Member Article

Investment builds on exceptional year for Oakstone Designs

A Darlington-based luxury kitchen company has expanded its operation after a fruitful year of business.

Oakstone Designs, which specialises in the design, construction and installation of stunning high quality kitchens, is set to achieve its best financial year yet, since establishing in 2004.

As a result, the firm has made several investments, including increasing its production capacity with the expansion of its workshop, purchasing new machinery and securing a new office.

Oakstone Designs’ founder, Stephen Kennedy, hopes the investments the Company has made will facilitate an increase in projects for the firm during the coming year.

The ambitious owner said: “After the launch of our new showroom in Northumberland Street earlier this year, we knew the next step was to expand our workshop capacity to accommodate the increase in orders that we hoped the new showroom would bring.

“The workshop expansion in Morton Park has created an additional 1200 square feet of useable space, which enables the business to run far more efficiently.”

Part of the expansion was the investment of £25,000 in the purchase of a new combination woodworking machine, which will help the firm maintain its high standards of quality and will also increase the machining capacity of the workshop.

Stephen added: “I’ve always believed in buying the best machinery possible in order to facilitate the quality of our furniture and this new machine has certainly had all of our hearts racing.

“As with all of our machinery, it was custom built to our specification in Austria and is accurate in all of its operations to one tenth of a millimetre.”

Looking back at his company’s accomplishments over the last year, Stephen said: “It is like watching your children grow up, you don’t really notice a daily difference, but every now and then you look at them and think blimey when did you grow that tall?

“It has been a great year and we have worked very hard on organising the structure of the Company and ensuring that we are well positioned for future growth. My aim is to always have a happy workforce and happy customers; they are my favourite kind.”

The investments continue to build on the award-winning kitchen company’s successes in 2016, which, aside from winning a national award, saw the opening of the new showroom, a new website and the recruitment of award-winning designer George Campbell.

To find out more about Oakstone Designs, please visit, http://oakstonedesigns.co.uk/.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Harvey and Hugo .