Words: Andrew Davies

Clients in the market for a new kitchen or bathroom understandably want to feel and see the finishes of any and every material that might feature in their project.

Whether it’s worktops, doors, handles or tiles you know that at some point in the consultation samples will appear and be spread across the desk like a stylish game of dominoes.

But while physical samples are, without doubt, an essential part of the showroom sales process, the traditional practice of suppliers sending out boxes to anyone who wants them is changing as return on investment gets scrutinised ever more closely.

So how do showrooms actually use them? And should suppliers stick to sending out samples for every colour and every finish to every store?

“They’re one of our largest investments every year,” says CDUK managing director Andy Noble. “We know we need to get them into the hands of designers to inspire them to create beautiful projects with our surfaces – and we need to do that quickly when we have new colours.

“So every year we spend somewhere between £200,000 and £500,000 on samples.”

This huge cost includes, of course, the production of the samples themselves but also a service that aims to deliver individual ones within two to three days as well as the high quality boxes and racks that house them all in the showroom.

Curate to create

Considerable investments such as these mean many suppliers are looking into the efficiencies of standard practices in an attempt to become leaner, hopefully without sacrificing service levels. In the July issue of kbbreview we examined whether that other stalwart of the showroom, the brochure, was still as relevant in the everyday work of a designer and there was a definite sea change in the way that suppliers were looking at a return on the investment.

Noble at CDUK says they are monitoring it ‘a little’ but ultimately takes a long term perspective.

“The investment is in the creativity of the designer,” he says. “So we don’t always see a correlation between what we spend on samples and what we sell in sheets because that can come over time. If the designer understands that Corian is providing them with something creative, we’re not just investing in that one single job, but in the relationship with Corian over many years.”

This literally tangible link between the designer and the products they’re specifying is incredibly important of course. As an intrinsic part of the design process, they’re an essential showroom presence but this also inevitably makes them numerous and seemingly breed like rabbits. The management of them is, therefore, almost a full-time job.

“Across the whole business we have thousands of them,” says retailer Stuart Luckman from RidgeWey in Weybridge. “We’re fortunate that we’ve got a large studio and are fairly ruthless when it comes to bringing in new elements but, yes, while individual collections might be updated a few times a year, collectively there’s something new virtually every week.”

This constant need to keep on top of samples does raise the question of whether suppliers simply provide too many. The fear that a specification may be lost unless every colour and finish is always at hand is understandable, but that may be underestimating the designer’s ability to curate samples to a point that clients are only ever actually seeing
a handful. 

“I personally hate samples,” says Al Bruce of Olive & Barr. “They clog up our sales procedures and make it much harder for our customers to come to decisions. We sell one particular type of classic in-frame kitchen that comes in any colour, but it means we don’t need to have different door samples.

“We find that clients choose from one of six quartz worktops and it doesn’t really go beyond that so there’s no point in showing any more of them either. If we’re going to show thousands, then it’s just going to prolong the whole decision making process so we like to refine things as much as we can and make it as simple as possible for our clients.”

Display decisions

For Bruce, the idea of having samples on display for browsing clients to look through is anathema and this has become an increasingly common view among some retailers. There is simply too much choice and to present it all to clients can be confusing rather than helpful. 

Stuart Luckman agrees, he may have thousands of samples but, he says, there’s rarely more than three visible in the showroom and any client presentation will only have one or two for that particular scheme.

“You don’t want to bombard people with what’s there,” he explains. “It’s more for the designers to have them at their disposal should they want to fine tune and run through a slightly wider range of styles and finishes.”

If the consensus is to not confuse the customer with too much overwhelming choice, what does that mean for the supplier who wants to display the full range? How do they want retailers to deal with samples?

“We’re currently evolving how we present Corian samples in particular,” says Noble at CDUK. “For many years, kitchen studios would receive a box of between 60 and 70 small samples but we’ve just brought out a new range using around 20 bigger samples of the most popular colours. 

“We’ve certainly seen a trend over the last few years that customers want to see a larger sample and so we’re investing in that, but to do it in a range of 60 would be far too much.”

Ranges, colours and finishes are constantly being updated or changed in this way, but a new set of samples means that, overnight, the old set are defunct. So what do you do with them all? Are there alternatives to simply chucking them in the boot of the car and taking them to the tip?

CDUK has recently launched an initiative called ‘Vita Nova’ that actively encourages and facilitates the return of samples for recycling. “A few years ago we realised there was an awful lot of waste in our supply chain being thrown to landfill – whether that was material coming into us or out with our fabricators, designers or studios. 

“So we made a commitment to stop and help our customers to do the same. We decided that if we’re a design solution supplier we should find a way to provide a take-back scheme – and that’s Vita Nova. It aims to repurpose, revive and reuse as much material from our supply chain as we can and, of that, about 45 tonnes per year is samples.”

Unlike brochures, there is no way to mitigate the cost of providing samples by offering a digital alternative. The physicality is the entire point of them and, until technology finds a way to replicate that, every showroom will have to continue to manage their libraries.

There is no question, however, that suppliers will carry on looking for efficiencies in their production and distribution – and the feedback from retailers on how they actually use samples will play a big part in that.

Listen to the ‘What’s The Point Of Samples?’ episode of The kbbreview Podcast…