ROK may be a new entity in the kitchens market, but its management are industry veterans and its business ethics are as solid as the units it builds. Rupert Bates reports.
It’s not quite living over the shop, but it’s close enough to stroll from his own kitchen to see how brand new kitchens are taking shape in the barns across the garden.
John White knows a thing or two about the kitchen contracts market; it has been his working life and his latest business in the sector, ROK European Kitchens, is cooking up plenty of interest from the housebuilding industry he knows so well. The boy from Billericay is doing very well.
White started out trading kitchens as a 19-year-old in the 1970s. It was initially all about putting every penny back into the business to grow it and soon he was working with significant housebuilders, with the likes of Countryside still his clients more than 40 years on.
White founded Commodore Kitchens before, along with the CIE premium kitchens business, selling the company to Nobia in 2015.
He could have stepped back and devoted all his time to leisure and his extraordinary collection of classic cars, being associated with the Felsted Elephant – more of which later – or indulging in his passion for game shooting. “You’d be amazed the deals done and clients found on pheasant drives.”
But you can’t keep White out of the kitchen and the desire was there to build another brand along with key associates with plenty of kitchen experience, who he could eventually hand over some of the ROK ownership in the future.
Maciej Zbikowski, John White, Jason Burgess
“I am enjoying doing it again and have great people around me. ROK is self-funded with no banks to please and it means we have been able to grow much more quickly,” says White (left), looking to have a £12m+ business within five years. ROK has only been trading since last April, with a first-year turnover approaching £3m.
“My business ethic has always been about doing things properly and to the highest quality, which is why clients come back time and again, knowing we can make bespoke kitchens and do a complete install onsite. The contract market is my only market and we do it very well.”
ROK’s managing director has seen seismic changes in the world of kitchens over many years. The kitchen has always been the hero of the house, but now it is a superhero, invariably open-plan, with design and aesthetic beauty, be it a traditional or contemporary kitchen, as important as the practical and functional elements of the space and the units.
Gone are the days when product differentiation came down to the colour only. Now finishes and flourishes are as cutting edge as the technology.
“It is about giving a complete service. The completeness and on-time delivery is paramount, we have a lot of systems in place and bundles of experience about the contract market. The design, manufacture, delivery and fitting with a ‘just in time’ approach and any issues sorted immediately is a massive part of what we do.”
White stresses the importance of sitting down with the clients, including big housebuilding names he has known for many years, discussing the site, the customer profile, the budget and the timescale. Clients include Countryside, Berkeley, Anthology and Joseph Homes.
Back to the converted barns.
White has a farm in the Essex village of Orsett. And for the time being it is also the home to the ROK factory in an inspired piece of rural diversification. Barns are now a factory and warehouse and the massive greenhouse is currently being converted into more offices.
It is barns with a difference, including a beam saw, a CNC machining centre, an edgebander, a drilling and dowel inserter and a carcass clamp – all kit from German plant and machinery manufacturer HOMAG. This is automotive excellence with the carpenter as intuitive machine, supplemented by staff adding self-inspection and a trained human eye to the mechanical processes.
“From the start, our aim was to create a state-of-the-art production facility in Essex. Although it is a new company, the senior team has a vast amount of experience in the industry. Our aim was to create a manufacturing facility that would give us a mix of automation, for speed and efficiency, blended with the flexibility of traditional craftsmen’s skills,” says Andrew Lee, ROK’s head of operations.
ROK has two homes. Back in Grays, sales director Jason Burgess takes us into a collection of modern warehouses where you half-expect to find Guy Ritchie filming another gangster-geezer movie.
Again this is very different use of commercial space, with a large mezzanine showroom and converted shipping containers set up to house a kitchen concept area, mocking up show units. There is even a fun nod to nostalgia with an original 1960s Kandya sideboard designed by Frank Guille.
Burgess, from Colchester, is another kitchen man through and through, working at Moores, Symphony and then joining White at Commodore before the move to ROK.
The showrooms above highlight the range of ROK kitchens, be it homegrown in-house products, hybrids with specialist veneered and lacquered finishes, or collaboration with stylish kitchen partners in Italy.
“Our ranges give us flexibility on capacity and volume and an ability to match any specification,” says Burgess.
“It may be clichéd, but there is a definitive kitchen culture in Italy, a Mediterranean flair they bring to their designs,” adds Burgess, observing an array of Ferrari books on the shelves, testimony to White’s love of the country and its cars.
ROK supplies consistently to regional housebuilders, as well as to London developers and can also offer high-end products to the top of the market.
The lights dim and brighten. The ROK showroom has thought of most things and light is an underrated component of the kitchen, be it for practical food prepping or social mood lighting.
Burgess brushes the laminated worktops, pulls out the drawer boxes, highlights the detailing in the hinges, points out the fine shadow gaps in doors and the trend towards open shelving and framing.
Porcelain, glazing, wood graining, glass and metal, there are deft design touches everywhere and plenty of top brands too – BSH, The 1810 Company, Silestone and Sub-Zero & Wolf – and class infused in every aspect of the kitchen, including hinges, handles, taps and basins.
I am rather taken by what is best described as a kitchen/study. It’s got glass of red wine and a good book written all over it, sitting under the beams of the original building.
Sophisticated software means ROK’s in-house designers can ‘talk’ to computers and electronic orders placed, with nothing lost in translation, minimising the risk of error and maximising efficiency in an industry where you might as well be out by a mile as a millimetre.
Brand is hugely important to ROK as it builds its reputation on the back of the strong kitchen heritage of its senior team, delivering a complete contract service to housebuilders.
Talking of brands I haven’t forgotten the Felsted Elephant, which even has its own Facebook page. The elephant is actually an old yew hedge outside White’s other family home, fashioned, topiary style, into an elephant.
Ellie has become an Essex tourist attraction, dressed up at various times of the year, even as an advent calendar with sweets at Christmas.
So depending which Essex house he is in, White is either greeted in the morning by his factory gearing up to produce high quality kitchens, or a green elephant, decorated in various costumes, although, ideally, as a West Ham football fan, he’d presumably prefer Ellie dyed claret and blue.