KIDS GO CRAZY AT CHRISTMAS FOR THE KOMBI KART KIT

If you want to give your children something this Christmas that develops their construction skills, allows them to be creative, sends them outside for hours of fun … and lasts way beyond Boxing Day, then look no further than the robust wooden Kombi Kart Kit from The Children’s Furniture Company.

Charles Codrington, designer of the Kombi Kart (and all the furniture made by The Children’s Furniture Company), first made a kart for his own boys, Ben & Theo; and after the tenth person in the park had said, ‘Whow, where did you get that from?’, he decided it was time to make a kit that people could buy and put together themselves.

That was three years ago and since then the Kombi Kart has been sold around the world and provided hours and hours of fun for hundreds of children.

OPEN WORKSHOP WEEKEND!

Spring is here and it’s time for a change!

In the spirit of all things sunny, we at The Children’s Furniture Company have decided to open our workshop doors and welcome you in for some huge bargains. There is also the chance to meet the designer and partake in refreshments, whilst you imagine how beautiful your child’s room will look with the furniture installed in your home.

We will be offering discounts of up to 50% off some of our best selling ranges.

So whether you like bold and bright, white and serene or warm wood, you’ll find it all under one roof!

Our last open workshop was a huge success and many people walked away with fantastic bargains, so don't miss out, come and see us:

OPEN WORKSHOP WEEKEND
SAT 15TH +16TH MAY 10am-5pm
HUGE DISCOUNTS – Up to 50% off!
Unit 3, Hardess Street (off Herne Hill Rd) SE24 0HN

Check out our new Etsy site:

As part of our ongoing mission to let everyone know just how great the Children’s Furniture Company is, we have opened up a new sister shop on Etsy. We love Etsy because it’s a place where handmade and ethical goods, like ours, are available. Our products are carefully sourced and we use water based paints, renewable source wood and in the case of our duvet covers, fairly traded cottons from India. You can find our Etsy store at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/ChildrenFurnitureCo

We have placed a few of our accessories and our famous Kombi Kart on Etsy to give you all a taster of what we do. We hope that through Etsy you will also visit our main site: http://www.thechildrensfurniturecompany.com/

Whichever site you visit, we hope that you enjoy your visit to the Children’s Furniture Company. Thanks for checking us out.

Sarah

Partners ... For Life, For Business

When you walk down the aisle on your wedding day and agree ‘to have and to hold’, ... do these vows also apply when you enter into business together too? New small businesses are popping up like daisies in the wake of the recession and this means more and more couples, married or not, are taking the business plunge ... ‘for better or for worse’. As with all things, there are positives and negatives about working with your life partner.

So what’s the upside? Well obviously you got on with each other in the first place, so there should be high levels of trust and honesty – and no doubt you’ve both got the same goals in mind. You’ve worked out where your relative strengths and weaknesses lie, and hopefully if they’re complimentary, you’ll avoid having to take on outside help in the first years of building up the company. But perhaps the biggest perk is actually being able to spend time with your partner and build something together for you and your children’s future.

Everything that’s an upside can be viewed equally as a downside! ... You see too much of each other; you never switch off; your conversations are dominated by the business and you never actually have time for your children because you’re working night and day. Even the boundaries that exist in a more traditional workplace can be strained and a power struggle between couples about who’s in charge of what, may occur. So working with someone you are married to, can mean that the line between the person you love and the person you work with, becomes blurred. And as a sanguine thought, when you have all your eggs in one basket and things are going well, that’s great; but in a downturn such as now, it’s a bit scary to think there is no other income but the business.

A couple who have had to experience many of these issues and just get on with it, are Charles and Sarah Codrington of The Children’s Furniture Company. They have been working together since 2002 and whilst it hasn’t always been a bed of roses, they have a few helpful strategies in keeping home and work harmonious. At work they have agreed a clear demarcation of labour and try not to interfere too much in each other’s area of expertise. Charles deals with all the furniture design, manufacture and production side of things; whilst Sarah is in charge of marketing, sales and logistics. So day to day they keep out of each other’s hair and when the working day is done ... ‘keep away from the dreaded email,’ is their advice, (or at least try), focus on the children and enjoy individual activities if you can - in Charles’ case he’s a mad keen cyclist and in Sarah’s, a passionate tennis player.

Despite the ups and downs, they still find it great fun to collaborate creatively on overall direction for the company. After 8 years workings and designing children’s furniture, they have a good grasp of what customers want and need for their children. Sarah comments that “we feel really chuffed when customers are happy with their purchases and we get positive feedback on the things we have designed and made. We really take it very personally!”

It’s That Time of Year Again…

We are on the verge of announcing our Superb Summer Sale 2009.

The sale is due to start 13th July, so keep watching this space to learn about great reductions and our now famous ‘Star Buys’ - they are always on a first come first served basis and last year, sold out in under an hour!

Also, for those of you who are MUMSNET members, be sure to have a peek at their ‘competitions’ section for your chance to win one of our Vanilla white beds (valued at £295) as well as any one of our beautiful cotton duvet sets to match (worth £49). If you are not registered on MUMSNET, simply go online to http://www.mumsnet.com/ and sign up!

You Get What You Pay For!

The credit crunch has switched everyone’s focus to the value OF money as opposed to value FOR money. The old adage of ‘taking care of the pennies so that the pounds take care of themselves’ has collided with the mentality of our recent throw-away society and resulted in people purchasing furniture that will do the job for the time being until they find something better. Whatever happened to finding furniture that you loved and that helped create a home as an expression of yourself? Whatever happened to heirloom pieces?

Durable, high quality children’s furniture is our specialty and we often get asked about the difference in prices between independent furniture companies like us and the big retailers. The gist of my answer is that if you want a quality item, you will generally find that it has a higher price tag attached. Retailers of mass produced furniture have done a lot to skew the public’s perception of furniture prices as well as their perception of quality. Cheap furniture is available everywhere! You know the sort, relatively stylish, inexpensive, quite cookie cutter-like and mass produced; the type of things that wobble after a year of “tough love” in a family home.

The best way to tackle making a furniture purchase, especially for children’s furniture, is to spend your money consciously and look at the purchase as an investment, not as a temporary solution that can be chucked away on a whim. Remember that overtime, replacing cheap furniture that you only sort of liked in the first place will cost you at least the same amount as the quality item that you loved, but was just out of your price range when you first went shopping.

It’s fair to say that people are starting to realise that the world’s resources are not inexhaustible – we’re told about it nearly every day - and slowly attitudes are beginning to change about the purchase decisions we make. Now, it seems that more and more people are looking to restore and care for things they may have previously decided to throw away, or as we have heard from our customers, are considering spending wisely on things they know will last.

It seems clear that there’s a growing number of people who understand the logic of paying a bit more for craftsmanship, design and sustainability of quality furniture. These people look for furniture, such as the pieces we sell at The Children’s Furniture Company, that you can build a room (and ultimately a home) around – furniture that will last through childhood and beyond. No matter what design elements you want to change over time, beautiful quality pieces of furniture provide a foundation from which you can explore with soft furnishings and décor. A good piece of furniture will always be in style!

Keeping it Close To Home

Over the years, we have explored different options around the world for sourcing manufacturers who can make our exclusive ranges of children’s furniture, and have found, in time (thanks to plenty of trial and error) that in more ways than one, British is often best! So now, made by our UK suppliers are, the Victoria, Pic’N Mix, Toffee, Caramel, and Vanilla ranges. This post mentions some of the reasons why we have made the decision to stick to Britain.

1. Transportation and the big, scary carbon footprint: Everyone is trying to do what they can for the environment. As business owners, we want to be sure that our company’s negative impact on the environment is as small as possible too. When dealing with furniture, it’s not unusual to see woods being sourced from Europe, then furniture being made and assembled in China before returning to Europe and finally being sent on to the UK. That furniture has travelled further than lots of people ever will! Think of the carbon footprint! All the benefits of cheaper production and material costs, one could argue, are entirely offset by the environmental impact made by massive ships plying their way across our Oceans - let alone the time needed for the whole process. Because of the distance furniture needs to travel when it’s made overseas and the amount of handling that it endures, each piece needs to be packed into containers with many protective layers of plastic and cardboard wrapping. Comparatively, transportation across the UK in one of our environmentally friendly LPG (liquid petroleum gas) vans can be done with those items wrapped securely in reusable, recycled furniture blankets!

2. Simplicity: It sure is a lot easier to coordinate shipments with UK suppliers. There are no language barriers, no international shipping containers to arrange and considerably less concern over damage occurring during a long transit. At a basic level, furniture that’s made and dispatched from within Britain gets to us and then to you a whole lot faster. It allows us to replenish stocks quickly which means that we can provide people with what they want within a reasonable time span.

3. The current economy: There is lots of interest in keeping British jobs for British folks to help spur on the economy. We do have an interest in trying to help out with this where we can and if a British supplier is available for a line we are interested in making, we try to deal with them for all these reasons and because we really like the idea of having our children’s furniture mostly made here. It must also be considered that now that the pound is not as strong as it used to be, getting furniture made in Europe or Asia is not always a better deal.

4. Reliability: British companies tend to be pretty reliable. I am not trying to knock companies from other countries, as the majority of those that we have dealt with have been very good, but different cultures do not always have the same sense of urgency or quality control that is commonly expected in the UK. British workshops have Health and Safety standards to adhere to (as mentioned in the previous post about MDF) which makes us very comfortable to use them to make our products. We have achieved an assortment of accolades and awards for our British made furniture, such as The Furniture Maker’s Manufacturing Guild Mark, which is an award for excellence in manufacturing. This really is a tribute to the workmanship in our furniture and gives us the confidence to say our products really are top notch!