Woking-based retailer Inspire Kitchens helped one of its clients have a once-in-a-lifetime Christmas last month, when it gave away a full £15k kitchen for free.
In October 2024, the business announced its ‘Win a Dream Kitchen’ competition, which was open to any client who placed an order before December 13. The grand prize was a fully equipped kitchen with a value of up to £15,000.
According to the company, the competition was possible thanks to help from its supplier partners, which included worktops from Matai Stone and appliances by Neff.
On December 16, the Inspire Kitchens team picked a winner through a random draw, which ended up being clients Shobin and Sneha, from West End in Woking, who had paid their deposit in November.
Inspire Kitchens’ owner, Jamie Baker, says the competition was something the team had been considering running for some time, but were originally hesitant about due to the costs associated.
He commented: “I know some retailers do things like give away free appliances and accessories, but because of budgets in this area, we’ve found that’s not always enough to entice people. So I said ‘let’s go hell for leather and give away a whole kitchen’ – I’m pretty sure a lot of people out there didn’t believe it was true, but it’s completely genuine!”
Despite the hefty price tag of £15k, Baker says that he was able to negotiate with suppliers to get the competition off the ground. He said: “We had to take a bit of a hit on the cabinetry costs, but December’s traditionally very quiet for us, so my aim was to try and take as many people out of the market who would buy over Christmas.
“It was a bit of a gamble, but it really paid off in the end because we ended up selling 14 kitchens in the six week run-up to Christmas. Way, way more than we usually would. We may have lost some money by doing the job, but we generated lots of marketing from the promotion, so I’d say it was 100% worth doing.”
Baker says that once told that they’d won the kitchen, winners Shobin and Sneha were “over the moon” with the news.
“We went round there to let them know they won,” Baker recalls, “We knocked on the door and pretended there had been an issue with taking their deposit. His face went blank but then we revealed that they’d won and they were both so pleased.”
Baker says that the competition was such a success, he’s considering running something similar again in the future.