Kitchen Contours
Kitchen Contours site
Kitchens are big business, and getting bigger. Demographics, economics and the great Kiwi mania for home ownership and re-modelling are seeing to that.
While every new house built in the current building boom obviously needs a new kitchen, continually changing fashions, improving lifestyles and the advent of new technologies has meant the total remodelling of kitchens throughout New Zealand has been the norm in recent years. These trends show no signs of slowing down.
It should be the best of times for kitchen joiners, but in recent years competition within the industry has turned savage. Once the preserve of small joinery companies building kitchens to order, the market has recently been flooded by big, cut-price operators offering a limited choice of standard designs at bargain prices.
To compete with these "Big Box" giants, smaller companies have been forced to work with higher levels of efficiency and to trade on their ability to offer superior service and customised products. Kitchen Contours in Wanganui is good example. Kitchen Contours managing director David Mackay started the company in 1985. The company employs 16 people and produces over 300 kitchen units a year, supplying clients from Wanganui down to Wellington.
The key to Kitchen Contours' survival and success has depended on applying the highest level of excellence in technological practice. David says this boils down to excellence, efficiency and customisation, with a high quality outcome as the immoveable bottom line. He likens buying a new kitchens to buying a new car: "You'd never accept one with a scratch on the door, it's got to be perfect."
