Wren Kitchens

Wren Kitchens now re-branded as Wren Living, is a privately owned British designer, manufacturer and retailer of fully assembled kitchen cabinets, fitted bedrooms and furniture for bedrooms, lounge, dining and home offices. The company has 46 showrooms across the UK, and its headquarters, known as The Nest, in Barton-Upon-Humber in North Lincolnshire, England. The headquarters was previously in Howden, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England until December 2013.

History

Wren Kitchens was founded in 2009 and is a sister company of Ebuyer.com which was founded in November 2000. The management team behind Wren has 35 years' experience within the kitchen market in both the UK and USA. The team traded for 10 years in the US before the business was sold and the team moved back to the UK, where they built a £250 million internet retailing business. Wren Kitchens was established in 2009, offering customers fully assembled kitchen units. Wren later launched a bedroom range in July 2012.

Production plant

Wren manufactures their kitchens and bedroom furniture in its own production plant in Scunthorpe,^[2] North Lincolnshire, where it created 300 jobs.^[3] Wren invested an additional £5 million into the production plant and its machinery in 2013, creating a further 100 jobs within the Scunthorpe area.^[4] Also in 2013, Wren bought a 750,000 square foot plant in Barton-upon-Humber from Kimberly-Clark.^[5]

Showrooms

Wren products are sold exclusively through its own retail outlets, a growing network of showrooms. Between 2009 and 2013, Wren opened showrooms in Aberdeen, Ashton-under-Lyne, Basildon, Beckton, Bolton, Bristol (South), Bristol (Cribbs Causeway), Cardiff, Chester, Darlington, Doncaster, Dundee, Erdington, Gateshead, Glasgow, Hamilton, Hayes, Hemel Hempstead, Howden, Huddersfield, Hull, Ipswich, Lincoln, Liverpool, Norwich, Nottingham, Orpington, Oxford, Poole, Portsmouth, Reading, Rotherham, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Southampton, Solihull, Staples Corner, Stevenage, Stirling and Thurrock. Up to 18 further showrooms are planned to be in operation by the end of 2013 taking the number of retail stores to 50.^[4]

Delivery and fitting

Deliveries to customers are organised so that all items – assembled cabinets, worktops, accessories and appliances – are delivered at the same time, by Wren’s own fleet^[6] direct from the factory.

Wren offers a free home measure service and installation may be arranged via a local teams of professional fitters. The company offers financial services provided by Barclays Finance

Related companies

Wren Kitchens is a subsidiary of Ebuyer.com, a UK online retailer of computer and electrical goods.

Consumer confidence

In 2011, Wren launched a bid to protect consumer confidence in UK companies in the kitchen and bedroom sector following the demise of the HomeForm Group.^[7] The company offered to honour quotes given by Moben Kitchens and Sharps Bedrooms to ensure anyone who had paid up to a 50% deposit would not be left out of pocket.^[8] In an article in The Times^[9] the aggressive expansion of Wren Kitchens and Bedrooms was cited as the reason for HomeForm Group, (parent company of Moben Kitchens and Sharps Bedrooms) being put into administration. Wren subsequently offered to protect the deposits of customers affected by the collapse of the group.^[10]

References

External links

• Wren Living