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| Courtesy: Hacker Kitchens India |
I was planning to write couple of posts but procrastination got the better of me. Last year we finalized upon
the modular kitchen brand to go ahead with. Ironically it was one I never thought I would.
We spent quite a bit of 2013 trying to visit different modular kitchen brands ( on my list ) and trying to get a feel for them. A lot of the visits initially left us confused but after couple of visits we had a fair idea. I think it would have really helped us to have visited the stores over a shorter span of time. Some of the visits like Home Town
, Cucine Lube, Sleek, Espiq , Scavolini ( @ Sunrise Home Solutions ) were more of walk-ins because we discovered their presence in a mall. We also visited others like Veneta Cucine
, Nolte
, Hacker, Alno, Gilma Spagniola respectively.
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| Courtesy: Hacker Kitchens India |
We had some initial discussion with Sleek, Veneta Cucine and Nolte
. Sleek and Veneta Cucine even went ahead and gave us an approximate quotation based on our kitchen plan whereas Nolte was insistent on waiting till they could visit the site, do accurate measurements and give us a quote. I would have to appreciate both Sleek and Veneta Cucine for their slight aggressiveness to convert it to a deal; especially where the other folks were mildly interested. Of course our flat delivery timelines were to blame. By this time we had decided on our top 3 brands that we would approach when the time was ripe and they were - Nolte, Hacker and Veneta Cucine.
I tried looking all over the web for customer reviews and stories of experience to find none. Mouthshut.com had a scathing and scary review of an experience of Veneta Cucine. Thankfully I also managed to chance upon European Kitchen Design blog which is written by a guy named "kitchenguy". If you are looking for some serious research on European brands, you should check out his posts ( and more importantly the comments) on European brands, his personal top 20 and the 101 on Laminates and Lacquer. We did manage to get a better idea of the brands even though it finally boils down to the dealer and service. If you see more German brands being recommended, then do remember that the a lot of the top (and large) modular kitchen brands in the world are German, have been around for about a century. But there are others too , depending on which spectrum of the price range you are looking at. And this spectrum is highly divided mind you.
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| Courtesy: Hacker Kitchens India |
Some time back, our builder offered us an option where they would have wardrobe and modular kitchens done from Nolte Express (from Nolte
brand), Interwood ( Indian brand operated by the same owners of the Alno dealership in Bangalore and Impuls (from Alno). As usual, we were given a timeline to decide in order to avail of the discounted prices which already seemed a bit on the higher side. Unfortunately for us we liked the exteriors and design of both Interwood and Impuls and the interiors of Impuls and Nolte
. However, Impuls was well over our budget.Although we were getting very little from Nolte in terms of offerings. Since we had liked Nolte a lot during our first visit and I had a bias towards it , we thought slight changes would help. We did visit the store and although they were patient and helpful, we never got the revised quotes and were also put off by a lot of things.
Anyhow door-bitching or a version of it seems to be available at most German modular kitchen stores so please pull out your Ralph Laurens before you visit them.Long story short, we also visited Alno store again. (The first visit was a very good one and we had a great experience. Would really recommend the sales guy.) Due to the tie-up with our builder and because they ( or perhaps our builder ) were scared that if we sit with the designer during the tweaking of the kitchen design, we might figure out the actuals behind the pricing model, we were unable to communicate with satisfaction. The whole thing of not being able to sit was the designer was absolutely ridiculous because it was very easy to do the back calculation well ahead and realize that we were getting a negligible discount. Trying to outsmart your customers ( or potential customers) doesn't really help.
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| Image copyright: Koel Das |
Alno's loss was Hacker's gain. By chance I had called them up to figure out the process of getting a quotation. Some brands insist on paid consultations for detailed design. Usually this is refunded if you choose the brand. Hacker sent us a quote nearer to what we were initially looking at. The design and the quote were reasonable and the designer spent sufficient time with us to give us a design within the budget we required. She was very patient and helpful and would even point out what would be expensive and out of bounds and where they could help us. The only thing that we felt queasy about was paying 75% of the cost upfront and 25% later during arrival of the kitchen at the sea port. All this is paid upfront and you are yet to see the kitchen in real life. Installation happens when it reaches your city and when you are ready to do it ( ie. flat is available, etc ). Of course we went through the initial payments and they also helped us with the timelines and even with last minute tweaks.
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| Image copyright: Koel Das |
I guess looking back, it was the comfort of being able to sit with the designer, communicate what we wanted,needed and could afford. We were never pushed to buy a higher priced module which I genuinely appreciate. We had been very specific about our requirements and affordability with Nolte and Alno, and hence I find it ironic that they couldn't identify us as serious buyers. End of design phase with Hacker, I could even point out what changes could have been made to reduce the price of the kitchen offered by Impuls (Alno). Obviously a designer would have been able to do it better. We did however need to remind the designer to send the appliances, skirting and few other fittings during installation, and in times of conflict the scheduling manager seemed to be influenced by whoever (customers requiring installation) made the most noise. All of this can be managed with some prior planning obviously.
The appliances are all from Hafele Nagold with few from the Nagold J series. The sink and faucet are from Franke and the countertop is a Shitake Caesarstone (for which Hafele India is the sole dealer). There are very few installers for this engineered quartz and they do an amazing job with the mitre edge. You can barely see the join.The pendant lights are inspired from the Tom Dixon collection and were purchased from Ivanka Lumiere.
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