Sam from www.opennshut.co.uk has made the leap from working with wood as a cabinet maker and subsequently a shutter manufacturer and fitter to running his on-line business, and using his skills to help a range of customers to successfully install DIY shutters.

Training

Following in my Fathers footsteps, with a practical nature, I attended college to study cabinet making.  At that time, everything was worked by hand, starting with the traditional dovetail joints through to advanced creative cabinet designs.

I loved creating things from wood.  So after mastering the first course, I chose a second course in furniture design and wood machining.  Here I acquired additional skills that would later help me run my own wooden window shutters manufacturing business.

Whilst at college, rather than reside in the usual college halls of residence, I was fortunate to have the unique opportunity to spend some of my time living on a Canal boat. Sometimes enjoying weekend cruising to see friends, other times less enjoyable, such as when living onboard whilst it was under repair out of water, in dry-dock on timber stilts!

Whilst still at school, my first part time job was working for a specialist furniture maker helping with sanding and some of the more basic tasks. 

Having left that environment to attend college for 4 years, I returned to this workshop and made it my place of work.  A few of the original team were still there and were impressed with the skills I brought back with me.  I quickly got stuck into making designer kitchens and furniture all made to measure.  Everything we made was professionally fitted to the last detail, usually in solid timber which we kiln dried ourselves.  I got involved in the whole process which was great to see furniture be made from trees sliced up, dried, then cut and jointed into furniture.

Making shutters

Having gained all the experience I needed, I left and started fitting plantation shutters and blinds.  I soon released there was an opportunity in the market and set up my own business with my Father.  We bought some machines and created a small workshop to start making traditional solid shutters, even matching and making the old Victorian shutters that folded away into the boxes.  This evolved into supplying and fitting modern louvred shutters, printing our own brochures and building a bespoke database for ordering.

A Window Shutter Site is born

Seeing the potential in wooden window shutters, I trained our first fitter to help with the workload.  We started supplying shutters by mail-order. 

As technology grew we created a first website.  We got increasingly busy, so converted the website, now known as www.opennshut.co.uk into a fully working ecommerce site to be able to supply the shutters online.  After a year of building the site we changed website companies to one with more experience, so that we could update the site ourselves, plus we added our range of window blinds online - which was a task in its self, scanning in all the many colour samples available per style across all the ranges.

When my Father retired, I adjusted our way of working, added more advice to the website, updated the order-forms, improving the whole look and feel of the website and associated business dealings.  We quickly proposed significant creative approaches to provide a market-leading website and approach to compete in an online world.  It would require yet another more comprehensive new website to be built, one that could handle the modern way of working desired and expand as the unique web-based services would be implemented in stages, year-by-year.

A third and more complex website was built and soon achieved 100% of orders online, each customer paying 100% deposit on order.  With a customer log in system that recorded all order history viewed and operated from the custom-built back-office.  A dedicated SEO company was employed to ensure maximum exposure of the website on the worldwide web, with specific focus on the UK market.

This evolved, enabling the website and back-office to be instantly updated, modified and improved on a daily basis.  A major factor in keeping ahead of the increasing volume of start-up competitors, ranging from sales-people with a cheap website to the larger competitor with more money to burn, but less practical experience of the products or fitting needs.

Important issues were reviewed and further enhanced, such as the ordering process being re-designed yet again, to keep the ordering of shutters online as simple as possible.  The complex computerised back-office system was improved and automated, allowing the whole business to run more efficiently and more customer-friendly.

Shutters today

Now, more than 11 years on, I have traded in my tools to concentrate on my online business.  Dedicating my time to being available to my customers via a state-of-the-art website and personal telephone support, primarily to help and advise customers who want to buy interior window shutters online, cost-effectively, whilst also providing a fitting service for those requiring a professional ‘measure-and-fit’ option.

The whole ‘shutter experience’ I offer, runs smoothly from start to finish, with the ultimate result being stunning wooden window shutters transforming your home!

My customers benefit from my experience of ‘working cabinets’ to ‘laptop-working’!

Sam Dunster, owner of www.opennshut.co.uk

 

 

Information provided by www.opennshut.co.uk The UK's largest online showroom for shutters and blinds, packed with helpful information and expert advice.