New world order?

We are a few weeks away from kbb Birmingham, the first major get-together of the KBB industry since the show in 2008.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this year's exhibition was going to be a rather quiet affair, but all the indicators actually suggest the opposite.

While a few of the brands that have been to kbb Birmingham in the past won't be at the show this year, over 250 companies have signed up already. And of these, over 25 percent are first-time exhibitors.

I've covered every KBB exhibition since it started 25 years ago in a temporary building alongside Alexandria Palace in north London. I cannot remember a single instance when the show had over seventy new exhibitors. Indeed in year two of KBB Tradex, the number of exhibitors may only have been about seventy in total.

Since then the show has weathered two recessions before this current one and the boom years in between, but I don't think it ever presented a show where over a quarter of the exhibitors were first timers.

Leaving aside what a huge vote of confidence this is in kbb Birmingham itself, to me it also speaks volumes about the future prospects of the UK's KBB market.

Is this the start of a new world order? Will some of the companies that decided to stay away from kbb Birmingham in 2010 lose out to the new kids on the block? Nobody can be certain, but I for one wouldn't like to bet against it, given that just about every KBB retailer I speak to is reviewing its list of suppliers.

No one in KBB-Land today has any experience of working in the current market conditions because the banking crisis that caused them has not happened before on this scale during the KBB sector's lifetime.

In that respect we are all sailing in uncharted waters. However, some seventy or so of our shipmates think they have spotted dry land in the distance and they can't all be wrong!

It's tough at the middle

The latest update to the kbb News website carries two upbeat reports from companies that could not be more different.

On one hand we have the mighty Homebase with final quarter 09 results ahead of expectations thanks mainly, it says, to sales of big-ticket items such as kitchens.

And on the other hand we have a review of 2009 from Ripples - the 17-strong group of up-market bathroom showrooms where MD Paul Crow says that they too had a better than expected trading year, finishing just 12.5 percent down on the previous year.

What does this tell us? It certainly suggests that the KBB market may be starting to polarise between entry level and high end.

Forget the top; the middle is where it's getting tough! It is increasingly looking like the mid-market kitchen or bathroom offer is getting squeezed between a good looking entry level kitchen or bathroom and an obviously up-market kitchen or bathroom.

And if you have an 'ordinary' showroom that does not do justice to the mid-market products you sell, you do have a problem - and it isn't going to get any smaller.

If you are selling entry-level kitchens or bathrooms like Homebase, quality of service will probably be low down your customer's list of priorities. Their focus will be on price, or more likely, the humongous discount you are offering off of the 'list' price.

But if you are selling a product that demands a premium price, it will also demand a premium showroom and a premium level of service.

Ripples sell to 90 percent of those who book a site visit - that is a staggering closure rate!

Some of the sales will be down to the quality of the products on offer, but almost all of the products Ripples sell are also available from other showrooms and many of them will have cheap copies on sale in superstores too.

I'm prepared to bet my own weight in the Borough Market's finest chocolate brownies that many of the sales are down to the level of service Ripples offers its customers.

And the best bit of all (apart from the brownies that is), is that good service does not cost you any more than indifferent service.

It's official! Size doesn't matter!

There has been the long-held belief in the UK that some companies are "just too big" to come to a trade show.

Perhaps the company has a well-established retailer network, or an extremely well appointed permanent showroom.

Well, Crown Imperial can tick both of those boxes. More UK kitchen retailers sell Crown's kitchens than any other single brand, and just outside Daventry it has one of Europe's finest kitchen showrooms.

And yet Crown Imperial will be at kbb Birmingham in March.

Frankly m'dear (to quote Rhett Butler) if Crown can see the value in being at kbb Birmingham and strutting its stuff in front of the single largest gathering of KBB professionals under one roof, those companies who used to say they were too big for a KBB business exhibition will have to have a rethink what they will say in future about not being in Birmingham in March.

And what are the Faceless Few going to say about the show now?

Remember them? They were the shy individuals happy to brief against kbb Birmingham as long as nobody mentioned their name.

I  gave them the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to share their thoughts with readers of this blog and guess what?

Despite almost 200 people reading my "Put up or shut up" post, only one person replied - and that was to say his company was coming to the show.

But just in case the Faceless Few are made up of shy and retiring folk, I've changed the response mechanism on my blog so they can reply anonymously.

I await their response. Again.

Mark Wilkinson OBE does us all proud

The honour bestowed on Mark Wilkinson OBE is something all of us who work in the kitchen business can be very proud of.

Design integrity and product quality are admired features in any walk of life. So for one of our number, for whom these twin principles are what he has built his business upon, to receive an OBE, is a feather in all our caps.

It also demonstrates that there really is an alternative to furniture production at the lowest level of quality or sale 'offers' less believable than a Dan Brown novel.

Mark Wilkinson OBE's past glories have been well documented. He was the designer of the "gang of three" who, together with Charlie Smallbone and Graham Clarke, launched Smallbone of Devizes before he went off with Cynthia Wilkinson to do their own thing as Mark Wilkinson Furniture and launching a raft of design classics that are still selling.

I may be wrong, but I don't think a Mark Wilkinson Furniture kitchen range has ever been discontinued.

This man's influence on UK kitchen furniture design is immense. He is the father of the English Country Style of kitchen that showed that there is an equally high-quality alternative to the production-led furniture designs that make up the bulk of the kitchen offers from the Continent.

It is mainly thanks to the early success of his 'heart and humanity' style of artisan furniture design that we have in Britain a healthy market for classical design styles of kitchens rather than being swamped with the machine production friendly, purely practical, and somewhat 'cold' alternatives from mainland Europe.

Outside of his work at Mark Wilkinson Furniture, Mark has been a tireless campaigner on behalf of his fellow dyslexia sufferers and has raised many thousands of pounds for charities that help those who are affected by dyslexia.

He was one of the first kitchen manufacturers to seriously embrace environmental issues too - originally replanting a tree for every kitchen he built and more recently encouraging primary school classes to 'adopt' woods.

Ironically in the year he is to receive his honour for the work he has already completed, it is looking increasingly like the Mark Wilkinson style of kitchen design is once again rising to prominence as consumers increasingly desert the more formalistic minimal designs and return to furniture with a natural warmth or character.