To Belfast And Back: In Search of Potential New Suppliers

We took a trip to Belfast to visit some potential new kitchen suppliers based in Northern Ireland. You might be wondering, why decide to spend money on travel and a trip to visit companies we have never worked with before?

We’ve written before about travelling to visit trade shows, and we find trips like these to be beneficial. Firstly, it is really good to be able to meet the people behind the name. It’s vital to our business that we build relationships with our suppliers, especially if it is a company who we will work with for many years to come. It was great to see their offices and understand how they work as businesses. Visiting them gave us a much better understanding of what is involved in their processes.

During our one day in Belfast we visited two different potential new suppliers. At the first company we had a walk around the workshop, and were able to take a look at a number of their kitchen door samples in their offices.

At the second company’s offices we were given a tour around full kitchens in a large showroom, which housed over 20 different kitchen styles. It gave us the opportunity to see all these kitchen ranges, colours and options for adapting designs to suit different spaces.  Seeing how their designs can be adapted will help us when we are trying to create something individual for our clients.

We really loved seeing the new ranges that they were producing. These included handleless shaker doors, purple and green doors within their standard finishes and a developed weathered metal look.

We were also able to understand what they needed from us in order to create a design tailored to our projects. As we do more and more kitchen designs (We won an award for a kitchen design) it is important that we continue expanding our supplier database. We felt that making the trip now would save us money on future orders with them. They provide great design and service at an affordable price. Where we save money, our clients save money.

Seeing the products in real life was very reassuring. It has given us much more confidence in sending across design requests for our projects with kitchens and utility rooms. We can place orders knowing we are in safe hands that can help us deliver great quality in long lasting products to our client. We look forward to working with them in the future.

More of their ranges can be seen here.