18 minute read
King / 14 Retail upgraded / 18 World Furniture
ROYAL
WELCOME
King, a household name in its native Australia, landed on Tottenham Court Road on Boxing Day. The 8729ft2 unit, staffed by a team of 10, offers a glimpse of the brand’s line of modular sofas – a reflection of the ambitious Antipodean’s marriage of innovation and craftsmanship. CEO Anna Carrabs tells us more …
www.kingliving.co.uk
Can you give us a short breakdown of the business? Founded in Australia in 1977, King crafts and manufactures contemporary furniture designed to adapt to our customers’ changing lifestyles. Today, King is a rapidly expanding global brand, with 25 showrooms across seven countries including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Canada and the UK.
What does your role entail, and how has it changed since you started working with KING? As the CEO of a global business, I oversee every facet of the organisation and am extremely fortunate to have a highly skilled and effective senior leadership team to support me. My remit when I joined King in 2015 was to expand the brand to a global market, and we have achieved that goal with eight international showrooms launched in six years.
What drew King to London? London is a design capital of the world and ahead of the momentum, design news and influence. As a global design business, London is the ideal location for King to showcase our innovative Australian designs on the world stage.
Anna Carrabs
Did the existing store space lend itself easily to refurbishment? What were the challenges? The site on Tottenham Court Road is the perfect London location. The biggest challenge was developing the site remotely during the pandemic – many of our team were unable to travel due to Covid restrictions, which meant most of the communication was online and not face to face, which is always a challenge when working with a physical space … but we couldn’t be happier with the end result.
I could not be prouder of our team. Their unwavering dedication and spirit underscore the King commitment to our customers.
How is technology incorporated in the store, and is there a complementary online channel? We have a dedicated ecommerce website that works in tandem with the bricks-and-mortar showroom on Tottenham Court Road.
At King, we talk about the King Difference – a set of guiding principles that inform every part of the business. At the core of this difference is the steel frame and the Postureflex seating system, similar to the steel suspension system used in luxury European cars. It is the foundation that allows us to build modular furniture and craft designs that continually push the boundaries of what ordinary furniture can achieve.
Where are your products manufactured, and how have you overcome the supply chain obstacles affecting all global businesses? We proudly manufacture at our stateof-the-art facilities in China, Australia and Thailand. The supply chain has been, and continues to be, a challenge for global businesses. But, because King owns and has complete control of all our factories, we have successfully offset many obstacles.
Describe a typical King customer, and your approach to serving them … A love of quality is the common thread that unites all our customers. I can confidently say this because we have a phenomenal track record with returning customers who buy one design and come back for other pieces.
In Australia, we offer King Care, which is a variety of services that help our customers maintain and refresh their furniture. This includes a custom recovering service. On any given day, you will find a 20- or 30-year-old King sofa in our Sydney factory being recovered by our King Care team. Our customers choose to keep and recover their King sofas because they value the quality of the design and the craftsmanship.
How does the Australian consumer’s taste, or the way they use their home, differ to that of the British? British interiors tend to be bolder with the use of colours and patterns, whereas Australian homes tend to have a more restrained neutral palette. I think, perhaps, this is a response to the different landscapes we live in.
Would you say there’s anything uniquely Australian about the brand’s identity? King is fundamentally Australian – it’s inherent in our brand DNA. All our furniture is Australian designed, and I think the most tangible element is how our designs are made for indoor/ outdoor living. In fact, three of our bestselling sofa designs – Jasper, Delta and Zaza – are also available as outdoor models. Designing pieces that work both indoors and out is challenging, but this is a testament to the depth of the experience and craftsmanship of our team.
Are there any other King developments you can share? I can’t share too much, but I will say that our global expansion will continue with new showrooms coming to exciting international sites soon …
RETAIL UPGRADED
Whether it takes the form of a light refurbishment or a completely new store, delivering fresh shopping formats is essential to keeping any bricks-and-mortar retail offer engaging and successful …
There comes a time in every retail business when its existing look just doesn’t cut it. Tastes change, and products evolve – so the store environment too needs refreshing from time to time.
Yet, unlike a change of clothes or a new hairdo, the cost implications behind such reinventions means they are rarely superficial – by making operational improvements, better utilising existing space, and identifying what shoppers really want, cosmetic uplifts such as new window displays and brand galleries are given even greater opportunity to reach their potential.
This month, Furniture News presents insights from two independent retailers at different stages of their transformative processes, to discover what prompted the redevelopment, how each was executed, and, crucially, the opportunities they have created …
FROM CLARKES TO LENLEYS
Having completed an upgrade of its flagship Canterbury showroom, Lenleys is currently refurbishing its Clarkes store in Maidstone, which is set to reopen this summer as Lenleys Home (Maidstone). Business partner Lavinia Watts, who represents the third generation of Lenleys management, offers her take on the redevelopment …
www.lenleys.co.uk
Lavinia Watts
At what stage is your store upgrade programme? Our refurbishment programme started in our flagship store in Canterbury late in 2021, and a total refurbishment and rebrand is taking place at our Clarkes store in Maidstone at the moment.
Our Clarkes store closed at the end of March and is expected to reopen this summer as Lenleys Home (Maidstone). The new store will feature the high-end brands and signature service that the Lenleys brand is known for.
The expected cost to complete the transformation is expected to be in excess of half a million. We’ve kept the budget flexible to a degree, to ensure that we deliver a retail environment that is both unique and representative of the Lenleys brand.
What drove you to start your overhaul journey? Keeping the store at the cutting edge of home furnishing has always been important to us. However, after nearly two years of living online, we know that people are increasingly investing time and money in the products that make their house a home.
For many homeowners, purchases of furniture and home furnishings are a tactile experience. They want to see and feel the quality that they’re selecting, and we’re seeing a significant increase in the number of people returning to stores to purchase these items. We therefore felt now was the time to invest in our stores.
By providing an enhanced shopping experience, our usual supportive service and our new in-store studios, we’re aiming to inspire our visitors so they can furnish their home or find that key design piece that will give their home the edge.
What input did you seek from external parties? Conversely, how much inhouse talent did you bring to bear? For the external building work, project management and design we’ve re-employed the services of C-Side Architectural Design, who already understand our requirements after working with us on our Canterbury showroom.
Specialist company Roofing
GOOD RETAILERS SHOULD ALWAYS LOOK
TO THE FUTURE AND EMBRACE NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Before (inset) and after – the Canterbury store’s kitchen section was replaced with a flooring design studio
Consultants Group are working with us to undertake major repairs and improvements to the existing roof.
In relation to the interior design, we have very much drawn on our own inhouse experience and expertise. Having recently completed a major overhaul of our Canterbury showroom we will take many aspects to the new Maidstone showroom. Although it has a smaller footprint, the overall feel of the store will be recognisably Lenleys, with a more focused product offer. Since reinventing your first store, have you stuck fairly rigidly to the original plan – or has the format evolved with learning? We have already seen the new studio concept in our Lenleys Home (Canterbury) proving incredibly popular. The studio areas help showcase key pieces and provide that level of inspiration that many of us like when making big decisions when designing our own homes. We are expanding this theme, and introducing this into our
Lenleys Home (Maidstone).
Whilst there’s still work to be done before we present this new store, we have seen both the importance and the value of making sure that retail spaces should be memorable for the visiting public – this was extremely apparent when the business was shut during Covid. This is similar to the website, which has also been overhauled.
We firmly believe that good retailers should always look to the future and embrace new technologies, and be prepared to invest to stay relevant in a market that has become increasingly fashion driven rather than exclusively practical.
Have you seen any tangible benefits since overhauling your stores? Our refurbishment programme is still in progress, but the feedback we’ve had so far has been incredibly welcome. Our shoppers tell us that they love the new studio experience, and how it helps them visualise how patterns and shapes could work in their own home – giving them the confidence to combine furniture and furnishings that they might not otherwise have done
Canterbury store is now an Alexander & James gallery Before (inset) and after – the flooring section of Lenleys’
PORTFOLIO PROGRESS
Sussex Beds is on a mission to open a new store every quarter for the next three years (before significantly accelerating that already-ambitious rollout), and this estate growth coincides with a refurbishment process across its existing portfolio. Projectmanaging this new-store, new-look implementation is operations director John Rayment …
www.sussexbeds.co.uk
COMPARE THE PROJECT COSTS AND OUTCOME QUALITY OF
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL PROCESSES
John Rayment Before and after – Sussex Beds’ new Dover store
At what stage is your store upgrade programme? All the stores are now up to the same standard regarding carpet, colour of walls and layout. This was completed during the last lockdown, so there was minimal disruption. Costs were minimal, too – just paint and PoS printing.
What drove you to start your overhaul journey? New stores back in 2017/18 were painted in a certain way to highlight different bed ranges within them. Over the next 2-3 years, all existing stores had money spent on renewing carpets and paint.
What input did you seek from external parties? Conversely, how much inhouse talent did you bring to bear? The new stores use contractors who we’ve gathered together over the last two years of expansion. For the six stores we improved during lockdowns – Portslade, Newhaven, Uckfield, Haywards Heath, Hailsham and Worthing – we used our own team from each store and head office, keeping costs to a minimum.
Since reinventing your first store, have you stuck fairly rigidly to the original plan, or has the format evolved with learning? New stores and planning are evolving each project, with much more detail for the contractors. The refurbs are a simpler process, with plans produced and paint purchased.
Have you seen any tangible benefits since overhauling your store format? Customer reaction and overall comments have been very good, and when they might go from store to store there’s a story and an identical appearance. Our Newhaven store in particular has seen footfall, conversion and turnover rise since reopening last April, highlighting the importance of a great-looking fit-out.
What advice would you give to a retailer considering their own store overhaul journey? Look into current colour trends, and visit competitors to get an idea of how they look. Then cost up your project for internal processes, and also price up externally, to compare costs and the quality of the end product
PURE AND SIMPLE
This summer sees World Furniture launch a bold new look, as it sets out a clear manifesto of affordable, quality design – heralded by its expertly curated PURA collection. World’s MD Marc Bunting gives Furniture News the exclusive lowdown …
www.world-furniture.biz
WE BELIEVE GREAT DESIGN SHOULD BE AVAILABLE TO
EVERYONE
Picasso
It sounds like you’ve had a busy year already – can you take us through the highlights? Since the start of the year, we’ve been going through a rebranding process – primarily to shout about what we’ve been doing for the last 22 years, but also to add some significance to some of the new collections we launched this January.
We’ve been in operation since 1999 and we’ve not been very vocal about how successful we’ve been in providing a quality, longstanding service to our customers. The rebrand will help tell our story, and explain how we built the business around key factors.
“At heart we’re a family business, and a tried-and-trusted wholesale partner to a large number of the UK and Ireland’s leading furniture retailers. Since 1999, we’ve invested and grown our business to guarantee our partners impressive lead times on an exclusive range of high-quality, beautifully designed furniture, at a great price, with exceptional service. It’s a simple approach, but it works.
What prompted you to put on your own show in January? Due to the NEC event being cancelled and a lot of new product available and ready to ship, we thought it best to at least put on a local show (and perhaps some customers would also come from further afield).
As it turned out, the show was an absolute triumph, way beyond our expectations. Held in Belfast’s stunning Titanic Hotel (in the old drawing rooms) we could not have asked for a better setting to display our new ranges. We flew in a lot of customers, who thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. With many of them not having seen any new product for quite some time due to the pandemic, the appetite for buying was extremely buoyant.
And how well did doing so work with your appearance at the January Furniture Show in April? It worked very well, because a lot of customers who couldn’t make it to our show in January saw us at JFS – and, of course, new business is always a part of why we exhibit there.
Please give us a quick rundown of your new product highlights … Exclusively curated by World Furniture, the PURA collection is an expertly designed furniture brand offering a stunning collection of high-quality, innovative and affordable designs. But what’s the significance of PURA? It simply means ‘pure’ in Italian, and, by definition, ‘perfectly in tune and with a clear tone’.
For us, this fits perfectly with our sintered stone dining collection. Sintered stone is a beautifully engineered stone that incorporates only natural products, and in addition provides stunning aesthetic finishes that will grace any home.
The benefits of sintered stone to the end consumer are significant. It is heat and cold resistant, 100% recyclable, scratch resistant, resistant to UV light (so it never fades), non-porous (so very hygienic) and, waterproof (so no ring marks, and very easy to keep clean). The choice of colours is almost endless, as the patterns of natural stone can be replicated.
What was the star of the show? The PURA collection. As a supplement to it, we launched a fantastic array of new dining chairs in wonderfully textured fabrics and colours.
Customer feedback over the last year has urged us to bring colour back. Grey is still prevalent, but end-users, perhaps influenced by spending a lot of time at home, are tired of grey, and retailers want some colour back in the stores.
However, important in our chair development was adding texture and tone to fabrics – again, providing a range of modern and contemporary chairs, but epitomising excellent design and quality craftmanship. We launched a total of 15 new chair ranges at JFS, with over 50 varying colours, textures and fabrics.
What other feedback did you receive? The feedback was almost overwhelmingly positive. The pandemic has made it tough to source new product and come up with new designs – but knowing what your customers want, and listening to what they ask for, can help immensely.
Ultimately, you can design products and hope for the best – but the real proof of the pudding is in the eating. When your customers place orders and get excited about what you’re offering and where you’re heading with products, then you know you’ve done it right. Between our home show and JFS, we hit unprecedented levels of customer orders, and we’re very excited about the future.
We understand there are various developments going on behind the scenes at World Furniture – can you take us through them? In addition to the company story, the rebrand process involves putting our ranges into definitive collections. This gives focus to our catalogue (and ultimately to our customers).
The ethos is that we believe great design should be available to everyone. Every day, our focus is on curating and innovating an exclusive furniture collection that continually exceeds all expectations. Nothing excites us more than great design, beautiful materials, exquisite tailoring and true craftmanship. Our ethos is to consider every space and individual, and that is where our success comes from.
Underpinning our business is a very simple message – when it comes to furnishing your home, we believe you can have it all. Great design and quality, at an affordable price. It’s what we do best.
Luna
Windsor Amber dining chair
Lucca
Are these developments set to fundamentally change the way your customers do business with you? No, but it will present them with a better World Furniture presence. Our company logo, literature and online presence will also receive a much-needed makeover, and our message to our customers about what we do will be much more clear and precise.
The catalogue has been significantly updated to include many more lifestyle images and provide a warmth to the imagery. Customers like this as a selling tool, as it lets the end-user envisage what the product will look like in situ.
In addition, our collections have been more clearly categorised into the six different segments in which we specialise – PURA, Gloss & Glass, Melamine, Dining Chairs, Occasional and Sofas. We will also provide more PoS literature and better images for online presence.
However, in essence, our core values remain the same. Our slogan is simple: ‘Welcome to World Furniture – beautifully engineered interiors’.
There’s also the ongoing benefits of our direct container programme. Having exhibited on a number of occasions in Shanghai and Guangzhou, our direct container programme continues to expand, supplying to countries including Canada, Uzbekistan, Portugal, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Maldives, and of course the UK and Ireland.
Why is this part of the business successful? It’s down to confidence and trust. With an established QC employee based in the area where the majority of items are manufactured, products are not released from the factory unless they meet our strict criteria. Customers know that when buying through us, they can do so with confidence. In addition, unlike many suppliers, we offer a very high mix of products in one container – a real benefit for retailers who are just stepping into the direct container market, as the risk is much lower.
What’s next in the pipeline? We’re currently working on some new colours in sintered stone, with some exciting new base designs and colours. Of course, there will be new dining chairs to complement the tables, in some very exciting new fabrics. We’ll launch these new items at the IFHS in Dublin [ 26-28th June], so please come and see us there.
Can you summarise how the business is positioned right now – what does the future look like? The business is very well positioned, and financially strong. We’re continuing to develop our workforce and invest in our people. We’ll also soon be starting work on a new site within our current location, to add another 50,000ft2+, taking our overall footprint to around 150000ft2 .
With what’s going on right now, times will be tough over the next year – but our ethos has always been to keep moving forward.We’re excited about the future, and remain committed to our core values of people, quality, design and sustainability
