Part of my job with my builder-employer is monitoring the various house budgets. One thing that I’ve noticed (and everyone will know this) is that kitchen cabinets are a sigificant portion of each budget. On the current set of houses we are building, our kitchen cabinet budgets are around $25k to $30k. Currently, we encourage the clients to visit several of the local cabinet shops. One of the local shops produces great looking, well-made stuff but the guy who owns the place is a complete jerk (for example, getting into a cursing match with one of the homeowners). The other shops produce decent stuff (far better than Home Depot) but, to me, their stuff isn’t worth $25k.
I sincerely goal is to get the best cabinets for the price for our clients.
Various building and architectural magazines have ads from “national” cabinet shops. The ads certainly look nice. Does anyone have any experience or opinion about buying high-end custom cabinets from any of these big, national companies? Do shipping costs offset any economies of scale?
Any advice/thoughts most appreciated!
ChrisA
Replies
You can do very well with many of them, Chris. You can probably see the quality of some of them in local kitchen showrooms. There are better places than HD, believe you me.
It sounds to me like you do enough volumn that you could set up as a dealer for one or two of these manufacturers and do anywhere from 40 to 55% off retail. (From what you mentioned in the flooring thread, I suspect that will go in the builders pocket and not the customers tho')
There are generaly three grades. Stock, semi custom, and full custom where they make any darn thing you please. The better ones will gladly replace a bad door if it happens. And there won't be any screaming at customers.
While I like my boss, I hope that it won't go into his pocket. I'd rather see the clients get better cabinets. Our current development is a small subdivision with a "horse theme," i.e., lots in the 5 to 6 acre range, relatively close in to town, and houses in the $500k to $800k. Around here, that is high end "executive style" housing. They really ought to have better cabinets (and floors, driveways, bath fixtures, insulation - I could go on).
ChrisA
I'm far from an expert on cabinets, but do have one observation from my limited experience.
It seems to me that the big cabinet chains try to cover all the bases, from the cheapest "Home Depot" quality to really nice stuff. They all seem to have different quality lines to offer.
Might be worth talking to some of their reps and looking over their literature to see what ya think..........
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