have moved on from injection moulded plastic to steel sided on concealed quadro runners than work smoothly without sidewards wooble, are not just soft close but touch opening. At the higher end oak dovetailed drawers are now the norm but still using the highest quality runner systems.
Internal wire work (because that’s what it used to all be made of – plastic coated wire that went rusty!) has advanced beyond our wildest imagining.
Surfaces have moved on from simple post-formed laminate to high quality laser edged laminate at the entry level to composite stones and marble recreations at an affordable mid level upwards.
On the day to day operational side of the industry, computer quotation and CRM systems have made managing client projects so much easier than when we started out quoting by hand on an A4 pad with file after file of suppliers price lists on a shelf above our desks. Making switching from one price group to another very quick and easy.
Huge volumes of printed brochures, although still important for showroom use, are no longer handed out in great piles to prospects as all the information they need is available online.
Funnily enough despite having a computerised job diary we still use a good old fashioned year planner, coloured pens, stickers and a rubber to see at a glance where we are.
Some things will never change!
Appliance-wise the advances have been huge. Dishwashers back in the day were a hard sale. Clients often said “ We don’t need a dishwasher, it’s the only time we actually talk to each other – while I’m washing and they’re drying!”. It was very much a kitchen studio product and I’m sure we drove demand until it became a mass market must have. Today they’re a must have, use hardly any water, are incredibly energy efficient, using a kind of lava stone to retain heat for dish drying.
We have moved on from the classic double oven to a single plus combi microwave or steam oven with perhaps an added warming drawer that can be also be used to prove your homemade bread.
Of course the biggest revolution came with the introduction of an affordable induction hob. Introduced first by De Dietrich it was still pretty pricy but was quickly followed by all the major brands introducing them to their ranges and prices dropped as a consequence. It was a bit like the early microwave or halogen days with us holding regular induction hob demonstrations in the showroom but now without the milk boiling over!
This was swiftly followed by the hot tap which took off so quickly thanks to excellent marketing, that today every 2nd kitchen we supply has one fitted.
The most recent innovation to take off really quickly has been the venting hob. Bora has been an overnight success story with most other major brands now offering their own versions after initially poo-pooing the concept as a 5 minute wonder! Mad really as how often have you banged you head attempting to avoid the old school ceiling suspended island extractor while trying to maintain eye contact with a client in the showroom?
On the flipside, is there anything that you think was a bit better in days gone by?
Margin! Profit is not a dirty word, profit is sanity. Profit is what allows our businesses to not just survive but to thrive. Profit pays for the new displays, staff training, replacement vans and computer hardware, and perhaps even apprentices. Profit allows us to retain quality staff and treat them well.
Today, thanks to the online race to bottom nature of appliance e-tailing, we make next to nothing on white goods yet spend hours researching product, attending brand’s training courses, ensuring our designs work with the specified appliances and for what? To secure the sale of the furniture where we have to make all our money.
Time is now our enemy and not our friend. Consumers expect and demand instant responses from us and, today, rightly so. But this is a drain on our valuable time which years back we seemed to have plenty of to spare.
If you could go back and speak to yourself when you were just starting out, what advice would you give?
Don’t do it! I love this industry and over the years it’s been very good to me but it’s bloody hard work with a crazy amount of variables that make it not for the faint-hearted, so I do sometimes wonder why I didn’t become a luxury car salesman instead!
Seriously though, I wish I’d set my stall out at the higher end of the market from day one but at the time my resources were limited and a mid market offer was all I could afford. Our transition to the higher end of the market has been driven more by the customers we have developed than by a conscious decision to take the business in that direction.
Our journey has been an evolution rather than a revolution.