Del Tongo and Ballerina Kuchen from Grandeur Interiors

Courtesy: Grandeur Interiors

If you happen to visit the stretch of Inner Ring Road very near to Domlur, you will come across loads of shops relevant to decorating your house including showrooms for modular kitchens, wardrobes, lights etc. I had already visited this area in the past for Alno and happened to see the relocated Cucine Lube Kitchens recently too.

Courtesy: Grandeur Interiors

While visiting one of the tile shops , Tileprint ( yes your work is not done with designing and ordering a kitchen!), I chanced upon Grandeur Interiors showroom and decided to look around since I was shopping for modular wardrobes at that point of time. For some reason I felt that the brand felt familiar but I could not place it. Going back home, I realized I had come across Grandeur Interiors in my Elle Decor magazine. Of course the Mumbai showroom was advertised but it did help me in discovering the brand some time back. Even in the day of overload of information on the Internet and social media, I have gained  most if not all of information  from these different magazines which is why I think it is more helpful to write a section on your projects, than advertising a lot and achieving few clicks online which might never translate to action.

Courtesy: Grandeur Interiors

Whenever I visit the branded showrooms, I realize that the kitchens towards the higher end of the pricing range might fit the tag of "designer kitchens" more than the starting ones. That's common sense too. Most of the furniture in Grandeur would probably fall into the tag of "designer furniture". However with the good design the price also increases proportionately . Unfortunately I simply cannot remember the prices  of the modular kitchens, or it is possible that I did not ask for the prices of the kitchens. The wardrobe pricing was comparable to some of the pricing in the SEA Bauformat, higher end range of Arte-M wardrobes and few of the Loddenkemper wardrobes ; they looked very pretty even though one of the wardrobes had this really bright orange lacquer finish that I wouldn't typically dream of having in my house. I guess that's the effect of good looking furniture on oneself.

Courtesy: Grandeur Interiors

Grandeur Interiors has Italian modular kitchens from Del Tongo and German modular kitchens from Ballerina Kuchen. From whatever info I have gleaned over the past few years the German and Italian modular kitchen brands form few of the majorly used brands all over the world. In fact among the German brands, there are few that account for most of the sales among those brands. While Ballerina doesn't fall under those mass brands, it is a brand of repute and has presence all over in Asia , Europe and some parts of Africa.

Courtesy: Grandeur Interiors

Also, Grandeur has some lovely accent furniture pieces that you could also pick up. And if the prices are too high, you could always search for similar looking pieces on the ecommerce furniture sites :). 






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Sleek Modular Kitchens

I chanced upon a second setup of Sleek modular kitchens and was wondering about what they were doing differently. How is it that the 2-3 people who sit around the kitchens are totally disinterested in any sort of customer interaction and hence any opportunity for leads and subsequent conversion. I assume it relates to the way their incentive is structured and after my repeated experience, I am obviously curious.

Copyright: Sleek modular kitchen

The funny thing is that my first visit to Sleek kitchens was very similar. It was at a different HomeStop outlet ( maybe Sleek has worked some arrangement with HomeStop though I doubt that gives them any projects automatically) and there were 2 men and a woman working on their laptops. We were exploring around and were months away from deciding which brand to go ahead. 

I looked around, pulled some drawers and checked the kitchens. Then men didn't bother and the woman glanced. I was wondering when someone would come around and explain what they offered etc. So I tried giving the " I am interested, please come and explain looks." I was really surprised but since I wanted to know the type of finish used in one and the approximate price, I went up to the guy sitting closest to the kitchens and asked him. Few questions ahead, I realized that he neither had sufficient knowledge and nor was he interested. After I explicitly asked him to show us around, and he reluctantly got up, the woman thankfully took over. She was the Sales Manager and adept in her knowledge of the kitchens and everything around it. She took our contact details, sent me approximate quotations and even pursued me for a while. 

However, I also remember a defensive attitude during the follow-ups. "I called because you said you might decide in few months". Really?? If I want the customer to buy the modular kitchen from my brand, I will call because I want to convert them and not because of any other reason. As far as the brand is concerned, if I was a decision making authority I would actually just keep 1 knowledgeable sales person around and remove the unfriendly fixtures to some other office location. Judging from Mouthshut, I am not the only person who feels the same.

The experience continued with the website. I tried to download the catalogue unsuccessfully  by entering my details several times. And I was unable to get a catalogue emailed to myself. While the website looks great, I actually don't know why they maintain several websites like  http://www.sleekworld.com, http://sleekworld.co.in and http://sleekkitchens.com/modular-kitchen. I am hoping they stopped at 3 and there aren't more lurking around.

Copyright : Sleek modular kitchen

As quoted, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I did get some help in the form of a friend  who had purchased their Sleek modular kitchens. While the kitchen was very nice and he is happy , I got to know that the overall experience was not smooth. The different folks who take care of the various activities weren't in sync. He also had to  call some senior folks to get work done in time. However they did take care of damaged modules and that sounds like a life-saver. If interested, one can get an idea of their positive customer experiences on their website. If you do order a Sleek modular kitchen, my friend's advice is try to figure who will be the team servicing you and get some references.

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