To recap on the merits of the bespoke cabinet making company vis-a-vis a carpenter:

Carpenter: Price; an independent tradesman, with low overheads, should always be cheaper than a fitted furniture company.

Bespoke Fitted Furniture Company: Design Service, Product Quality, Showroom Facility, Guarantee, Testimonials, Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Project Management. That’s seven good reasons for spending more and going to the experts. That’s not to say that the carpenter cannot offer any of these benefits but he is unlikely to offer all of them. To read them all, start with my post of 7th July.

And the eighth? After Sales Service.

No matter that the ordering process includes measuring the job four times and that you have received a set of technical drawings, samples and a detailed finish schedule, everybody in the team is an experienced professional and the process has been revised over many years and tested to destruction. Murphy’s law says that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong: A component gets damaged, the paint manufacturer sends in the wrong colour lacquer, a dimension is misread and not picked up. Every snag is unique in some way, otherwise a recurring problem should have been designed out of the system but try as they will to provide the perfect product, customer expectations are as varied as the customers and human errors do occur.

No manufacturer, in any industry, is perfect;  it’s not necessarily what goes wrong but how the supplier reacts when it does that matters. Business relationships are not always built on getting it right first time every time but often on putting it right promptly and with minimum fuss.

The independent tradesman, who may have moved on to his next installation by the time you find a problem and may not be able to be as responsive as you would like. Also, it is human nature to react by defending your own workmanship. This is not always compatible with good customer service practice.

When an individual has designed, made and installed the your new fitted bedroom or home entertainment units it can become very personal if you need to report a problem, and with no designer, draftsman or surveyor to blame he may struggle to rise above his own error and give the correct customer service response, which is always: How can I put this right and restore the goodwill?

Also, it is often easier for the customer to report a problem to the administrator responsible for customer service than to confront the individual who made the error directly. If the design, drafting, surveying, manufacturing and installation functions all reside in one person, somebody who has worked in your home for a week or more and who you have plied with tea and biscuits, who else can you complain to and expect a constructive and pragmatic resolution?

Six arguments so far in favour of using a specialist fitted furniture company, and the seventh? Project Management.

Sure you expect the installation of your fitted wardrobes or home office furniture to run smoothly and be right first time but, in the best of all possible worlds, problems do occur.

A professional bespoke furniture supplier will have a sophisticated project management system in place and will employ a team of people, each with an allocated role in the process, typically: designer, draftsman, surveyor, production scheduler, bench joiner, sprayer/finisher, quality controller, delivery driver, installer/fitter and administrater. That’s ten individuals, each with a key role to play in ensuring that the process runs smoothly, fits in with your programme and achieves a result that meets, and hopefully exceeds, your expectations.

In today’s difficult trading conditions, no supplier can hope to stay competitive without the leanest possible infrastructure, and yet, all ten of these key roles must be fulfilled and their functions coordinated or customer satisfaction is put at risk. The independent carpenter cannot be expected to wear ten hats at once and, although their partner may act as administrator and some functions, such as delivery driver and installer can be combined, much functionally within the project is put at risk by not having independent oversight.

There is an old carpenter’s adage that says ‘measure twice, cut once’ and it is a sound principle when applied to making and installing anything custom-made or bespoke. However, the protection provided by this practice is far greater when the second measure is conducted by a third party. it’s far too easy to repeat an error when checking you own work. Effectively, an efficient fitted furniture maker take the measurements four times: the designer on the first visit, the draftsman who ‘closes the survey’ by adding together all the designer’s measurements and angles: wall, window, right angle, wall, alcove, right angle, wall, doorway,right angle, wall,  pillar wall and , hopefully arrives back at the same place. If correct, the survey closes, if not a mis-measure is suspected. The job is than re-measured by the surveyor before manufacture and finally, for the fourth time by the fitter, on-site, before he begins the installation.

Management of  the project is the key role of the administrator whose job it is to coordinate the functions of the other nine members of the team, ensuring a smooth process and a delighted customer.

That’s a lot to ask of even the most talented carpenter.

Five reasons to spend more money and deal with a specialist Fitted Furniture company so far. Now lets consider the sixth.

Last week I discussed looking at letters of recomendation or testimonials from the company’s existing customers. This can be very very helpful in giving you the confidence to invest more of your hard earned money with an established  cabinet making supplier, rather than the independent carpenter but I did point out that these, supposedly, unsolicited testimonials if not all written by the managing director’s  aunt, have their limitations in that they will inevitably have been audited, if only to the extent that letters of complaint – heaven forfend that a reputable company would ever recieve such things – will have been filed elsewhere, possibly in the waste bin.

Better still ask whether your potential supplier of wardrobes, study furniture or a home entertainment centre carries out its own Customer Satisfaction Survey and see if you will be allowed to peruse the results. Any home improvment company that honestly cares about its levels of customer satisfaction should be conducting such a survey on a regular basis to establish where the shortcomings are and what can be done to improve performance.

The benefits of  this practice to a prospective client are two fold: firstly, the very fact that a company conducts such a survey is indicative of a positive attitude to the perfection of customer service and, providing the company is prepared to share the resulting data and that it is read intelligently, it can indicate, more accurately than a selection of glowing testimonials, how well the company is performing.

These surveys usually take the form of  questionaires asking clients to rate a range of performance indicators such as product quality or staff competence through multiple choices ranging from very bad to excellent. Because all clients are rating the same functions by predefined criteria it is easier to take a broad view of how satisfied the average customer is without peaks of vitriol or hyperbole. There is usually a ‘comment’ section at the end of the questionaire that allows the client some freedom of expression but it is the general trend in answers to specific questions that offer the greater insights into a company’s customer service performance.

Let us assume that the company you are considering buying custom made fitted furniture from have a file of customer satisfaction surveys and that they are happy to share them. Let’s think about how they should be interpreted: Firstly, are there a sprinkling of ticks in the boxes marked Poor or Bad? Believe me, if every response is Good or above something is amiss. No company ever achieves universal approval from all its customers and if all the clients surveyed are happy bunnies, you are looking at a faked, or at least heavily audited, set of surveys.

Secondly, where there are a sprinkling of negative comments, and it should only be a sprinkling, do the client’s comments show that the problems were resolved. Don’t expect to find a company that never makes mistakes, look for one that employs fallible human beings who occassionally err but uses those opportunities to show their customer service strengths to earn plaudits for correcting them.

Lastly, if every survey sheet is ‘Bad’ run a mile, but in those circumstances you probably won’t get to see them anyway. However, ignore the odd sheet in which all the questions are answered in the negative, provided it is only the odd sheet. Believe it or not, there is such a thing as The Customer From Hell, they are rare and one does ones best but as anybody who has ever worked in customer service will tell you ‘ you can’t win em all’. The important thing is that you try and try your best, not just try your best as in ‘that’s the best we can do’ but try your best as in ‘Try, try again and then try even harder’.

So far we have examined the pros and cons of using the specialist company rather than a carpenter when buying bespoke fitted furniture and established that their are potential benefits in: a design service, product quality, a showroom in which to see finished product and benchmark  the putative installion and a full 10 year, insurance backed guarantee to offset the extra expenditure of using the professionals.

Now lets look at how you might gain from the experience of others: If you do use a carpenter, be sure to ask to talk to some of his old customers and, if possible, see some of his work. Not only does this compensate for the lack of a showroom but the opportunity to share somebody else’s experience could give you the confidence you need and help avoid a costly mistake.

Any well established cabinet making company will be able to furnish you with the details of past customers in your area but you may find this a tiresome and embarrassing experience, asking complete strangers to let you into their home to look at their fitted bedoom furniture. Many people find looking through letters of recommendation or ‘testimonials’ a much more user friendly excercise.

A proper fitted furniture specialist with a showroom you can visit and an adminastrative infrastructure should keep a library of letters of commendation that you can browse through. If they have not received any such letters, be very suspicious.

Ideally, you should be presented with a book or folder containing a substantial number of testimonials dated over a long period of time, perhaps several years. Do be cautious; look for different types of paper, handwriting and styles. Pick one at random and ask to see the drawings that relate to this client. Surely, nobody would create false letters of satisfaction? Would they??

Also, bear in mind that these commendations have been audited. Any company that has been in business over a period of years will have received letters of complaint – surprisingly, these will not be included in the folder!

Look out for phrases like ‘We were annoyed when we discovered that he wrong doors had been delivered but were very impressed that you sorted the problem out so promptly and with the minimum of fuss’. Everybody makes mistakes sometimes and a good supplier will earn more Brownie points for sorting out the inevitable problems efficiently than they might from getting right first time.

Do not settle for the film or theatre promoter’s trick of just quoting short phrases like ‘We are very impressed by the quality’, when the full phrase might have been ‘We are very impressed by the quality it’s just a pity that the after sales service was so appalling’. Insist on seeing the full text.

Now we have three reasons for going to a fitted furniture specialist: Design Service, Product Quality and Showroom facilities.

Clearly, the carpenter should be less expensive and sometimes price comparisons will be decisive. However, there are times when price is not the only factor and you are entitled to good reasons for spending more hard-earned cash than you need to.

Today’s reason for going to to an established company of cabinet makers is the guarantee.

A fitted bedroom or home office furniture should not cost as much as your car but you will be looking at an expenditure in thousands rather than hundreds of pounds and you should expect a minimum of ten years trouble free service.

Certainly, your new living room or home cinema furniture will not be subject to the stresses and strains of the family motor but it will have moving parts and surfaces designed to withstand the wear and tear of domestic life. Servicing or replacing components such as hinges or drawer runners can be tedious and expensive.

More important, is the confidence that comes from knowing that your supplier is making and installing product designed to last.

However, a guarantee is worth nothing if the manufacturer goes out of business or, in the case of an independent tradesman, moves away or becomes unobtainable. In today’s difficult trading conditions, retailers and suppliers of domestic goods, large and small, can disapera overnight.

The best guarantee for any high ticket item is one that is backed by an insurance policy. Do not expect to have to purchase an insurance guarantee, It should be paid for by the supplier. This not only ensures that you will still benefit from the warrantee whatever happens to the insaller but also that your supplier has been checked out by the insurers. Insurance companies work hard to minimise their exposure to risk and they don’t underwrite guarantees for companies or individuals with Arthur Daley credentials.

OK, reasons to be careful: Make sure you get a proper design before hand so you can be confident the end product will match your expectations, ensure that the product quality is what you are seeking, expect to see samples of materials and finished product to benchmark the installation and insist on an insurance backed guarantee from a specialist insurer such as the Consumer Protection Association.

More to follow.

In earlier posts about buying bespoke furniture we have looked at what you gain from using the professionals rather than the less expensive carpenter and considered the benefits of using somebody with the knowledge and experience to design a bedroom, home study or home cinema furniture. We also considered the differences in the look and feel of furniture made in factory conditions and then delivered and installed, rather than constructed on-site with your home doubling as the cabinet maker’s workshop.

The next benefit to consider is being able to see examples of the finished product before you buy. Generally speaking, it is unusual for a carpenter to have a showroom, whereas it is highly unusual for a fitted furniture specialist not to have displays of installations that you can see and feel. You would not buy a second hand car unseen, or for that matter a carpet, a bathroom suite or a kitchen appliance but it never ceases to amaze me that people can ask a tradesman to build them fitted wardrobes or alcove units costing hundreds, and probably thousands of pounds, from a sketch and possibly a small sample of material.

A fitted furniture designer will usually come to an appointment with a boot full of samples in his car, but if you are dealing with a legitimate bespoke furniture company you would expect a proper showroom on the high street, a trading estate or, in the case of an independent specialist, attached to the factory or workshop.

Visiting a showroom allows you to get a feel of, not only, how the manufacturer makes its product but also the pride in the quality it offers. It helps you imagine how the product will look in your own home and, very importantly provides a benchmark with which to judge your finished installation and ensure that ‘what you see is what you get’. Metaphorically ‘kicking the tyres’ helps avoid disappointment in your purchase and should allow you to make upgrades or stipulations about how well the drawers run, the level of gloss on a lacquered finish or the exact shade of oak or walnut you expect.

Now we have three reasons for going to the professionals: Design Service, Product Quality and See Before You Buy. But that is not it, by any means. In the coming weeks I intend to give you many more reasons why the professionals are best.

OK, so whilst considering whether to use an established professional bespoke fitted furniture supplier or to save money by employing a carpenter I have cited the benefits of dealing with somebody who can supply a design service and produce technical drawings that make it clear what exactly to expect from the finished product.

The second benefit that I would to look at is the nature of the finished product: Apart from the initial design aspect and a clear understanding of your expectations, the  fitted furniture or cabinet maker will have a factory or workshop in which bench joiners (a different trade to carpentry) will prepare the doors and carcasses to precise sizes, usually within a millimetre,  and finish them ready for delivery to site and installation. The bench joinery is the messy part with wood shavings and dust that has to be extracted mechanically from the atmosphere in order to avoid health hazards. It isn’t just modern materials like mdf that carry risks, the dust from traditional hardwoods can be carcinogenic. By the time that factory made fitted furniture reaches your home it should be clean and sealed from the air.

A carpenter will normally purchase the raw materials, bring them to your house and do all the cutting,  drilling and finishing on-site. This has three effects: (1) the disruption is greater and takes much longer, perhaps a week to make a set of wardrobes as opposed to a day or two to install factory made units. (2) There will be more pollution to the atmosphere in your home, wood dust can take weeks to settle and the varnish or paint used in finishing your new furniture will be emitting solvents and adours for some time. Current legislation bans the use of air-dried finishes in factories and the new catlyst dried lacquers are virtually inert by the time they reach your home. (3) The painted or varnished finishes that can be applied by brush after the furniture is made are far less durable and abrasion resistant than sprayed on factory finishes.

Of course, you may prefer a more hand-made look to your furniture and prefer that it looks like something a carpenter has made, and at Options Fitted Furniture we do, from time to time, use various techniques to produce distressed or brush painted finishes that look hand-made whilst still retaining the hard wearing properties of modern materials.

So there you have it, the advantages of a skilled furniture designer backed up by a drawing office and a clear understanding of what you will get when it is finished  and the reduced disruption in your home coupled with the nature of the finished product are two powerful arguments for calling in the professionals.

However there is more to come and in future posts I will be looking at seeing before you buy and the project management aspects of having a new fitted bedroom, home study or living room furniture installed.

A very good question and one I was asked by a prospective new customer recently.

I had to ad lib my answer but I can’t have done too bad a job because that client has now placed a very nice order for fitted bedroom furniture.

What other choices did she have? Well, I know for a fact that she had had quotations from other fitted furniture companies and from a local carpenter. I had nothing to fear from my other mainstream competitors because, although they all claim to make bespoke furniture, I am certain that none of them have the flexibility to achieve what this client wanted. The carpenter, however was another issue.

I have no wish to disparage carpenters, and those that don’t work for us as part of the Options Furniture installation team have every right to earn a living and do, on the whole, provide a very valuable service.

However, there is one reason why my prospective client would consider using a carpenter and it is a powerful one – price! There is no reason why a carpenter, with minimal overhead, cannot make and install fitted wardrobes for considerable less money than we can.

So, why should this customer choose Options Furniture or any other professional fitted bedroom supplier rather than a carpenter?

1. The design aspect: This client has a very attractive but difficult to furnish loft conversion and really needed professional help to design a bedroom while resolving complex issues about retaining the elegant proportions of the room and providing adequate storage solutions in difficult spaces. Furthermore, she was looking for the Japanese look and I have my reservations about whether a carpenter would have the skills and experience to address these issues.The Japanese look is often achieved with sliding doors that mimic the screens that divide up traditional Japanese houses but can be interpreted in other ways.
   In the event, I was able to offer five designs that resolved the complexity of the awkward spaces, creating the Tardis effect and achieving a Japanese look in a variety of ways.

   

   Whatever his skills, it is rare to find a carpenter who can resolve storage and space problems and present those design solutions through technical drawings that the customer can interpret such that they can make the right choice and have a clear understanding of what they are going to recieve.

2. There are many other benefits of using a professional bespoke fitted furniture supplier rather than a carpenter and I will address some more of these in my next post.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was the architect who coined the phrase ‘less is more’, he was a pioneer of the minimalist movement in which the object of design was arrange the essential components of a building in such a way as to create an impression of extreme simplicity.

Today we apply van der Rohes principles to the design of bespoke fitted furniture when used in contemporary interior design to create a feeling of simplicity and space. There is still a place for traditional cabinet design using complex five piece doors with raised and fielded panels or the simpler Arts and Crafts designs, often erroneously refered to as ‘Shaker’, but more and more homemakers and interior designers are showing a preference for plainer styles of furniture that can do much to flatter the smaller living spaces of today’s high density housing.

Ornate, Victorian designs look great in spacious 19th century houses with high ceilings and large sash windows but in more restricted spaces an impression of spaciousness comes from paring things down to their basic elements. This need not imply a loss of aeshetic quality, more that the beauty is found in a simplicity of line and the inherent qualities of the  materials used. Why take a a finely coloured and textured hardwood with all the elegance that nature has gifted it,  cut it into smaller pieces, craft them and join them back together to form a whole in which we admire the craftsmanship when all we needed to enjoy was the natural beauty of the material itself?

I am speaking here of natural timbers such as oak and walnut or even more exotic woods like zebrano, but the same principles can apply to the more popular, and affordable wood effects from which bespoke fitted furniture is usually made. Do we get more pleasure from a panelled wardrobe door made to look like a hand-made hardwood door or is there as much to be appreciated in a beautiful flat door in an attractive recreation of a piece of cherry, perhaps enhanced by a simple and elegant handle?

However, some purists cannot enjoy something that purports to show the beauty of something else by copying it, this is after all what landscape painters have been doing for centuries; when you look at a Constable or a Canaletto you are not seeing the real England or Venice but a reproduction of it. If  an artificial representation of real wood does not work for you, you can take a modern material like MDF and give it a high gloss, or satin lacquered, finish and still see beauty in the lines, the choice of colour and the quality of the paintwork.

Friends of mine recently employed a professional declutterer. A WHAT? I hear you cry but yes; some people do earn their living by helping other people declutter their homes. In fact there is a whole industry out there, try googling declutter or try this website – www.apdo-uk.co.uk

My friends are delighted with the service they have received. Apparently, their declutterer helped them to decide what items needed taking to the council tip, which things to keep, how to arrange their free standing furniture to achieve the most decluttered look and what to put away.

It’s the putting away that intrigues me. Assuming that you don’t dispose of all your clothes and possessions, to achieve the objective you need storage space. Modern houses, in particular, are designed to maximise the use of expensive land and meet planning targets on density, therefore, room sizes are getting smaller and the space for storage furniture is at a premium. Creative use of bespoke furniture in difficult spaces is one solution but you will also need to maximise the use of wardrobes. Bedroom furniture with sliding doors may be one solution to achieving the Tardis Effect. The best way to an uncluttered home life is to adopt the minimalist look that is becoming so popular in interior design. Simple flat doors on wardrobes can make a room look bigger, they need less cleaning and, added bonus, cost less. Particularly popular of late are plain  high gloss doors. However, I have recently noticed a trend to plain wooden and satin lacquered doors, to get that uncluttered look simplicity is everything.

But decluttering the bedroom isn’t everything, minimalist living room furniture can create that Zen like air of tranquilty as well, and for those who work from home, an uncluttered office and a neat and tidy workspace are essential aids to productivity.