[Karan]: IKD Kitchens have had a business Facebook profile for well over a year now, and we have had the pleasure of making lots of new friends and acquaintances as a result. We met our new stationery guru, Sheila from Knights & Hyde through Facebook, and now enjoy huge discounts on all of our office supplies, as well as having them delivered promptly and FREE to our door. The potential from Facebook truly is limitless, if you know how to drive it properly.
One of the biggest connections we have made on Facebook however is with Tim and Jenny from Apollo Blinds of Northampton. Tim is the owner of the business and responsible for all of the free design consultations and free installations, whilst Jenny (Tim's daughter) is responsible for practically everything else, in her capacity as Showroom Manager. This includes organising Tim and managing his overflowing diary, whilst ensuring the first class customer service they have developed and are understandably proud of.
Jenny's also something of a social media whizz and first contacted me, via Facebook, way back in April I think: we hit it off immediately. Jenny has a very dry and observational wit, is very clever and a tiny bit bonkers - all qualities I appreciate very much. It also helps that Jenny studied economics and politics at university, has a son of roughly the same age as my own, and absolutely adores The West Wing. Could we have been separated at birth I began to wonder, until Jenny firmly reminded me of the considerable age difference between us. Charming. So that would be "no" then?!
The more we got to know each other and how we ran our respective businesses, the more we realised we had something in common. IKD has a "family" of supplementary tradesmen and suppliers who we work in very close association with, but they have to be more than good - they have to be damned good, as we're all about the excellence. There is no point Ian and I working our socks off to build a solid 18 year-old reputation for excellence and then bring in third rate electricians, gas technicians or builders who are going to undermine everything we're trying to achieve. So when we asked Tim to install two venetian blinds for our showroom window and they were subsequently made-to-measure and fitted without error or issue, we knew we had to invite them into the IKD family. We are now proud to be official Trading Partners with Apollo Blinds of Northampton.
This is the "Cotton" venetian blind on the showroom side of the window. You can see how exactly it fits and how beautifully it has been installed. On the office side of the window we have a "Flint" venetian blind, complete with the Uniwand safety feature, and it's a brilliant idea. To eradicate the risk of small children being hurt by loose blind cords, the Uniwand fully encloses all cords in a plastic wand, and this wand completes all of the blind functions (ie: up, down & tilt etc). We chose to have two blinds because there will be times during a kitchen showroom demonstration, when we will want to effect a blackout, so we can demonstrate the various innovative lighting options available. Tim understood what we were trying to achieve and was able to provide us with great professional guidance, which has afforded us two beautiful and functional blinds that we love. You are more than welcome to stop by and test out the Uniwand for yourself.
As many of you will already be aware, we invited Tim and Jenny along to exhibit at our Kitchen Showroom Opening event last weekend, and I'm delighted to report that our trading partnership with Apollo Blinds is already paying dividends for them by way of sales enquires and design consultations. Watch this space to see what Tim, Jenny, Ian and I are cooking up next for our future respective customers, it's very exciting and it's going to be great!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment