Granite and Quartz Worktops – as the Crow Flies!

Most of our work here at Affordable Granite involves full installations of granite and quartz worktops in our customers’ kitchens. A full installation involves a visit to template, and then another visit to install.  Obviously, our templaters (Wayne and Mikhael) and our fitting teams (Seb and Grant, Dave and Ash) have to be on site, and we use Renault vans to get them and our products to our customers’ homes.

But over recent years we have seen an increased amount of Supply Only and Supply & Deliver work. This has been partly because we have really tried to sell (rather than throw away) the offcuts from bespoke kitchen jobs. This led to successful offers like our famous Bin End Sale: Hundreds of people have bought economical bathroom vanity tops, toilet cistern covers, utility worktops, hearths and the like on this basis.  We manufacture to your measurements, rather than measuring up, and you are then responsible for fitting the manufactured section.

Obviously, these sections can still be relatively large and heavy, and difficult to carry safely in a normal family car, so some customers want us to deliver. And that is what creates a challenge for us. Taking a van off the road and away from doing full installations is not economical, and yet our customers need their worktops delivered. How can we make this work as a business, and for the convenience of our customers?

We took our cue from Amazon. The kings of internet ordering have been experimenting with the use of drones for delivery, and we could see no reason why the technique shouldn’t be simply scaled up for our products. The last few months have been exciting, with experiments to find the ideal sizes and manufacturers of the aircraft, and over recent weeks we have made our first flying deliveries. Already the drones have impacted on our bottom line with their speed and efficiency, and we believe that this technology is the future for our industry.

Keep your eyes open and look out for an AG drone; we could be overhead right now, about to drop a slab off!

Not all drone designs were found to be equally practical for us: the otherwise excellent Valkyrie III frightened the farm horses and we had to abort our test programme.

Owner and MD Andy “I’ve got a Tesla” Phillips was the first to take the controls of the Nordstrom 278 during training. It was quite a while before anyone else was able to have a go…

Flying over the City in the late afternoon, a worktop is ready for delivery to the 33rd floor of the Leadenhall Building, as an office coffee point.

Every so often we receive requests for installations on the Isle of Wight, or even as far afield as the Channel Islands. In the past we have delivered to Portsmouth or Southampton, where island-based builders have picked the slabs up. Now we can send the worktops direct from Charlwood. In the photo, our powerful Gaggenau and Bosch quadri-rotor returns from its third long trip of the day, taking an entire kitchen to St Peter Port, Guernsey.

Because of air traffic regulations around Gatwick, we have to be careful with our flight paths. Andy and Lucas went on a training morning run by St John’s Ambulance and now route our drones northwards before we fly east to the Kentish towns. Here a 3 metre white quartz worktop is over Earlswood Lakes, Redhill, on its way to a a customer’s utility room in Sevenoaks.

The drones never tire; the office day may be over, but this full height splashback in Nero Assoluto will still arrive at our client’s home before sunset.

At Affordable Granite we are not alone in going for the drone: bespoke and exotic stone wholesalers, Gerald Culliford of Kingston have purchased two of these powerful Bang and Olufsen units which can deliver entire 3x2m slabs of the densest black granite.

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So there it is. Do check the date – and come and visit us at Affordable Granite. You will find a friendly welcome, helpful advice and excellent granite and quartz worktops. And quite a lot of good humour – on any day of the year!