The kbbreview Podcast

Welcome to The Kbbreview Podcast and another of our special episodes around the kbbreview Retail & Design Awards 2025.

This month’s episode is a peek behind the curtain of the awards, as we have a chat with some of the judges, both in the retail business categories and the design categories. We’ll find out about the approach to judging and interpreting the criteria, and what the judges expect from the 2025 awards in particular.

A huge thank you needs to go out to our awards podcast partner, Sonas Bathrooms - it’s great to have their support, as between now and the event on Thursday, April 24, at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom we'll be bringing you MORE special bonus episodes where we'll really get under the skin of the awards and celebrate the very best talent our industry has to offer.

In fact, we'll be revealing the shortlist itself in a very special episode of this podcast just before Christmas!

In any case, for more information on the awards and booking tables, you can go to kbbreview.com/awards.

On with the show!

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Welcome to The kbbreview Podcast, your host is editor-at-large Rebecca Nottingham and this is another of our very special Rising Star episodes where we meet the upcoming superstars of kitchen and bathroom retail.  

Between August 2024 and March 2025 we’ll be picking a monthly Rising Star to feature in the magazine, online and this very podcast. Those eight monthly winners then become the shortlist for the overall winner which will be revealed at the kbbreview Retail & Design Awards 2025 in April.

It's done with the support of our very good friends at Blum and you can find out more about them at blum.com.

You can nominate your rising stars, or indeed nominate yourself, via the awards website kbbreview.com/awards and there are only two rules:

They must be currently employed by a retailer - which we're defining as a company that sells direct to the consumer.

AND

They must be under 30 years of age on March the 4th, 2025. 

Other than that, they can perform any job role within your business – admin, design, sales, finance, installation, we don’t mind as long as they’re a star!

So let's meet our Rising Star for November, Alistair Glover. After starting out on the supply side, he became fascinated by kitchen design, eventually joining retailer Alexander in Sussex and in the space of just two impressive years, he's gone from designer to showroom manager. Here's his story…

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Welcome to the kbbreview Podcast and this is Episode Ten and the last official episode of Season 13.

Season 14 will officially start in the New Year but we'll actually be back in December with a special mini-series looking ahead to 2025 AND, of course, the now legendary episode where we reveal the shortlist for the kbbreview Retail & Design Awards 2025 (entries close on November 14th!)

In this episode we're meeting two of our 2024/25 Adopted Retailers - you may have seen this in the magazine and online but we're following three independent retailers over the next 12 months as they embark on new endeavours in their businesses. The ins and outs, the ups and downs and everything in between as we map the very real experiences of independent KBB retailers. 

In this episode we're meeting Joe Kardani, the co-founder of Point 5 Kitchens in North London. After opening their first showroom in Muswell Hill  in 2016, they're in the middle of developing their second showroom just down the road in Belsize Park.

Then we have Olivia Weaver, aged just 25, she and her husband are starting a brand new retail business in Shropshire called Harrison James after several years on the tools.

Our third Adopted Retailer is the equally interesting  Leamington Kitchen Company in Leamington Spa and you can read their first installment here and we'll meet them on a podcast further down the line.

All this is made possible by our Adopted Retailer Partner Alku, the exciting new range of Kitchen, Bedroom and Lifestyle furniture, created with the designer in mind. We're delighted to have them on board for this and you can find out everything you need to know about them, including how to become a dealer, at alku.co.uk.

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Welcome to The kbbreview Podcast, your host is Andy Davies and this is Episode Nine of Season 13.

Today we're delving back into the mysteries of the brain with another look at the psychology of you and your clients and, in particular, the effect of unconscious bias on how you view them and they view you.

Does the car they drive, the clothes they wear or the haircut they have mean that you form opinions on them the moment they come through the showroom door?

Or, more worryingly, is the same true for their gender, race or age too?

The answer, according to our guest - retail psychology expert Phillip Adcock - is an uncomfortable yes to all of them no matter what you might say. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have made you instantly judge everyone you meet and these unconscious prejudices are constantly battling with your conscious desire to treat everyone the same.

His view is that the more you're aware of how people's unconscious minds work - both yours and your clients - the more successful you can be in selling your services. And that could mean accepting some uncomfortable truths and actively consciously choosing to go against them.

And don't forget that entries close for the kbbreview Retail & Design Awards 2025 on November 14. Find out everything you need to know at kbbreview.com/awards.

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Welcome to The kbbreview Podcast, your host is Andy Davies as always and today we're asking the most fundamental and simple question that usually doesn't have an easy answer  - how's business?

The market has been really poor for some time - you don't need me to tell you that - but what are the nuances within it, what are the different perspectives on why that might be, what are the positive signs of recovery and what's going to happen in the short to medium term?

September and October always bring the KBSA Conference and the Bathroom Manufacturers Association Conference and they're perfect places to grab those in the know to get a snapshot of opinion on where the market is.

So we grabbed some willing volunteers and asked them that question - how's business?

Entries for the kbbreview Retail and Design Awards 2025 are now open but the clock is ticking as we're closing them at 5pm on November the 14th - and we won't be extending that.

We have categories for kitchen and bathroom designs at different project costs, we have Showroom of the Year, Retailer of the Year, Installation Company of the Year, Supplier Team of the Year, New Retailer of the Year and our Rising Star Award for those in KBB retail under 30. In other words we've got something for everyone and it's totally FREE to enter so you've got nothing to lose. 

Everything you need to know is at kbbreview.com/awards

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Welcome to The kbbreview Podcast, you host today is editor-at-large Rebecca Nottingham and this is another of our very special Rising Star episodes where we meet the upcoming superstars of kitchen and bathroom retail.  

Between August 2024 and March 2025 we’ll be picking a monthly Rising Star to feature in the magazine, online and this very podcast. Those eight monthly winners then become the shortlist for the overall winner which will be revealed at the kbbreview Retail & Design Awards 2025 in April.

It's done with the support of our very good friends at Blum and you can find out more about them at blum.com

You can nominate your rising stars, or indeed nominate yourself, via the awards website kbbreview.com/awards and there are only two rules:

They must be currently employed by a retailer - which we're defining as a company that sells direct to the consumer.

AND

They must be under 30 years of age on March the 4th, 2025. 

Other than that, they can perform any job role within your business – admin, design, sales, finance, installation, we don’t mind as long as they’re a star!

So here's our Rising Star for October, Luke Niblett from Luxe Kitchen Designs. He started out as a cabinet maker but decided he wanted to run his own business and, before he's even 30, he's managed to not just do that but do it very successfully…

See our other Rising Stars at kbbreview.com/risingstar

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Welcome to The kbbreview Podcast, your host is Andy Davies and this is Episode Seven of Season 13.

And today we're delving into the world of franchises. 

They've been around a long time in this sector, of course, but the accelerated growth of Kutchenhaus in particular has refocused attention on the business model that combines lots of the pros of being an independent retailer with the power of a national brand.

So names such as Kutchenhaus, as well as Schmidt, Kesseler, Ripples, Raison Home, The Kitchen Depot and many others are forging a whole new approach to kitchen and bathroom retail.

We interviewed Paul Lee from Kutchenhuas a few episodes ago - so go back and listen to that for more specifics on their head office strategy - but today you'll hear kbbreview editor-at-large Rebecca Nottingham talking to franchisees from three different companies and looking at why they chose this route, what the pros and cons are, and how far they think franchising can go in the KBB market. 

So we have friend of the show Trevor Scott - who runs a Kutchenhaus franchise alongside his long-standing business RFK. We have James Casey from Kesseler in Sudbury, and we have Imran Azam who runs Ripples showrooms in Wokingham and Beaconsfield.

Now, heads up, Imran's sound isn't great but bear with it as his story and perspective is really interesting AND he was literally talking to us on his holiday from the balcony of his hotel in Monaco. Rather brilliantly, you can hear the birds singing in the background....

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Welcome to the kbbreview Podcast and, for those keeping meticulous records this is episode six of season 13.

Your host is Andy Davies, and we're getting all nostalgic in this one as we mark 40 years of kbbreview. Our very own George Dean has been having a chat with a couple of top retailers, who have both been in the game for more than 40 years, to get a view on what the industry was like back then and how it compares to now.

We have Tina Riley from Modern Homes in Leamington Spa and Phil Beechinor from Alexander in Worthing.

We've also got Mark Pearson in there, his day job now is kbbreview's Operations and Events Director - in other words the man behind the kbbreview Retail & Design Awards - but before he joined us he was a very accomplished bathroom retailer, specifically with Porcelanosa, and he started his career over 40 years ago too.

So, if you're fans of how it used to be back in the day, you don't want to miss this one!

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In the second of our very special episodes all about the kbbreview Retail & Design Awards 2025, we catch up with our Podcast Partner Sonas Bathrooms and a pair of their retailers to look at the importance of the supplier-retailer partnership.

Hosted by kbbreview's Matt Baker, our special guests are:

Richard Sloan, the CEO of Sonas Bathrooms

Becky Price from Park Street Interiors in Camberley

and

Dan Tuff from Glenfield Bathrooms in Leicester.

Don't forget that entries are OPEN for the kbbreview Retail & Design Awards 2025. It's totally FREE to enter and if you're a kitchen or bathroom designer, retailer, supplier or installer, we have categories for you. The closing date is Novermber 14th and you can find out everything you need to know at kbbreview.com/awards or in our special awards podcast episode.

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Welcome to The kbbreview Podcast, and this is the final episode of our special three-part series we're calling 'Changemakers'.

It's all in association with our very good friends at Hettich and together we're meeting people or companies that are truly forging their own path in the UK kitchen and bathroom sector. They're shaping opinions, trends and business practices in a way that genuinely shifts the industry zeitgeist.

Your hosts in this series are, once again, kbbreview's Andy Davies and Hettich UK managing director Simeon Gabriel. 

This week we're meeting Richard Hagan from Crystal Doors - on the surface they're a manufacturer of vinyl wrapped doors but under Richard's guidance they're so much more than that. He is a true champion of sustainable manufacturing, and his relatively modest company based in Rochdale has shown that it is possible for anyone to genuinely have minimal impact on their environment.

He is a proper expert on the mechanics, economics and practical applications needed to do it too, there is nothing conceptual here, and he is a leading player in the business community of Greater Manchester sharing that expertise. No greenwashing here.

He's a fascinating character, an obsessive about the subject and he's been able to turn it into reality in a away that many talk about but few do.

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