Aaron Meredith

Tell me a little bit about yourself and your business.

Aaron: I’ve had a sales background for the last 10 years and I’ve been designing kitchens for most of this. I started my KBB journey with Wickes. I was with them for four years, doing kitchens and bathrooms. Then I spent a good chunk of time with Howdens, and the last company I worked for was Wren.

When I moved from retail to trade at Howdens, that’s kind of where I formed the business's initial ideas. I sat on it for three years before I actually decided to do anything with it.

In a roundabout way, my position at Wren was market research. Although obviously I wanted to make a living, my main intention was to spend time understanding the business.

I’ve been doing AM Kitchen Consultancy for the last four months now, it’s been the best public-facing four months. But there was a lot of preparation in the run-up to actually going live with it, and things have taken off quite well.

When I left Wren, I gave myself a six-month runway to get up off the ground and start building a client base, but I actually managed to balance the books within my first couple of months. I’m just getting up to my 22nd client in the last four months.

A lot of it’s been word of mouth locally. And then Instagram has done a lot of work for me as well. I knew coming into the business, content was going to be one of the defining factors of whether it would be a successful business or not.

So that’s kind of where I am now four months in, doing quite well, probably a bit more growth in there, and I’ve got a grander vision of where I want the business to go eventually.

I don’t think it’s enough to just go freelance, but this personal shopper model - I don’t really know anyone else who’s doing it.

Who is your target audience?

Aaron: My avatar is the mid-range customer anywhere between £10,000 and £30,000. Most of the projects I work with fall somewhere between £15,000 and £20,000, although I do try and work with any budget.

I did a kitchen for a lady the other week - she’d been quoted a kitchen with Wickes for £13,000. I managed to find her the kitchen for £7,900, and organised a fitter to support her as well, so even after fitting we managed to save her about two and a half grand.

My business is not all about saving money, it’s more about the time as well. I’ve spent a lot of time in the industry, so I know there’s a lot of working class people out there who don’t want to be bouncing from showroom to showroom. I’m kind of trying to plug that gap.

And then obviously budget stuff, your B&Q, your off-the-shelf Wickes stuff, people are probably not going to be able to save much money with me, so they’re probably best off doing that themselves.

Your business is built around giving homeowners independent advice instead of selling them a kitchen. How do you define yourself?

Aaron: Correct. There’s no selling of a kitchen from me. I design it first, and then I take that and get various quotes from various different places, depending on the specification of the kitchen.

It’s hard to label I’m trying to fill the boots of a mortgage broker, but in the kitchen industry. I see myself as a personal shopper, maybe a customer advocate. So although I design kitchens, that’s just the vehicle I use to help customers.

How does your business model work?

Aaron: So we take a bit of a step back. We'll talk about the kitchen you’re ideally after. We won’t think too much about the product as such. I just talk about layout and how they picture the kitchen, then we’ll talk about colours, worktops, etc.

I’ll design the ideal kitchen for that person I don't fixate on unit sizes, about what type of doors we’re using, etc. I’ll just design the kitchen to the customer’s ideal situation.

I’ll be quite blunt with them along the way, like look, what’s your budget? Do you have any ideas where you want me to look for the kitchen for you, and if they don’t, I’ll use my own expertise to do that.

Most people who come to see me have already been around some of the major retailers. There are also a lot of independents who reach out to me on Instagram and TikTok as well, asking me to quote business with them.

So far there’s been no pattern as to where my customers are buying their kitchens from. It depends on the customer’s needs. Some people might get to the end of the project and say, “I want finance,” in which case they probably need to go to Wren. Or if they need the kitchen in two weeks’ time, Howdens is probably going to be a better bet.

Some customers are just averse to going into any of the nationals and want more of an independent company to deal with, in which case I’ll go to an independent, whichever suits them. That’s about it, really.

I’m mainly trying to give people confidence that they’re buying the right thing. I’ll get the full quotes.

Let’s just say you come to me with your budget of £20,000 and ideas of how you want it ideally. I’ll then go away and get you quotes from various different places, and I’ve got a report that I generate for customers.

At the end, you’ll have a report on the quality of the door, the quality of the hardware, the warranty on all of the products, and the perks of going with each company whether they offer finance packages, whether they’re able to get your kitchen in a week’s time, whether this company is more flexible if there’s any changes that need to be made down the line.

And then I’ll have a little section there saying, if this were my kitchen, I would probably go here, but for your circumstances, these might be the reasons why you would want to go there.

If the customer still can’t make a decision off the back of that report, then we can just have a call and discuss it and whittle it down to one or two, and then they can visit those places and decide what’s best for them.

It’s definitely a niche in the market. I can't see anyone else doing it. It does come with its drawbacks. I can imagine I might start pissing off some companies eventually if I’m getting various quotes, but I’m on the customer’s side, not the businesses’.

I speak my mind. I’m not bothered if I annoy these businesses at the end of the day, I’m looking after the customer, and that’s that. I charge the customers a consultancy fee. You probably saw my pricing on my website.

You started AM Kitchen Consultancy to give homeowners proper independent advice, the kind you can’t get standing in a showroom being sold to. What are some things you saw independents doing that made you build your business differently?

Aaron: I personally think most of the industry is doing lip service to the word “bespoke.” These days, you can buy a so-called “bespoke” kitchen everywhere. But are kitchens truly bespoke? Can you honestly say most kitchens sold are bespoke? Because nine times out of 10, you’re going to get modular furniture with a couple of doors modified here or there.

You can’t really say you’re a design-led business if the end goal is to sell your own product I truly believe that. So I’ve chosen to separate myself from the whole process.

Don’t get me wrong, not every single designer in the industry is a salesman. I appreciate that. But at the end of the day, if you’re working for a company, your incentives are always going to be to sell that company’s product. If the end goal is always to sell the product that you’re selling, then there’s always going to be a conflict of interest.

From my own perspective, it doesn’t really matter where that kitchen comes from, because I’m already paid to offer that service. My main focus is just to design a kitchen, and then the actual kitchen gets bought on the back end of that.

I’m not necessarily anti-showroom. I'd say I’m more anti-confusion. I’m more about shining a light on the product for customers, so they know exactly what they’re getting.

I don’t hate showrooms, I don’t hate the nationals, I don’t hate any company as such I just don’t look at it like that. You’ve got independents probably looking at those big companies thinking, “Oh, what are they doing,” but whereas I look at it as a whole — the whole of the kitchen industry.

I suppose I can say things in my Instagram videos that some people just can’t, because I’ve got nobody to answer to.

You are very open about your service pricing on your website. How has it benefited your business?

Aaron: I think people are crying out for transparency and honesty and trust. I think saying things like “50% sale” or “60% sale” just turns people off with this sort of information age that we’re in. So I chose to be as transparent as I could be.

Does that limit the type of customers coming in?

Aaron: I’m only targeting one person. I'm not trying to take over and shop for everybody. I’ve focused on one particular avatar, and that’s all I’m aiming for. It’s the middle of the market.

I don’t want to try and pretend that I can source you a better kitchen than your Tom Howleys or your bigger kitchen companies because at the end of the day, the people who shop at Tom Howley don’t care what they spend per se it’s the service & brand name that they’re after.

Most people buy one or two kitchens in their entire life, so it’s a new experience for them every time. I want to make sure they’re not going into it blind, because nine times out of 10, that’s what happens.

I’ve seen it day in, day out, when I worked for these companies people go in with no idea how to shop for a kitchen, no idea whether they’re getting good value for money. Often it’s potluck which designer they sit down with, whether they’re going to be upsold something they don’t need, or whether they end up spending an extra grand and a half on a worktop that they could have got cheaper elsewhere for the same product.

It’s not all about money, really it’s the time, I suppose. My three main pillars are to save people time, save them money, and make sure they don’t get sold to or misled when buying a kitchen. That’s exactly it. I've done it very intentionally.

I didn’t want anybody landing on my page and wondering how much I cost, wondering what service I offer. I want to make it as clean as possible, so people know what they’re getting themselves into when they work with me.

I’m not selling the kitchen, right I’m selling my time and my service, so it costs what it costs.

There are, however, instances where some of the retailers may pay me a bit, like they would a tradesman. In those sorts of scenarios, I always lay my cards on the table with customers and say, ‘look, this place here, they’re quoting you this, but they’re willing to pay me this,’ and I split the difference with my consultancy fee.

So, just say, as an example, if a customer pays me £400, and I then go to an independent, and they offer me £300 to give them the business. I’ll often give the customer back the consultancy fee so I still make my £400, but it’ll be £300 from the company, £100 from the customer.

And in some cases, customers are willing to let me take a bit of a slice of the pie from the supplier, like if kitchens go through Wren, for instance, I have the potential to earn more BUT i don’t let that be the reason why a customer buys a kitchen.

Ultimately, I want the customer to buy the kitchen that was the best kitchen for their project. If the right kitchen for the customer pays me nothing additionally then so be it.

Rising material costs have affected the whole industry. How are you putting together affordable project quotes without lowering your standards?

Aaron: By getting four or five quotes, you can get an average cost of what it should be. My industry experience helps too. I know what levers I can pull to make sure I’m getting a price as best as it can be.

So if I go to Howdens, I can press them on their margins, and I know where I can pull the price down to. I can take that quote —  bit cheeky — over to Wren and say, “What can you do for me?” I’m trying to make sure they’re still making money but not taking the mick out of the customer on the margin.

A lot of these ideas have been built up through my time working in kitchens. I can think back to one particular instance when I was working for Howdens: a builder bought a kitchen and made 20% before the kitchen even was delivered. That really got to me because it was a £20,000 kitchen, so the builder already had maybe £4,000 in the pocket before he’d even put a unit in.

I'm sure not all builders and fitters do that, but situations like these just added to the fuel that made me think this is why I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I just don’t want my incentives to be skewed. I always want to keep that main vision.

I can imagine there’s a lot of freelancers who may have had the same sort of vision as myself, and the business might not have done well. They might not stick to the path, and end up finding a supplier of kitchens, and then they just become another independent designer who sells somebody else’s product.

I’ve been approached by suppliers saying, “Do you want to supply our products?” I’m not interested. I do not want to sell anybody’s kitchen.

I truly believe my business will become a national company. I hope a national customer advocacy, whether that’s a network of designers like myself all over the country, or whether it becomes like a tech company, like Go Compare, for instance. I don’t know which path the company’s going to take, but we’ll see.

You’ve seen the national chains from the inside, what can independents learn from them?

Aaron: Let’s take Wren. Technologically, they’re way up ahead of anyone else. Their design software is like paint-by-numbers — it makes it very, very easy to design a kitchen, and very, very easy to not make a mistake.

You don’t need to be an advanced kitchen designer to design a kitchen with Wren. So that sort of high turnover of staff they have constantly moving designers on and getting new designers in doesn’t really affect them. They’re able to get somebody off the ground and design a kitchen within a month or two. And their processes are so tight that you can’t sell any other way.

I struggled with Wren. I sold well with them, but I didn’t like the way they worked. Their sales approach was very hard-nosed. The follow-up schedule was absolutely mental; you're ringing customers every other day after they’ve had a quote. Their processes are great, though. If you’re a salesman, it’s a dream.

Howdens are very flexible if there’s a problem, they’re quick to fix it. It’s a bit more of a grey area than that with the kitchen technically being sold to a builder rather than the end user, but if there’s a problem with the size of a unit, you can take that product back to the depot and get a new one. If you’re buying a kitchen, Howdens is probably going to be the easiest company to deal with to change faulty products.

Wickes are a great employer. Of all the three places I worked for, I felt more valued there than I did anywhere else. They look after their staff, they’re quite flexible as a designer, you can sort of pick and choose your hours. As long as you’re fulfilling your contract and putting in your numbers, they’re not going to get on your back.

What are some of your favourite softwares that help you run your business better?

Aaron: I use WinnerFlex to design. If I’m being honest, it was more to do with familiarity. I used 2020 Fusion working for Wickes and Howdens.

When I started my business, I went out and looked at what software I could actually use, and I came to the conclusion WinnerFlex was the closest to Fusion for me. It’s fully adaptable. I can resize units, I can change the units to any colour I want, I’ve got a host of libraries for appliances, door styles, I can pretty much do whatever I want on it. And it’s got a very good rendering engine on it as well, so the end renders are very professional.

Then I use AI to sort of adjust the lighting, to give the customer a better idea of what the kitchen is going to look like.

So whatever renders I produce through Winner, once I’ve generated them, if the lighting’s not quite right, I’ll adjust it with AI and make it look a bit more realistic.

I’ve got pro subscriptions with ChatGPT, and I use Claude as well. I’m a one-man band, so for my landing page, I’ve used AI as an assistant to build all that. It’s all my copy, but it helps me a lot.

I built my own bespoke CRM with Emergent AI for my business. I don’t need to code it; AI codes it for me. It’s basically an application with a login to protect customer information. It’s much like the CRMs you’d see at most kitchen companies. The only difference is it follows my customers’ journey.

Emergent AI helped me build out my website and it’s also built the app on my phone, so I can manage all my customers on there. I’ve got customer cards and I can WhatsApp message, email, and leave voice notes through that.

Say I go to visit a customer, I can leave little voice notes on there. And if I need to quickly reply to a customer without thinking too hard about what I want to say, I can just do a quick AI prompt and it’ll write a message for me.

It took about four weeks to put together the different iterations. I built it, tested it, found out what I did and didn’t like. I’m not the best with admin stuff so I’ve built this out just to try and keep myself focused.

It’s absolutely bespoke, it doesn't belong to anybody but me. It’s all built for me.

I did try SketchUp, but I didn’t really get on with it. So really, all I use is my email portal, Instagram, WinnerFlex for design, AI for some of the lighting, and then my CRM to manage my customers’ data.

If an independent showroom wants to bring in more customers next month, given your success, what should they be doing today?

Aaron: I think independents need to put a better face on the company. They should focus more on customer trust.

I see a lot of independents on Instagram showing pretty pictures and renders of the kitchens they’re doing. I really don’t believe people need to see an excess amount of that.

You’ll notice on my Instagram I’ve got one set of renders on there, and it’s intentional, because I don’t want to attract a load of companies to my business. I want customers, and that’s it. So I intentionally keep my renders off my website. And if people ask to see my portfolio, I share it with them.

A lot of what you see on my Instagram if you go from the beginning, you can see it’s sort of formulated and it’s updated as it’s gone along.

I can use one particular example: Kitchens by Guy. I genuinely believe he is one of the perfect examples of an independent kitchen company. I really like his straight-talking approach, and I like how he puts himself out there for his own business, and I think independents could learn a lot from him.

What’s with the penguin?

Aaron: It’s a bit of  an inside story, it was just my six-year-old daughter. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, really. A lot of these kitchen companies use birds; you’ve got Howdens with the rooster, Wren with the 'wren'. So I asked my daughter, ‘What’s your favourite bird?’ And she told me it’s a penguin. And I asked her what her favourite colour was, and she said, ‘Pink,’ so there’s the branding, and there’s the bird.

What tactical advice would you give to a young designer who wants to leave a job to go independent like you did?

Aaron: Just believe in yourself, and spend a bit of time planning what you want to do — really think about who you’re trying to reach before you go into it. And then just save yourself a bit of money to give yourself a runway to get going.

When I started my business, I had two kids, nine months and six years old. And I’ve got a mortgage and a lot of responsibilities, so I made sure that I had a good six-month runway to get started. So just have a backup plan, and believe in yourself.

It took me three years before I decided to actually start the business, even though I had the seed of the idea for a while. All the time I spent working for these companies, I was formulating and understanding the type of people that I wanted to reach.

I don’t think it’s enough to go out into the market and say, right, I’m an independent, I’ll design a kitchen for anybody. You really need to think about who you’re trying to reach, and you need to know who you’re selling to or offering your service to.

I don’t like just using myself as an example, but with the videos that I produce, I’m always talking to a particular customer. When I’m scripting my videos or talking on my videos, I’m always thinking about the customer I’m trying to reach. If I’d come in all “anti-showroom this, anti-showroom that,” I don’t think it would have worked as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I have got my opinions on the industry, but I don’t want that to be what I’m known for.

A lot of people are too quick to slag off all the different companies, there’s a particular person out there who actually hates Wren and says he’ll never buy from them, but Wren’s got plenty of positives as well.

I think it’s totally dependent on the customer as to who they should buy their kitchen from. One kitchen for my neighbour might be the wrong kitchen for me, and vice versa.

It’s really unfair to single out one particular company and say they’re terrible, because there are positives within each company. Just using Wren, for example, there are kitchens in their range I would quite comfortably have in my own house.

You need to understand the product you buy. There are specific types of doors that I would absolutely avoid, hinges and hardware that I would absolutely avoid. That’s where my experience comes in because I pass that on to customers.

For new designers wanting to do something like I’m doing, I would just say: really focus on who you’re trying to reach, and then just get on with it, and do it. Don’t be too afraid. What’s the worst that can happen? You fail, and then you end up going back to being a designer for another national.