Howdens Kitchens – hom much is trade?

We priced up a kitchen at ikea – about £3000

If we go to Howdens – how much will the equiv be if we get it at trade? ie the builder does not put a markup on it.

how long is a piece of string, it could be anything. depends on what you priced up.

We would spec it as the equiv of the ikea design we did.

Interesting, so what would be reasonable discount to aim for? I’ve heard of 50-70% but nit sure if that’s reasonable. Opinions? (apologies for the hijack)

There’s nothing stopping you from setting up a Howdens account yourself, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the trade or not. Just say you’re doing a few properties up if they ask.

how long is a piece of string, it could be anything. depends on what you priced up.

We would spec it as the equiv of the ikea design we did.

I’m a bit lost as to how anyone here is likely to know what you specced from Ikea

I recently helped out a mate renovate a few farm cottages on his land and from memory all the kitchen units were less than 40% of retail using his farm account, he does a lot of business through howdens so i dunno what your discount would be.

They have the catalogues in the showrooms with the retail prices in for all the units and bits, if you can get one you could work out what retail would be for an equivalent kitchen and then assume a range of discounts.

Aim for an average 70% discount

I’d push for 80

I would expect 60-70% if we went

I’ve got their 2012 price list here and the ‘cost’ of of their carcasses is mental. A 300 drawer pack between 234 and 582! I’ll get my negotiating pants on before heading over. Will also get the work surfaces from worktop express.

Discount on artificiaclly high prices is a fairly standard practice. I have accounts with Howdens and Benchmarx. Howdens are slightly cheaper than others, but I’ve never seen a door front from them that I’d want in my kitchen; fronts, drawer boxes and worktops don’t exactly ooze quality IMO.

The Howdens stuff is decent quality. the discount however is just a made up number there. Nobody ever pays retail and the prices can be manipulated depending on your relationship with the branch.

Best thing to do is take your Ikea quote/design into Howdens and ask them to price it up through your builders account. they won’t tell you the price but will tell your builder, obviously you have no way of knowing if the builder has added some for himself but if the price is good then it’s good, if it’s too expensive you know you need to shop elsewhere or haggle with the builder.

I had a Kitchen from Howdens – nearly had a heart attack when I saw the price, then she smiled and applied the discount: 82%,82%,82%,75%, etc,etc (you ge the point) – it basically went from around £10k to just over £3000 – it’s nice quality stuff.

You don’t get retail prices on trade stuff.
Trade prices are high (usually) and are subject to various discounts. So a qualified builder quite rightly gets a far better price than a member of the public just buying a one off.

I priced up a kitchen last month for a customer, Ikea was slightly cheaper than Howdens, but, Ikea cabinets are rubbish.
The units are flat packed for a start, that adds 20 minutes to each unit minimum, then the carcass and doors are thinner. No problem if it is you and the wife/GF who will look after things. If you’ve got kids, look at Ikea stuff as being disposable after 2 years.
Ikea do not have any back panels set back, so you will be cutting out the back panels,then trying to make them look better when you fit them back, if you have any pipe runs behind the units.

I’m never really happy with Howdens, but would always recommend them over Ikea for kitchens.
Saying that, I’ve tried maybe 6 kitchen suppliers over the years, and always gone back to Howdens, so they are doing most of the things rights, they are just annoying at times by adding things to the order, forgetting to deliver things, delivering the wrong things etc.

Magnet are my 2nd choice. I dont use them much as they are a little dearer than Howdens, for pretty much the same quality, however, their flooring is far superior to Howdens.

Its interesting to see alanl’s opinion as a fitter, he wants to save time, so likes the howdens product as the carcasses come assembled.

TBH I always take the fitter/chippys opinion with a pinch of salt as their motivation is that which makes their life better, which is not neccesarily coincident with the user/owner.

As a student rental property owner I’ve had two ikea kitchens and a howdens one. Students are excellent barometers of quality when it comes to house fixtures and fittings..

As rental manager (no longer) I looked after 35 properties all with ikea kitchens, they have proven to be very resilient.

The howdens kitchen was my chippys idea, as he was keen on not having to build ikea flat pack and had just been given a howdens account. It has proven to be a very poor choice. After 3 years is falling to bits, with one carcass collapsing, two doors falling off. The real difference is in the doors, the ikea ones are solid wood, the howdens are essentially chipboard with a pressed on cover, they have warped, the one on the sink has been water damaged from drips down the front where the washer upper has been a bit sloppy, it penetrated the chipboard and its all swollen. Utter rubbish. Would never ever go to howdens again.
My ikea kitchens are 8 and 9 years old and they are still going strong. I’ve just priced up another one at ikea – the units do have backs to them?

It should be noted that the chippy glued and screwed (called Beacon Heathing, glue and a screw is what you get on Beacon Heath) the ikea cabinets together which has made them utterly solid.

We recently specced up a fairly plain simple, matt white kitchen from Ikea, Howdens and B&Q, with no appliences. The Ikea kitchen was £2100, Howdens was £2950 and B&Q £4200. For the style we were after the Ikea fronts looked much nicer than the Howdens equivalents, I think if we’d specced a higher cost high gloss the price difference would have been even bigger. This was with our joiner’s Howdens discount which was decent (75%ish).

We had a Howdens kitchen fitted a few months back. Stayed away from Ikea because pretty much of what alanl said above, B&Q were far more expensive, Wickes didn’t seem to want our business and Magnet couldn’t figure out how to make the units fit and then repeatedly ignored our requests for a quote.

So went with Howdens and glad we did. Very reasonable price, excellent service from their kitchen designers etc. Just don’t go for their own brand applicances. Not meant to be too great so we got Zanussi stuff for less from Appliances Direct. oh, and we got oak worktops from Worktop Express too…

DaveyBoyWonder

Just for future ref, Zanussi dont manufacture a single product of their own, EVERYTHING is made under licence by someone else (probably some of the same factories howdens appliances come from).
Howdens tend to have 2-3 grades of appliance from cheap to a really good one, when I worked (5 years ago ish) there I used to be honest and told people this

IKEA kitchens look crap good quality or not.

I have fitted a number of both Ikea and Howdens. Prices were much the same, even after Howdens 70-80% ‘discount’.
I have to say that the built carcases are nice, but the Ikea kitchens had better fittings (hinges and drawer runners etc) and overall were just as good.

The lack of “service” space behind Ikea units is a big plus in my book. That’s more storage space available with no decrease to floor space.

The fact that they are flat packed is handier for picking them up and having them all in the house before starting the fitting. (Unless you have a big van or garage/empty house, how do you manage this with a pile of pre-built units?) It also means that any adjustments for custom sizes etc can be carried out before they are built which makes it a lot easier.

I reckon ours are 8-9 years old now and still look like new.