Kitchen Cabinets for Less

Kitchen Cabinets for Less

For whatever reason the summer months are lean in the kitchen industry. Everyone wants a new kitchen in the fall to show off for the holidays. Add in the fact that Peak at Home Showroom, located in Kansas City, is still in it's infancy, made us wonder what our competition is doing to stay afloat in this economy.

We know that we have a quality product for less money than anyone else in our market (comparing apples to apples). We know that we have great customer service. We know that the things we do for our clients save them money and that means value. So we have service, value and lower prices. Wait, everyone claims to have those three things, so how do we go about proving it to our demographic?

We know our demographic is female aged 35 to 55 years old. We need to advertise where they are getting their information. Customer service is word of mouth. Our clients can tell you stories of us doing measure ups at new construction sites in the winter with the temperatures -7 degrees or walking the last 1/4 mile up a driveway in 2 feet of snow because our vehicle would not make it through the unplowed snow. Value and lower prices are tangible and easy to prove for us. We purchased three of the top selling cabinets at the big orange box store and put them in our showroom, next to one of our Peak Cabinet Company cabinets. That display sells itself. You can visibly see that the other guy's cabinets are particle board, not stained inside, no toe kick attached and cost almost 50% more than our cabinet. For the record, Peak Cabinet Company ktichen cabinets have solid wood doors, plywood boxes, dove tailed drawers, concealed hinges, stained inside and out to match the door and these are all standard features.                                                                                                           

To take things a step further we sent someone out to the local showrooms with a kitchen to be designed. Then we set up a couple in a home with a kitchen that needs remodeled to see how their in home experience went. What we found was surprising.

A company called Proffits, great showroom, however no one greeted us when we came through the door. Once we did get a sales person, the first thing out of their mouth was "what is your budget"? I don't believe in asking a client what their budget is right off the bat, because that implies that if their budget is $30K, then I'm going to spend $29,999 on their kitchen. I would rather get to know my client and their lifestyle, find out their wants and desire. I design the kitchen for them and their future. We can always trim off pieces or redesign to accomadate the clients finances. We did manage to a quote from Proffits for our kitchen. Final cost and this is for particle board cabinets, no delivery, no installation, for $15K. We priced out the same kitchen for alittle over $7,000. The kicker for this company is they would not show you the drawings of your kitchen. If you want to see those, you must set up additional appointments to meet their designers at $150 an hour at a minimum of 4 hours.

Another company called Geronimo, doesn't even have a showroom. They send someone out to your house, do measurements, talk to you and your spouse about the new kitchen and get back to you in a week or so.  During our appointment, the gentleman came in, took some pictures, took some measurements and stated that the new kitchen, including a new floor would be $30K. Really? I haven't even picked out a cabinet yet and it's how much money? The gentleman that came to the appointment obviously did not know much about kitchen design because he could not answer the majority of our questions.

Now the big hurdle for us at Peak at Home, is to get people in the door so they can see for themselves that we really do offer service, quality and value above anyone else in Kansas City.

Names of companies have been changed.