The story so far

Wiltshire. We’re British born and British raised. We put down roots here in Wiltshire over 20 years ago and that’s where you’ll find us still.

Our head office is a pretty inspirational place to work (if we do say so ourselves) and this is where each of our designs are born and where all of our making stories begin. They often end their design journey here too. We have a specialist carpentry workshop next to our head office where we inspect, perfect, and craft bespoke pieces of cabinetry. A few steps away from that are our painting workshops where we carry out custom paint projects and the precision finishing that we’ve become known for. And above that is our training academy. This is the place that sees us experiment with new ideas, develop new ways of doing things, and teach all of our approved kitchen fitters the art of installing a Neptune kitchen.

Qingdao. As we grew, we took our production overseas and built two workshops, from scratch, in China. Not many companies get to say that. Instead they outsource their work to manufacturers from all over the world who work on products for a myriad of other brands. But we wanted to do things properly. To make our production run even more smoothly, we recently decided to move all of our making to the one workshop in the northern city of Qingdao (the host city for sailing in the 2008 Olympics). It's all looked after by cool-as-a-cucumber Pavelas. He built his team gradually, bringing in expertise from countries far and wide; excellence isn’t always easy to find. They operate to the same exacting standards as we do in our UK office with a deep respect for local customs and traditions. They're Neptune, just as we are. We're one team who are only geographically oceans apart.

Our making story doesn’t stop at Britain and China, it goes much further.

North America. For sustainable timber sourcing.
Myanmar. For rattan weaving.
Portugal. For throw knitting.
India. For rug looming.
Yorkshire. For mattress making (the traditional way).

Where we have the expertise to make something ourselves, we do. We’re fantastic cabinet makers, we’re superb when it comes to textiles, and we’re more than a dab hand with a paintbrush. But we have no qualms in saying “actually, we’re not skilled in glass blowing”. (Yet). So for certain, specialist crafts, we search for the people who are bona fide experts.

We like to think of it as one big global family of kindred makers.

Our way of thinking always starts with ‘people first’. We know what it feels like to have a family, to work hard, to contend with life’s ups and downs, and so when we make, we try to come up with things that will make life easier and better.

We find inspiration on our own soil but we’ll also look overseas to Provençal styling and subtle Gustavian grandeur. It’s a bit like a quest, where we track down iconic English designs that have been reinterpreted on other shores. We admire what they’ve done, and learn from it, but we want to reclaim them and bring them back home to make them our own all over again. But we never lose sight of the fact that we’re trying to achieve timelessness. We’re not interested in what’s going to come and go. We fuel our thought by looking forward, but not being afraid to glance back either.

Everything we make uses a happy combination of traditional craft and modern-day making. We obsess over joinery favouring dovetails and mortise and tenon over pins and staples. But we also invest in cutting-edge technology like lasers to precision-make our work surfaces. It’s a fine balance between then and now. And if it isn’t already apparent, we build to last. In every sense of the word. Quality, craft, materials, style, and service.