Do you have complete and utter faith in your product? Every day, Raft’s Mick Quinn is grateful for the integrity of his FSC-certified Indonesian teak furniture and UK-manufactured upholstery – but then, with the type of savvy, upscale customers he relies upon, it’s a necessity, reports Paul Farley …
I’m sitting, mince pie and notebook in hand, in Raft’s showroom on Cricklewood Broadway. It’s a pretty incongruous location for a manufacturer/retailer that serves up reclaimed teak furniture and upholstery to London’s eco-conscious elite, yet it prospers thanks to its longevity.
It was the very first of seven Raft stores, four of which opened in the last year alone. Founder Mick Quinn sits down opposite me – and immediately, it’s clear he has a timely point to make.
“What I’m most concerned with,” he begins, “is the whole state of the furniture industry in the UK. If you go to the Milan fair, you have a little espresso, and you walk round the show. The people are good looking, and so is all the stock. Everyone’s made the effort, the infrastructure, the build-up, the students in the areas outside – the whole industry feels different. It looks like they’re not in recession, even though they are.
“And then you go to Birmingham, and you’re a little bit embarrassed. You walk in, and you think ‘I wouldn’t like the Italians to come here’. Nothing is manufactured here. It’s all Chinese imports, veneers on chipboard and ply. There’s no concern for the moral element – where it’s been imported from, where it’s been manufactured, what the nature of it is. I know I’m going to ruffle some feathers by saying this, but it’s a bit of a let-down.”
“The industry has shrunk, and we’ve gone from four shops to eight, in just one year. We’re going at breakneck speed at the moment”
Mick’s criticism is not levelled solely at Interiors UK – he’s seen furniture shows in London fronted by companies already in pre-pack – but he does speak from experience, having exhibited at the NEC some eight years ago.
“If you compare it with the other shows in Europe, it just doesn’t feel like we’re taking it seriously.” He ascribes some of the blame to the exhibition organisers, and their failure to properly police quality levels – yet admits that the failure is symptomatic of a deeper problem with the UK industry.
“In the mass market, it’s all about price, and how cheap can you get it for,” he says. “Most retailers don’t seem to see the value added at the end, or appreciate the long game which should factor in corporate responsibility. Don’t get me wrong – the public want a good price – but they want the best quality over all.”
It’s a bold statement. Raft operates at a relatively high level, supplying both reclaimed Indonesian solid teak furniture and a quality selection of locally-manufactured upholstery to chiefly well-informed, well-heeled, principled consumers. Mick’s position on the quality/price debate might seem simplistic given our recession-heavy economy, but he has reason to be confident in his product.
“We’ve not been affected by recession – just look at the numbers on our books. This year [2013] I reckon our turnover’s going to be about £3.75m [up from £3.2m in 2011]. But it’s not only that which has grown – it’s our reputation, and our market share, too. The industry has shrunk, and we’ve gone from four shops to eight, in just one year – that’s 100% growth. If we were to do that over three years, we’d be at 128 stores. We’re going at breakneck speed at the moment.”
The new showrooms, in St Albans, Harrogate, Brighton and Clapham, are reflective of Raft’s recession-proof customer – one that will not quibble about the price if they have faith in the product.
“A Harrogate customer is a London customer – just as wealthy, discerning, critical and selective,” says Mick. “This idea that people with money are frivolous with it is not true – they absolutely want to know the ins and outs of everything you do. And that is perfect for us – it’s brilliant that they appreciate our transparency. Buy less, but buy better, has always been my mantra.”
Key to Raft’s allure in this respect are its sustainable credentials. Although consumers’ willingness to fork out extra for sustainably-manufactured products was dulled by the downturn, the trend by no means disappeared. There is money in the market, if a business can differentiate itself from its competitors – Raft’s fully FSC-certified teak has come at a price.
According to Mick, full certification has taken around seven years to obtain. “The process has not been easy, and it’s so expensive,” he says. ”You send stewards out into the forest, you pay their accommodation and their travel expenses, only for them to come back and tell you, ‘do you know what, I’m so sorry, but I was away on the Wednesday and so I didn’t see the goods transferred, so this batch of timber cannot be certified.’
“Stop relying on other people to tell you what the next big thing is. Just trust in your own ideas, and employ the best people to help deliver them”
“We have put our overseas partners through the process – they didn’t volunteer to do this! The FSC stewards sit in their factory and measure the wood coming in – it drives them mad! Our guys know how much wood comes in the front door, how many nails are removed, how it goes out the back door, where it comes from, what the location is. If you take down a house in Yogyakarta, or out in the wilds of Borneo, an FSC steward has to be there to witness it.
“100% accreditation means 100% of the product must be FSC certified. If a product comes in and it’s got a split on it because it wasn’t dried properly – or it took in moisture in the container – and we have to fill that split, the wood that you fill it with must be FSC certified, and the sawdust you mix with the glue must be too.” Even if a customer buys a product, only to return it an hour later, it loses its FSC status, just because there’s a chance some of the wood might have been replaced.
Despite all the hoop-jumping, FSC accreditation now provides Raft with the perfect answer to any discerning eco-conscious customer. “Our clients will come into the shop and say ‘how do you know it’s reclaimed?’ I’ll say ‘well, madam, it’s because it’s got an independent FSC accreditation on the back. If you go on their website, and look up our name, they will tell you whether or not it’s reclaimed. Don’t listen to us. And you shouldn’t listen to any other salesman.’
“Our best customer is the analytical customer. The enthusiastic one – ‘oh God, I love it! Smell this! Feel this! When can I have it delivered?’ – we take for granted. But the analytical guy – the guy that really drills down with probing questions – they’re the best, because once we’ve outlined our credentials they can’t shop anywhere else afterwards!
“I love supplying something that people think is the best – and it’s the same for all our staff. We’re top of the tree.”
Despite the long process, Raft has built a long-term relationship with the FSC, and Mick appreciates that having an independent body to manage the industry is imperative. And Raft’s green credentials do not stop there – according to Mick, his is the only company in the world to have solar-powered kilns in Indonesia. “The place has got sunlight from morning to night, they’ve got a massive natural resource, and what are other firms doing? Burning fossil fuels to dry the timber. And then calling the timber green!”
He tells me about a lecturer from Melbourne University – “one of the world’s eminent experts on drying timber” – that paid a visit to Yogyakarta, completely ignorant of Raft’s operation. When he was made aware of it, Raft’s kiln immediately became the field study for the lecturer’s latest paper. “So he’s sitting in Melbourne doing a virtual study of what he thinks would happen, and we’re sitting there with solar powered kilns and a company in Cricklewood,” laughs Mick.
Reclaimed teak furniture accounts for about half of Raft’s turnover – the other is upholstery. Since January 2013, after terminating the existing relationship with its established upholstery manufacturer, Raft has made all of its own sofas, in North London. This allows it to closely monitor quality and labour conditions, and offer made-to-order models when required.
Mick admits that he’s currently tied up in an intellectual property dispute with the former manufacturer – but it certainly isn’t the first time Raft has been forced to defend its brand. In 2012, Harvey’s settled with Raft after using Raft’s trademarked name for a new range of furniture. Raft instructed lawyers to initiate legal correspondence for trademark infringement and passing off.
“Harvey’s called a whole range the Raft range,” says Mick with disbelief. “It’s like Microsoft having a white range and calling it the Apple range! So ACID [Anti Copying in Design] stepped in, and Harvey’s withdrew all the paperwork featuring the name, and entirely stopped using it. That was a real fight.
“They also paid our legal costs. In an industry such as this, intellectual property is a key driver for sales and one of our core business assets – this was why I had no choice but to take action in that situation … and in the present, despite it being with our former manufacturer.”
I ask whether the debacle might have been purely down to ignorance rather than plagiarism. Mick laughs. “Well, in my view, there were just too many similarities. We dealt with the legal side through one of ACID’s accredited legal advisers, who was confident we had the strongest possible case. The settlement that resulted has just reinforced our rights in the Raft brand.”
“The language of the furniture industry is absolutely peppered with lies”
History then repeated itself – the offender, Loaf – last year. “Two or three weeks ago, I got compensation from Loaf for doing exactly the same thing,” says Mick. “They had a coffee table and they called it Raft – it’s got fat chunky legs and a reclaimed-looking top …”
“It’s never been about the money, but about protecting what we’ve set out to create – especially with regard to the eco certifications, which are a huge part of our brand identity.”
In short, Raft owns the trademark for the word ‘raft’ in relation to furniture – and he works hard to defend the brand he’s built. When he criticises the state of the UK trade, it’s clear Mick believes that innovation, rather than imitation, is the way forward – especially if a retailer or manufacturer wishes to play in the international league.
“Stop relying on other people to tell you what the next big thing is,” he urges. “Just trust in your own ideas, and employ the best people to help deliver them. The problem is that [Furniture News] is a mass-market newspaper, so a lot of guys reading this will respond with, ‘we don’t want to do that, we just want to buy off the shelf.’
“But if you’re just buying off the shelf, and you’re buying from some illegal company in Indonesia, you’ll just get closed down. If you’re buying from China, and our Government decides to whack a whopping great tariff on containers coming over from China, you know you can’t withstand an increase.
“I can. I can increase that [Mick picks up a small teak coffee table priced £229] by £10, and my customer accepts it. You increase a £49.99 piece by £10 and you’ve got a problem on your hands.”
Easier said than done, I posit – surely direct sourcing is simply not an option for most small companies? “That’s not true,” Mick contests. “I’ve got a factory here in North London – it’s not true that you can’t do it yourself. It’s not true that you can’t employ a designer to sit down with you and ask, ‘what is our customer like, what does our customer want?’ Let’s bring that range across to Indonesia, let’s run it past ACID first, get it copyrighted – or take it across to China if you have to have it manufactured there. There’s a host of good manufacturers in England as well – there’s loads up in Long Eaton.
“But there also has to be honesty and integrity in the industry – I can’t tell you how many times you speak to somebody and all they want to do is copy someone else’s product.
“Ultimately, people need to stop trying to race to the bottom on price.”
So, dealing with a high-value product gives Raft an edge. Its cabinet prices are not exorbitant – but, thanks to their solid teak nature, neither are they cheap. “We pay good wages in Indonesia for our employees, who we see as integral to our success,” says Mick. “However, the real value is in the reclaimed teak as a material.”
This explains why Raft runs a returns/park exchange service, with negligible loss of value – according to Mick, his teak goods simply do not depreciate. He says he sometimes finds secondhand Raft pieces on eBay selling just shy of their original prices.
“If you want solid wood – all this plantation wood, you put your nail through it and you damage it in seconds, it’s soft, quick-grown – if you want really top-end stuff, and you want it to hold its money, you’d buy teak. Because teak is getting rarer and rarer as properly-reclaimed timbers are more and more sought after, the price of it only goes up – and I know that because of the cost of the teak that I’m selling now, in comparison to a few years ago.
“It’s like this ring on my finger,” Mick gestures to me. “It’s made of platinum, and it’s gone up in value since I bought it. It’s not a dollar bill, it’s not a coin that’s been given an arbitrary figure – it’s physically worth more than when I bought it 20-odd years ago.”
If teak’s worth is indisputable, where does that leave Raft when it comes to discounting? It’s a subject of much scrutiny and soul-searching in the furniture industry, particularly given the OFT’s high-profile investigation of leading multiples last year. Raft discounts no more than 5%, and only for its January sales. I suggest that Mick is in a pretty privileged position if he doesn’t feel the need to discount to generate custom – but it’s already clear that in Raft’s case, there’s little need to.
“We don’t do BOGOF, we don’t do special deals,” says Mick. “We don’t sell on price, so we don’t have the big starburst sign in the window, and we don’t have credit signs in the shop. We don’t want people to be buying based on price and price alone.”
Mick’s distaste for discounting is all-encompassing. “I’ll be honest with you – my gripe with discounting is I can’t believe the public still believe it.”
He gives me an example. “You go into a shop and there’s two red wines that you don’t know. One of them is £8.99 and the other is £8.50 – but the £8.99 one is reduced from £17. Which one do you go for?”
Of course, I answer “the reduced one”.
“It’s ridiculous,” he says. “You’ve got no idea whether it was ever £17, and no idea if the following week they’re just going to discount the other bottle.
“It’s wrong, it’s completely wrong. I have looked the customer in the eye and said ‘look, this is the situation’ – but it won’t change your buying habit tomorrow, you’ll still go and respond to it, and so will I. It’s just a scam. And we’re all party to that misnomer.”
Consequently, Mick does his best to set out his stall clearly and honestly. Raft might not have the biggest retailer profile out there, but Mick says its customer base is growing rapidly. “We had a woman in the other day,” he says. “She was dressed to the nines in her designer clothes, and she was so embarrassed that she’d never heard of Raft before. That’s great – she’s obviously accepted it’s a high-profile brand that she just hadn’t come across. We love it when people feel they have discovered us.”
Maintaining Raft’s public image is an increasingly important issue for Mick – the last five stores he has opened are franchises, and, as such, the brand’s values must be conveyed more carefully than they would in the case of a standard expansion.
Raft’s St Albans store was cleverly set up as a model franchise operation, to demonstrate to new franchisees how Raft stores should be run. The stores look identical – “the only difference is every new store looks better than the last, which is frustrating!” – and are established following careful area studies to establish the customer base.
“The location is key,” says Mick. “You have to be fairly sophisticated with the numbers, because it’s no good just looking at where the wealthy people live, otherwise you’d end up with a shop in Belgravia – they may live in Belgravia, but they don’t shop there, they shop in Kensington. We’d probably never opt for a shop in Cricklewood if we were starting out again!”
Some have suggested that rapid store expansion was one of the reasons retailers working along arguably similar lines to Raft, such as Dwell and Lombok, were brought low. Opening franchises does lessen the financial risk attached to expansion, agrees Mick, yet “there’s a different risk. The risk is that you’ll dilute your brand”.
Consequently, for Mick, the choice of franchise partner is even more important than that of area. He works with people new to the furniture industry, because their expectations are easier to manage, and because their passion for sustainably-manufactured product is likely to be all the greater. They are often ex-customers, such as the leading architect and property developer running two of the new stores.
"We don’t want people to be buying based on price and price alone"
Much of Mick’s time – and that of Raft’s co-founder, Heinz Frye, whom I catch a quick glimpse of in the store – is spent keeping a close eye on these franchises. The expansion is truly testing their management abilities – and those of Raft’s wider staff base.
The success of the franchise operations is crucial – “we would be absolutely mortified if one of them was to fail”. Mick is already researching potential locations for further openings, driven by his clear confidence in the brand and product.
It’s rare to meet such an outspoken retail leader. During the interview we’ve also discussed the death of the high street (unequal rates, charity shops and bookies), workers’ rights in Indonesia (“we now accept that it is not acceptable to trade in blood diamonds – what they’re doing with the new forestry regulations and laws in Indonesia is absolutely right”) and shabby chic (“people aren’t buying it for a baroque house, they’re buying it because it’s a bit chintzy”) – yet the bulk of Mick’s attention is focused on the unethical elements within our sector.
“The language of the furniture industry is absolutely peppered with lies,” he laments. “What do big name retailers mean by ‘oak solids’? It’s not ‘solid oak’. It means the door fronts, the top, not the panels necessarily. When they say oak, walnut or teak ‘finish’, you can be guaranteed 100% that it is neither oak, teak, nor walnut, because they wouldn’t use the word ‘finish’.
“And the best one, ‘green wherever possible’? I saw one of the worst offenders at the Jakarta show once – an exhibitor sign said ‘we strive to be 100% green by 2020’. Really? That’s a complete condemnation of what you’re doing right now.”
Perhaps Raft truly has cut through the ‘greenwash’ in the market. It’s refreshing to discover such a no-nonsense approach, and I hope that Mick’s honesty, and that of his business, is genuine, because with every person that understands sustainability and is looking for furniture, Raft has the potential of a uniquely loyal customer.
For many years, Mick has channeled his efforts into ensuring his business is immune to the kind of condemnation he levels at others. Of course, nobody’s perfect – but Mick Quinn is striving for something completely deserving of his customers’ patronage, and you have to admire his vision.
This interview featured in the January 2014 issue of Furniture News magazine - visit here to register for free and read more.
