Paul Albutt, national sales manager at Charltons Furniture, answers Furniture News’ questions about the company's strongest product area offering and the issues surrounding it.
What is your strongest product area?
Charltons offers furniture products for all of the modern home. However, we are particularly strong in dining. We currently offer six very different dining collections that are in high customer demand.
What are your historic and current bestsellers and why are they so popular?
Historically, Bretagne has been incredibly popular and that still remains the case today. It is a big winner because with the range we are offering a semi-bespoke product.
We are handing choice to the customer, with 18 different paint colours, five stains, a choice of contemporary accessories and the product is delivered in natural, lacquered or oiled wood. Our Somerset-based paint shop can offer a great looking product in a finish that matches exactly what the customer wants.
As regards our new collections, since Interiors UK in January, orders for Rutland have been extremely strong, with customers really liking the reclaimed pine with the painted finish and chunky metal handles. Xandra has also become extremely popular, offering great value for money as well as quality.
What trends are you currently experiencing?
Oak still remains strong but our USP of choice of paint and finish is proving more and more popular. In terms of colour, Limestone seems to be the current colour of choice for our customers.
Have customer preferences in the dining room sector changed much over time? In what way and why?
Customers are no longer prepared to accept what others think that they want. They want a genuine choice on what they buy for their home.
What are the key issues affecting your bestselling product at a retail level?
Choice, price and delivery.
And at a supply level?
In order to improve both quality and reliability we have recently undergone substantial changes on the supply side. However, these moves aimed at improving quality unfortunately brought with them their own problems, creating far longer delays than envisaged. Matters were not helped when one of the factories we did use in China suddenly ceased production.
The positive news is that hopefully the problems with supply and delivery are now well behind us. We have spent a substantial time building a new base of manufacturers in China, able to meet our most rigorous standards of quality. Our own team in China carries out constant quality inspections and we also regularly fly out from the UK to carry out inspections both during manufacture as well as packing and shipping.
What are your observations on how best to retail your product?
At the end of the day you have to have a reputation for delivering a product of real quality that the public wants to buy. If a product is of poor quality then with all the dressing up in the world, the public are not going to buy it. At Charltons, we have built a reputation of trust and we sell products of real quality. We work closely with our retailers and intend to work even more closely with them in the future, so that they know everything that there is to know about our products. Good point-of-sale is also essential.
What are your personal tastes and preferences?
I have Charltons furniture in my home of course! I remain a big fan of oak, but me and my family have a lot of painted furniture at home – it looks fresh and different. I am simply following the trend shown by our own customers!
