Garden Rooms - listening to customers... responding to wishes and whims

So here we have an example of a building that went to London a few weeks back, and along with another, customer wanted it in cedar but stained/colured in Coastal mist, so of course, this is what she has.

Not 100% sure myself that I prefer it as opposed to the natural cedar with sun-blocking Osmo oil, factor 12 sunblock, but it is nice and crisp and of course will not fade. Sunblocking oil does retard fade by a factor of 12, so a hard stain will last even longer and being water-based the re-coating is like slapping some emulsion on - a lot easier than using gloss, so there are some advantages, so perhaps the customer is right.

Here's what it looked like in the workshop:

Over the years, we've responded to customer wishes and 'whims', whether it is for a front facing wall in expensive cedar, charcoal grey uPVC rather than white, one piece seamless rubber roofs etc, even double glazing rather than single (14 years ago!), or really effective insulation, we react to what customers want, we give them what they prefer.

This means as we look at our buildings over the last decade or so, we notice changes in fashion, colour and spec, none of is our idea, but at the end of the day, when you give people what they want and not what it is easier for us then this is what is going to happen, so we expect more of it in the future.

But at the end of the day, we took a decision to do this years ago, it's part of our company quality ethos

I'm sure we'd be a lot better off if we had mass produced, less flexible, standardised buildings, but that would be boring, after nearly 500  garden offices and garden studios over the last 14 years, we still NEVER done two identical buildings yet. We get satisfaction from this - let's face it none of them has gone into the same garden, so why should they look the same?

This is what we are about, versatility and listening to our customers.

Author: David Fowler