“I really do wish I had something much more incredibly exciting to tell you,” Joe Kardani, co-owner of Point 5 Kitchens, jokes at the start of our catch up call for this feature. “We are getting there, we’re just taking it slow.”

Although from the sounds of things, progress is actually coming along very quickly at the retailer’s new showroom space. When we last spoke with Point 5 back in our April issue, Kardani said the team had completed all the preliminary work for the space, with flooring in place and decorating work set to start in the coming weeks.

But by the time of our latest call, furniture was due to arrive any minute for the new showroom, with Kardani (pictured right) estimating most of the furnishings should be ready in a matter of weeks. “We’ve started templating some of the worktops on the bits we already have installed, but we’ve got a few major things that still need to be fitted. All the store frontage has been finished now too.”

Kardani says that the shop’s front sign is still yet to be completed, and this is one of the next jobs to tackle in the ever-growing to-do list that paves the way to the showroom’s completion.

Despite it taking a bit longer than the team originally anticipated, it’s admirable that the team have stuck to their original vision for a showroom space that has a bit of a different vibe to their original studio in Muswell Hill.

Instead of simply creating a carbon copy of their original showroom, the Point 5 team want this new space to show things that were entirely different to their current displays. If it all works out, the plan is to direct customers between the two spaces to show a wider range of styles.

“In the current showroom, we’ve got some fluted work and a more contemporary door with a thinner style,” Kardani explains. “But in the new showroom, we’re trying out a few different design ideas that we’ve done for customers in the past that have worked really well.”

As well as multiple kitchen displays, Kardani says the new space will also include a host of other displays, such as a utility room, wine room, bar, TV unit, and a whole area dedicated to showing a large selection of built-in wardrobes.

“The basement’s quite sort of cavernous,” he says, “there’s little nooks and crannies everywhere, so we’re trying to use up every inch we can.”

People power

As well as physically fitting and designing the new showroom, the Point 5 staff has been very open about the administrative hurdles they’ve faced along the way too. 

For example, since kbbreview first spoke to Kardani and Point 5’s other co-founder, Tomasz Kolasinski (pictured left), both were very vocal about how they needed to scale up the size of their staff to cope with the heightened demand brought by the new showroom.

Back in September, Point 5 was made up of only four members of staff, Kardani and Kolasinski, along with designers Manuel Fusco and Wojtek Pawelczak. 

Since then, the business has already taken on two new members of staff. As it stands, the current plan is for the team of six employees to be split evenly, with three staying in the first showroom, and the other trio staffing the new studio. But in an ideal world, Kardani says it’d be great to have an extra member of staff in each showroom to better keep things running smoothly.

“We don’t really want to get overwhelmed right as we’re starting. With two more extra people, we could share the workload between the two showrooms a lot better. But at the moment, three in each showroom should be a good enough start to keep things going.”

Although it might seem like a change of pace for the close-knit Point 5 team to have such a major staff structure shake-up, Kardani is confident that it won’t be a problem, especially considering the Point 5 team already spends so much time on site or meeting with clients. 

And as he rightly points out, another showroom means “we’ll always be jumping back and forth between the two”.

Aside from staffing, another challenge the team has found is the delicate the balancing act between completing their usual projects – designing kitchens and living spaces for clients – alongside completing a whole new showroom for themselves.

In fact, Kardani admits this is probably the single biggest reason for the showroom’s delays so far. 

“We’ve recently started to fit a bit more in the showroom, but we’ve just been very busy with customers at the moment, unfortunately. There’s still a lot to do there because we simply haven’t had anybody free to do the work in the showroom.”

Launch day

So with all the pieces finally clicking in to place, Point 5 has revised its earlier estimate and is now aiming for an opening in late July. Although Kardani says the team have been too busy to even think about marketing the new showroom yet, he does have a strategy for the opening. 

He’s envisioning a quiet soft-launch opening this month, “just so we can get the doors open for customers that do want to come in and have a look around”. This will hopefully be followed up with an official launch event in September. 

 “Because a lot of people are away over the summer, we want to do something bigger when we know everyone’s back,” he explains. “We also want to get the local estate agents there for that as well. There’s about three or four on the same road as us, so it’d be great for them to see what we do and have us be front of their mind.”

When we next stop in at Point 5 in the September issue of kbbreview – almost one year on from when we started following their journey – the doors to the new showroom will hopefully be open for good.  With the finishing touches almost complete, what will the team have to tell us about their first few months in the new studio?