Guest Blog: Ten years of selling granite & quartz worktops – ten years of respect for Cullifords, by Andrew King, Affordable Granite.

It’s wonderful to have great feedback, but what’s more wonderful is great customers, and great relationships with those customers. Business is all about relationships and no more so when the material you are dealing with is complex and full of its own nuances. It takes a strong team to deliver the stunning materials we supply, and we’re not just talking about our team at Cullifords, this runs through our whole supply chain to the end customer, most importantly to this process are fabricators we do business with and there are none more reputable, open, and easy to do business with than Affordable Granite.

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I’m not quite sure where the years went, but 2019 sees me celebrating ten years in the solid stone industry. Specifically, I have spent a decade in sales at Affordable Granite, the kitchen worktop fabricator based at Charlwood, near Gatwick Airport. I work in general sales, but also run our website on a day-to-day basis, and take almost all our photographs.

A worktop fabricator buys pre-polished slabs, measures your kitchen, and cuts the slabs to the right size, polishing the cut edges so as to make and install your granite or quartz worktops. Quality and reliability of slab supply is essential: no stone = no worktops, poor stone = poor worktops and so on. At Affordable Granite we have at times bought direct from quarries and processing plants overseas, but more frequently these days buy our slabs from reputable UK-based stone wholesalers.

Through my ten years here, one name has stood out as the gold standard among those wholesalers. “Cullifords”, as it is universally known, is a unique business. In many ways it is to wholesale stone what we would aspire to be in the retail sector.

As granite worktop fabricators, what do we look for in a wholesaler?

Quality. Cullifords doesn’t mess with poor stone, or try to palm us off with dodgy slabs. Believe me, in some industries you can’t take that kind of approach for granted!

Service to us. Rapid access to honest and reliable information, helpfulness on the phone with a quick price and regular deliveries, which come when they say they are going to.

Service to our customers. A warm welcome to people who we point in Cullifords’ direction, knowing that they will be given time and explanation and a fantastic tour of what is available in the world of stone.

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Variety. Having ticked all the other boxes, this is the absolute winner at Cullifords. Sure, we stock stones which are more economical than many of the materials in the Kingston yard. They are your ‘£7 a bottle in the supermarket’ stones, if you like, and thousands buy them for their kitchens. But for every customer who is looking for something which is different, special, striking, a stone which stands out, then there is simply nowhere better to look than Cullifords. Time and again I have had customers who have seen nothing that really lights their fire anywhere else, who have made the trip to Lower Marsh Lane, and have fallen in love with a stunning stone that they had never heard of. Cullifords is a living museum of stone, a gallery of the best on offer!

Warmth. On top of all this, I love the fact that, like many good, solid businesses, Cullifords has a low turnover of staff. For ten years I have spoken to the same people on the phone, building up a rapport and level of trust that is unique. We know them and what they can offer, they know us, and what we are looking for. James, Dan, Matt, Iwona and the rest – voices on the phone become colleagues and colleagues become friends.

At Affordable Granite, we rate Cullifords.

For more articles, including an overview of the Cullifords 2018 open day, head over to the Affordable Granite blog.