kbbreview Adopted Retailers | Point 5 Kitchens

The Point 5 Kitchens Team: (from left to right) Manuel Fusco, Wojtek Pawelczak, Tomasz Kolasinski and Joe Kardani

Sponsored by Alku

The day-to-day lives of independent KBB retailers are busy, complicated and full of twists and turns. Each one has a fascinating narrative and we want to tell those stories in new and unique ways – so we’re very excited to be introducing the first of our three new Adopted Retailers.

In the first part of our series on kbbreview’s new Adopted Retailers, meet Point 5 Kitchens in Muswell Hill, which has exciting plans to open a second location, and will be keeping the new site incredibly close to home.

Athough the word “bespoke” is sometimes accused of being overused in the kitchen industry, Point 5 Kitchens is a place where it still has genuine meaning.

“A lot of companies like to say that they’re bespoke, but we feel like we truly are,” explains Joe Kardani, Point 5’s co-founder. “Each and every kitchen we do is entirely different, and they all have something special about them.”

Each of Point 5’s kitchens is handcrafted in Poland, by the brother of Tomasz Kolasinski, Point 5’s other founder. “I’m a cabinet maker by trade”, he explains, “My grandfather was a cabinet maker, and so was my dad. So it’s a whole family thing.”

The two business owners joined forces in 2011, combining Kardani’s experience in the property market with Kolasinski’s cabinetry know-how. They went on to open their showroom in Muswell Hill in  London in 2016, and since then, the business has gone from strength to strength, with the team now looking to make the ambitious leap to open a second showroom.

Interestingly, instead of trying to move further afield to appeal to clients in a new area, the Point 5 team has decided to open their second showroom quite close to home. Roughly four miles away, just across Hampstead Heath, plans are underway to open the second Point 5 showroom, on a busy road in Belsize Park.

“We work closely with all of our customers, and we’re a small team, so it would be a waste of our time if we had to travel far between the showrooms,” Kolasinski justifies. 

Another benefit of such a close move is that the team can use the new space to show a totally different take on its already well-established offering. “We don’t want to copy this showroom. We’re coming up with something completely new,” Kardani says, “We might re-use some elements, but generally we’ll be coming up with new things.” 

The intention is for the team to direct customers between their two local showrooms, essentially doubling its shopfloor space, while also showing clients an even more diverse set of design styles.

From a business management perspective, Kardani thinks the biggest hurdle to overcome will be the issue of staffing, admitting, “Finding the right people that fit in with the way that we work will be our next challenge. because we’re not a big corporate business – we’re kind of like family”.

But from a design perspective, Point 5’s lead designer, Manuel Fusco is focused on solving how to bring in new elements while still staying true to the business’ signature design style. “It’s just finding the balance in how to keep attaining our quality of service,” he says, “but also focusing on how we apply the experiences we’ve got from all the kitchens we’ve done into the new showroom”

Administratively, Point 5’s other designer, Wojtek Pawelczak thinks that the business will have to learn how to juggle its projects in a new way. He says: “We always make sure the design is right before showing it to customers, so that takes a lot of time. With a new showroom, we’re probably going to have to do more designs than now, so we’ll need to find a way to manage our time.”

Still, the team are optimistic, and are working towards opening the new showroom by January. 

Pawelczak hits the nail on the head when he concludes that despite the challenges that are inevitable when opening a new location, the biggest benefit of the new space is that it will give the team “the best chance to prove ourselves, together”.

kbbreview’s Adopted Retailer programme is sponsored by Alku. You can see the other two adopted retailers in the October issue of kbbreview, and they will also be featured on kbbreview.com later this month.

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