To date, we haven’t made much noise about our bespoke service. In truth, it started small. We were creating things like simple filler panels to complete a kitchen scheme. It wasn’t quite a service at this stage, more of a possible solution where there existed no other. But it felt like there could be more to it.
That meant we needed people. Specialists and craftsmen. As we write this article there are 22 people who work purely for the bespoke team at our Wiltshire head office. Ten of those are carpenters, a handful more focus on finishing. We have a couple of apprentices, one person who takes care of all of the administration, and one designer. And by the end of April there will be more. It turns out, bespoke is a service that’s more in demand than we’d first anticipated.
Bespoke, to us, is something that we create outside of our ‘standard’ collections. We use the same design principles, the same exacting criteria, and the same level of technical expertise. It’s proven most popular in kitchens, where a Neptune designer might suggest that a bespoke cabinet would work better for a specific project. It could be a case of simply altering the size if the dimensions of the space are making it tricky to achieve the perfect layout or wisest use of space. We categorically don’t believe in ‘it will have to do’. We create what works. It could be that there’s a gap at the end of a run and a customer doesn’t want one of our breadboard and tray blocks, or tea towel rails, instead they wish that the cabinets were that bit wider. So we make them wider. Or narrower as the case may be. Or shorter (low cottage ceilings can often get in the way). Sometimes, it happens the other way around and a customer has thought up a new cabinet creation that they desperately want to have in their home. Together we’ll explore the design, and make it happen. And if it can’t, perhaps for safety reasons, we’ll find a happy middle ground and design something as close to their original design as we can.