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The British Are Coming

Wren Kitchens, The Popular UK Brand,
Has Arrived in America

Design:

WREN KITCHENS is hoping to attract American shoppers with European-style cabinets that are made in the United States.  They also offer appliances, counters, cabinet hardware, sinks and faucets, all on display in large retail showrooms that are dedicated to selling kitchens only.

    There is a new entrant in the already cutthroat competition for American remodeling dollars, and only time will tell whether or not this is good news for consumers.  Wren Kitchens, the huge British-based kitchen retailer, whose core business is its cabinets, is extending its reach across the Atlantic to begin tapping into the U.S. market.  Of all the products that go into a new kitchen, cabinets are by far the most important.  They define its looks and its functionality.  They also eat up the biggest chunk of most kitchen budgets, usually between 30 and 40 percent.   Since a typical, full kitchen remodeling project with new cabinets costs between $25,000 and $75,000 in the U.S. (estimates vary wildly) and given that its consumers spend over $70 billion on such projects each year, it’s understandable that any cabinet manufacturer and retailer would be hot to get a piece of that outlay.  With 5 showrooms in Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania and more planned throughout the Northeast, plus a manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania Wren is spending lots of money and moving quickly to establish itself as a major presence on the far side of the pond. 

The cabinets Wren Kitchens makes and sells come with some state-of-the-art options not always available in other mass-market cabinets, like the convenient pull-out pantry shelves, left, or the cube shaped “Magic Corner” device for blind corner cabinets, center, or the stylish over-the-sink dish/wine rack, right.

      Wren is clearly positioning itself to compete against big-box retailers like Home Depot, Lowes and IKEA, but it will offer consumers a specialized, strictly-kitchen sales environment, something the other guys can’t, and it is throwing in a lot of fun goodies, like the VR, the extra features and some sweet styling that will set it apart.  As with the other three big-box retailers, Wren does not install their kitchens due to liability issues, but  it will arrange for a “partner” contractor to do the installation, or you can find your own or do it yourself.  Wren prices seem to overlap with the lower end of what’s offered at Home Depot and Lowe’s, which is where those two companies do most of their kitchen business.  In terms of lifestyle appeal, aesthetics and market niche, though, the key target of Wren’s entry into U.S. market seems to be IKEA, which also offers European styles at low prices.  By emphasizing that its cabinets are made in the U.S., though, Wren is perhaps hoping to gain an edge over the Swedish giant, which imports all of its cabinets.   

     Wren’s arrival in the U.S. should offer remodelers some new choices and more competitive prices, especially on cabinets.  While the company sells a range of kitchen products and presents itself as a one-stop resource for most of what goes into a new kitchen, its cabinets, which the company manufactures, are its bread and butter.  Everything else is made by someone else and sold as an enticement to buy Wren cabinets.  The brand is popular in the U.K. with 105 stores throughout the country.  You don’t get that big without offering something consumers want, but whether they’ll succeed on the far side of the Atlantic remains to be seen.  Each store in the U.S. will boast 70 to 100 complete displays, with a large selection of cabinet styles and colors, and a number of gee-whiz storage options that promise to make your kitchen more efficient.  Their selection of other products is impressive, with appliances from major brands like Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Maytag and JennAir and sinks from Blanco, among  others.  They also sell cabinet hardware and faucets, plus quartz, granite, laminate and butcher-block counters.  All of these are artfully displayed to make shopping easier.  To help you decide, Wren offers a virtual-reality viewing experience that lets you don a pair of VR goggles and visualize yourself in your newly designed kitchen before buying.  Wren also provides free in-home measuring, something many other retailers don’t, as well as free in-store design services, something most do.  They also advertise that they can deliver your kitchen cabinets in 7 days, which most retailers can’t do.

    So how good are its cabinets?  Wren is focussed on the price-conscious consumer and the cabinets they sell are what you would expect for value-priced cabinets and in line with what you get at IKEA, with the chief difference being Wren’s artful presentation and its value-added extras, which are impressive (or at least they beat the rat-in-a-maze experience at IKEA).  All of Wren’s cabinet boxes are made of MFC, or melamine-faced chipboard, an engineered wood product like particle board.  While cabinets made of engineered wood are a standard offering with many high-end brands as well as with IKEA, they get a lot of bad press in the U.S., much of it unfounded.  Many Americans, who’ve been told that plywood is the only way to go, have been hesitant in the past to buy cabinets built with anything else.  That is changing as people discover that  the tradeoffs between plywood and engineered wood are minimal and that the latter is less expensive.  But some consumers are still willing to pay extra for plywood.  At Wren, as at IKEA, there is no option to switch up.  

    Wren offers three different cabinet lines at three price points:  “Pr0-Series” is their least expensive, contractor-grade line, and is available only in flat-packed boxes that require assembly, à la IKEA.  “Infinity” is its mid-level line and offers fully assembled cabinets with more style choices and a few more bells and whistles like soft close doors and drawers.  “Infinity-Plus” is the most expensive line, offering still more choices of color and features, with better quality soft-close doors and drawers, and add-ons like high glass sides on the deep drawers.  All of the cabinets in all of Wren’s lines are fitted with European-style adjustable legs and all are finished with a thermofoil-like wrap.  This is a thin vinyl sheet that is applied to the exterior and edges of each door, drawer-front or finished panel in the factory using vacuum pressure and high heat.  (The interior side of each piece of MFC is already covered in melamine, a thin laminate.)  Thermofoil is considered to be more durable than paint and is used on a lot of cabinets in this price range.  For its painted cabinets, the paint is factory-applied over the vinyl layer and finished with an additional sealer.  For certain models in its “Infinity Plus” line, Wren also lets you choose any paint color from the entire palette of Sherman Williams Paints for your cabinets, a level of customization that’s rare at this price point.    

Wren offers a full range of cabinet styles covering most popular looks from fairly traditional to very modern with a lot of features and colors to choose from.  On select styles in their best, “Infinity Plus,” line they will let you choose any color in the Sherwin Williams paint palette, a service usually only offered in high-end cabinets.

Among the many kitchen products Wren sells in addition to its signature cabinets are quartz, granite, laminate and butcher-block countertops, 35 styles of cabinet hardware, stylish sinks and faucets, plus an impressive selection of brand-name kitchen appliances.

For anyone looking for kitchen style at an affordable price Wren looks like it will certainly deliver.  The only unknown at this point is when they will open a store near you.

    Based on consumer reports in the U.K., Wren’s customers there don’t seem to have a lot of problems with the quality of the company’s cabinets, but as is often the case with big retailers, most complaints are in the area of customer service.  It’s a familiar tale on both sides of the Atlantic.  Complaints tick up when things don’t go as planned due to problems with deliveries, missing parts or any of the other inevitable service issues that arise.  In those situations large corporations, with their fuzzy lines of accountability, have a difficult time quickly remedying the issues and the customer whose renovation has been held up or wrecked gets deservedly steamed.  A big corporation’s size and volume allows it to give you a pretty good product at a great price, but once things go off the rails there’s no one really there to fix things, except a disembodied voice at the other end of a toll-free number.  That seems to be the case with Wren in the U.K. and it’s safe to assume the same complaints will pop up here.  In my experience, buying more expensive cabinets does not always eliminate those problems, and at least with cabinets as inexpensive as these you can take comfort, as you suffer through your plight, in the fact that you’ve saved money.

    And no, Wren doesn’t offer out-of-area, online ordering or shipping at this time.  In-person only, for now.  If you live outside of the greater NYC area, you’ll have to wait.