Kitchen Contours
Client consultation and developing the brief
The first step in any design/manufacturing process is client interaction
When a potential customer first visits Kitchen Contours with a query, he or she will sit down and talk through their ideas with a staff member. "Working well with clients comes with experience. It comes with years of practice and dealing with a range of people and the problems they've got."
"A lot of people have got no idea about what they want – they just say 'I want a new kitchen'. We'll hand-sketch a basic plan or they will bring in a plan and we'll make adjustments to it. Then we'll go away and draw it up."
The client will come back and view the designer's work on-screen. Several rounds of adjustments and changes may be made. Using design software allows numerous iterations of a design to be easily created, if need be, to ensure the client is getting what they want, as far as is practically possible. Sometimes this process can stretch out over a period of weeks.
"Selling a kitchen to a client is just the first part of the process ... it's making the design work that can be the tricky thing; a lot of people have no idea of how it all goes together and that's where cabinet-making experience comes into play.
"It all boils down to a few basic things. Firstly, you have to be practical. We are designing for manufacture. You can have real design flair, but sometimes you have to reel that in and say we've just got to be practical here and get the job. Once you've got the job you can sometimes upsell, but you don't want to be going the other way."
"Sometimes we get flash designers sending us plans they've sold to their client that will never work. So we have to fix them up so the kitchen can actually be manufactured.
"Secondly, the design has to be within the budget of the client. You can come up with a great design, but if it doesn't fit in with the budget of the client then you're dead and buried. Its no good trying sell a flash $30,000 kitchen if they've only got $10,000 to spend.
Keeping abreast of design trends is important. David travels regularly to kitchen shows, both within New Zealand and overseas. David aims to be a leader rather than a follower in the local market, but sometimes finds it's hard selling concepts picked up offshore.
"When I first went to Europe I came back with these great ideas, but nobody wanted them because it was too soon. Even though people travel more these days, we're still a couple of years behind Europe I think."
