After moving into a new high street studio and nearby workshop, Lewes-based bespoke furniture specialist Inglis Hall – The Kitchen Maker is enjoying significant growth in a tough market. Tim Wallace talks to co-directors Toby Hall and Tim Flux.
Photos by Leigh Simpson
Q: What’s the background to the company?
A: Toby Hall, pictured above right – We launched in 2013 and Tim joined as co-director about 8 years ago. We also have 2 other designers. We call ourselves a left-of-centre kitchen company. We’ve made a distinct change from our past when we’d take on almost anything including timber-framed buildings and big structural joinery projects like staircases. We took on projects nobody else would do but we used to lose a lot of money back then!
Q: And all the furniture is handmade?
A: Toby Hall – Yes, it’s not a selection of mass-produced items, which you’ll see in what we call the façade kitchen companies. Every piece in the collection is made, by hand, in our new workshop. That’s kitchen cabinetry, boot rooms, utilities and offices. Our substrate material for our carcases is birch ply but our furniture is made from French oak.
Q: How’s business?
A: Tim Flux – Over the last 3 or 4 years we’ve moved premises and got back to basics. We’ve changed our design direction and how we position ourselves in the market. We’ve been in our new showroom – An Actual Kitchen on Lewes High Street – for a year-and-a-half now. Then we have the new, 10,000sq ft workshop just down the road at Golden Cross.
We had to grow 35% last year just to survive because the rent was 10 times as expensive. We hear from lots of people that the market is quite difficult but we’ve managed to hit that target and will again this year.
Q: How easy has that been in such a challenging market?
A: Toby Hall – We don’t call it a business plan but we’re constantly trying to make sure the work we’re doing is worth doing.
Tim Flux – We’ve got the price point of Plain English but the quality of Artichoke. That’s set us up pretty well. Our average kitchen is around £75,000 to £85,000. We want turnover to be around the £4-5m mark. We don’t want to be a company that doesn’t know our clients’ names.
Q: Is that kind of turnover realistic in this market?
A: Tim Flux – We did £1.8m this year and we’re aiming for £2.5m next year. Our business model has been all about the move but now we’ve re-stabilised and can expect 3 to 4 years of growth. We don’t have any financial backers and investors wanting us to hit certain targets. We don’t want to put stress and pressure on our team so we can hopefully do it organically. We’re currently 18 people and we can achieve that target with 25. We’ve just moved into a facility that can get us to that point.
Q: And you have a small studio rather than a showroom?
A: Toby Hall – I have a slight phobia of traditional kitchen showrooms where you go in and look at multiple displays. Our design studio is a 57 square metre architectural space, built as if it’s a client project with a really lovely fully functional kitchen. When we bring a client in, we cook them lunch in that space and treat them like a guest in our house.
Q: Do you follow trends or create something more personalised?
A: Toby Hall – We stand slightly apart from trends. We’re doing something more lasting. We wouldn’t want to get caught up with anything too ‘trendy’ but a mix of materials is our hallmark. Texture is a big one at the minute. I hate the word unique, it’s a dangerous word to use but we’re putting craft into modern kitchens. We haven’t seen anyone else who’s got that approach.
Q: So how would you sum up your design philosophy?
A: Tim Flux – It’s kind of what I now call a creative science. Toby is from a much more artistic background whereas my approach is much more science based and about product design. The combination works quite well. The blank piece of paper approach sounds lovely but it must be a nightmare for a lot of companies because you’re starting from scratch again. We don’t have sales people that just design what they like and agree to things that we’ve then got to figure out. It doesn’t foster success.
Q: Are clients mostly looking for traditional Shaker or modern?
A: Toby Hall – One of our greatest traits is that we can make anything, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. We still get people asking us for shaker kitchens but we try to educate them about the benefits of the way we work. It’s not part of our design language or identity. We’ve seen a gap in the market for making something very traditional that isn’t just a standard base frame shaker kitchen. We’re trying to bring a high level of craft and pairing it with a modern aesthetic.
