GRANITE WORKTOP INSTALLERS: LOCAL WORKTOP FIRM OR STICK WITH THE BIG SHED?
In our first article on buying worktops from the big kitchen companies, we looked at the fact that many customers come to us for their worktops, after having travelled some way down the road with a “Big Shed” kitchen showroom. Firms like Howdens, Wren, Magnet and Wickes all have some kind of quartz worktop offering, and a few do some granite too. Doesn’t it make sense to get your worktop from the same people who are doing your units? Why come to local fabricators and worktop installers like Affordable Granite?
QUARTZ WORKTOP INSTALLERS: NATIONAL FIRM V LOCAL WORKTOP SUPPLIER
The big kitchen retailers do not own their own granite or quartz worktop factories. They tend to use a few very large worktop fabricators who work across the entire UK. This may seem a good match for them: big sheds on multiple sites with massive turnovers of mass-produced kitchen units, they want to look to similarly scaled worktop fabricators to service their customers. But will that work for you, the customer?
If you are buying your kitchen from a national company, what is the advantage of going local for your worktops?
• Large enough – but small enough!
The expression “small is beautiful” is forever associated with the German-British economist E F Schumacher, His best-selling book under that title drew attention to an important truth: the ideal size for organisations, businesses and other enterprises is not “as big as possible”. Quality production, excellent installation, caring customer service and thorough aftercare are more easily found with “human-sized” firms.
At Affordable Granite we are big enough to have the state-of-the-art machinery that marks out a professional outfit, but small enough that you can expect to speak to the same people in the office throughout your installation process. We are a family firm – human-sized and with human values!
• Chain of responsibility
This is another facet of “small is beautiful”. A relatively small organisation operating from a single site has shorter chains of communication and responsibility. Manufacturing and installing granite and quartz worktops is really all about information flow – interpreting he customer’s desires, templating what they have actually had built, communicating the template data to the factory, applying all of that during the fitting process.
At Affordable Granite, with around 20 staff in a very stable team, we all know each other well. Our experienced sales team, accounts, templators, stonemasons and installation teams are all based on the same site; we have excellent communication from start of job to finish.
• Local flexibility
National companies have to organise their work well in advance, often using sub-contracted staff around the country, and cannot easily react to pressing needs / opportunities. Small, local companies are, by their nature, close to their customers and can respond far more quickly.
At Affordable Granite, the vast majority of our customers live within an hour’s drive. We can be responsive and flexible regarding templating and installation dates. And we can go further than an hour – see here for details.
• Environmental impact
A local worktop firm will not have to drive so far to get to you. Booking your granite worktops through (for instance) a branch of Howdens or Wren in the South may involve your stone travelling from a factory somewhere north of Manchester. That doesn’t make sense in terms of time or cost to the planet. Some companies even machine the stone abroad – we know of one where the business plan involves lorries going to and from Estonia.
Affordable Granite works locally. The vast majority of our worktop customers are in Surrey, Sussex, Kent and Hampshire, or the southern half of London. Our wholesale suppliers (who import shipping containers of stone) are all in the same area. We can get to you quickly and we have have a tight carbon footprint on all the final phases of your worktop installation.
KITCHEN WORKTOP INSTALLERS: A NATIONAL V LOCAL CASE-STUDY
It just happened that while I was working on this blog I was simultaneously dealing with a customer who had ordered their granite through Wickes.
They ordered their kitchen back in late Spring, with a fit lined up for August. My customer assumed that Wickes would be looking after the worktop installation too – he hadn’t realised that it was being subcontracted out. He was given a template date of 20 September – a little disappointing, time-wise, but he waited patiently. The day arrived, but the templator didn’t. He contacted Wickes and he was given a new date – 25 October. I think it was at this stage that he realised that Wickes and the worktop company were quite different companies, and there weren’t many people at his local Wickes who dealt with them anyway.
When the 25th October came round, again without any templator from the worktop firm, he contacted us, by online chat, as it happens. “Could you template this Thursday?” “Let me check – yes sir, we can!”
In the event, it works better for him to have his kitchen templated early next week – and the will be. I have every hope that we will be installing towards the end of next week, or early the week after.
This story is far from unusual. For customer service, responsiveness and speed in getting your worktops in – with no shortcuts on quality – you can’t beat a relatively small-scale, local firm.
For the next part in this series of articles, please jump here.
We are Affordable Granite, the leading granite installer in Surrey, Sussex and across the South East. We are THE local source for quality quartz and granite worktops for our area. To deal with a family firm where small really is beautiful, to find attention to detail and a customer service experience second to none, contact us today. For questions, queries and quotes connected with any aspect of worktop installation or kitchen design, please don’t hesitate to contact us on 01293 863992 or by email on sales@affordablegranite.co.uk/ .
