Best of British - Kenton Jones
We talk to some of Great Britain's business leaders and discover the secrets to their success
Kenton Jones - Managing Director of Kenton Jones Designers & Makers
In a nutshell, what does your business do?
Design, manufacture and install handcrafted kitchens and furniture.
Could you give us a short overview of your career to this point?
Being the second generation in a family business, I have grown up around timber and joinery. From an early age, as my father before me, we had woodwork tools and would be designing and building things. During my early teens, I spent time as an apprentice in a small engineering shop, although the material palette here was completely different to the family’s joinery shop, it gave me a perfect grounding to accuracy and tolerances generally associated with engineering metals. In my later teens, I worked within our joinery shop alongside all of the employees in the different departments.
Moving into my 20’s I served my time on the installation side of the company’s products as a site joiner. This also led into developing an engineered timber construction company that now sits alongside the joinery side of the business.
In my early 30’s I took on the management role from my father for the whole business and continue to do so to this day.
Who inspires you in business?
Firstly, my father as he built our business from the ground and was successful in doing this by just following his personal qualities that included; attention to detail, passion for quality, being inspirational and respectful of others and above all not afraid to think outside the box and do something others say can’t be done.
What has been the biggest challenge to your business?
The luxury joinery world is one that sees a lot of companies rise and fall through the different economic climates, these climates effect the industry heavily being a non-commodity product. By far our biggest challenge is navigating our way through today's rising material, labour, and overhead costs. As a company, I am very fortunate to have a team that is continuously looking at efficiency improvements and ways to improve our processes.
What is the unique quality that sets your business apart from others?
Throughout the years we have had the reputation of being able to deliver projects that most would shy away from. We have a deeply ingrained passion for the material we work with. That is the beautiful thing about timber; being natural and no two pieces the same it’s a material that has history and a story behind it, well before it begins its second life being turned into a piece of furniture. We have a team of people from initial design right through to completion who all appreciate timber and the qualities associated with it compared to other inanimate materials. As a company not only do we love what we do but we have a history and story to talk about and continuously add to in the future.
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