Founder of Cub Kitchens Steve O’Neill ditched the world of banking for furniture making – and applied his problem-solving skills to a new way of selling bespoke kitchens. He tells Amelia Thorpe what sets the business apart.
After working as a banker in the City for 18 years, Steve O’Neill had come to the end of the road. "The banking industry wasn’t that much fun and it really wasn’t my passion," he says. "I spent my spare time renovating and making furniture, so as soon as I had completed a large and successful project as a bookend to that career, I decided it was time to do something more enjoyable."
In 2020, encouraged by his wife and now business partner, Alice, O’Neill decided to set up a furniture-making business in a workshop at the bottom of the garden at their home in Brighton. The process of building that workshop – something that O’Neill did himself – proved technically challenging as the land required specialist foundations. "I found myself going out and buying piling machinery to do the install, and in the process, accidentally started a foundation business," he laughs of his Load Bear company, which specialises in eco-friendly, concrete-free solutions for timber-framed structures on problematic ground. At the same time, his furniture business began to grow, evolving into kitchens – and is now called Cub Kitchens. "Alice refers to me as a bear, because I’m hairy and a bit grumpy, hence the bear theme for the company names," he says. (There’s also Bear Haus, the company that grew out of Load Bear clients’ requests for extension and house building services.)
The group of businesses has grown significantly and is no longer the ‘lifestyle’ operation that Steve has first envisioned when he left banking behind. It now operates from a 400sq m site in Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, and employs 18 staff (plus Steve and Alice O’Neill). "Our kitchens are made using hardwood throughout, including the entire carcase," he says. "We flat out refuse to use chipboard, ever, because when you bring MFC into a humid kitchen environment it will fail eventually."
"Our costs go into materials and machinery," he continues. "We save money by not having showrooms and we don’t have a sales team." The pricing system is unusual. While most estimates for bespoke kitchens can only be generated once the design is completed, Cub allows potential clients to generate their quotes from its website. "And that will be the final price," says O’Neill. Cub offers 3 sizes of kitchen: Large (with an island), Medium (kitchen with over 8 cabinets) and Small (8 cabinets or under), with a choice of 4 sustainably sourced timbers as standard (tulipwood, ash, oak and walnut), in Shaker, flat fronted and ‘stick frame’ styles. Small kitchen prices start from £16,000 including VAT, but excluding worktops and appliances. Worktops can be quoted used the system and no margin is made on appliances.
Every design is undertaken by O’Neill himself. "I can do this, because I am only creating designs for kitchens that I know are going to progress," he explains. Substantial investment in software enables him to design a kitchen and have it ready for production "in a couple of hours", while the latest precision machinery is designed to deliver a consistently high-quality result. Sales have to date grown by word-of-mouth recommendation, but there is now a new marketing manager, plans to create furniture for more rooms in the house, and a strategy to develop sales to architects and designers. "We are on track for producing 100 kitchens this year," says O’Neill. "I’m well beyond the honeymoon period and I still love it, I absolutely love it."
