Yet another Kitchen question?

cddc

Woody39 wrote: »

Do you have many problems with the Glenco door?

Not from my store at any rate and we have sold alot of it. The only slight irritation is when customers have added to it a few years later and found the whites have not quite matched up. No problems with delaminating or "orange peel" that I am aware of. It may only be a vinyl but it seems to be a good one.

ryder72

are you serious?
why is it better?

the money is better staying in the country, providing the uk with the resources to get out of this double dip recession.

the boards used by german companies are egger or kronospan, the same as uk companies.

the cutting and drilling needs to be done to a high spec..there are many many uk companies who achieve this.

I can only assume that you work for a german kitchen company or are indeed Deutsch your self

I have read with interest the other thread. The English/German kitchen argument has come up here several times and like CKDesigner, I have the same sentiment.

To clarify my position, I run a kitchen studio and we retail a German product as well as an English one. The English offering is more at the semi-bespoke end of the market.

I swear by the German products and will go the extent of stating that even entry level German products like Hacker Classic, Schuller C1, Bauformat, Wellmann, Nobilia, Ballerina etc are far better than anything English I have seen.

I agree with your sentiment that we are all better off buying English made products. But I also want to make sure that I buy the best product I can get for my money. I also want to make sure that when I order a kitchen for installation it shows up on time, without shortages and makes the job for the fitters as smooth as possible.

Now regards your own manufacturing - I take it that you buy in board, fittings and doors and make your kitchens. Egger I believe is Austrian, Kronospan I don't know. Blum, Hettich, Grass are all Austrian/German. Handles are mostly dominated by Italians and Germans. Ready made doors some in great numbers from Italy. The machines and consumables in your workshop are almost exclusively non-British. A number of fitting and accessories you buy presumably come from Hafele which is German. So you are effectively assembling foreign components. With all respect, you are unlikely to have 10's of millions of pounds investment in factories that allow high precision, reliable manufacture. The difference is that we buy kitchens where the work you do in Britian is done in Germany. The Germans do a fantastic job of manufacturing and logistics and build in excellent quality for a very reasonable price. We are able to design fantastic kitchens and sell them at affordable prices. That's my reason to sell German. That's what my customers like.

Finally to put it into perspective, we also do an English range of kitchens. And for ranges that are comparable to our German offering, they aren't a patch on cost, quality, finish or flexibility. They have their advantages in terms of design, unique styling etc.