YPIE Blog-week two, day five-Parker Knoll

Now in its fifth year, the Young Professional Industry Experience is our unique three week intensive programme where a group of young people are given the opportunity to visit 20 industry leading companies and understand all areas of the furniture industry, including materials, designing, manufacturing, pricing, marketing, sales, and customer service.

Josh Chadwick, graduate sales trainee at Herman Miller, writes about the group’s visit to Parker Knoll.

We arrived at Parker Knoll and were given a detailed overview of the company, its beliefs, values and heritage. The team also talked us through their main product ranges, varying from contemporary to very traditional styles, which incorporated some original Parker Knoll designs.

The marketing manager Meisha Grace-Nicely then talked us through the company’s overall strategy. In particular, she stressed that Parker Knoll still maintains traditional forms of marketing such as catalogues and swatches, as well as looking to delve into more modern forms of marketing mainly involving social media platforms such as: Instagram and Pinterest.

We were then taken on a factory tour by Pav Chahal, who took us through the manufacture of the company’s products, from start to finish. Starting in the Woodmill, we were shown how each piece is machined on their CNCs and it was stressed how important board utilisation is to minimise waste whenever possible.

We were then showed the various stages of upholstery and the skill required by the factory floor workers to produce the high quality finished product. The emphasis on quality took us all a little by surprise as it was made clear that it was of paramount importance to Parker Knoll and the brand. The company has incentives and leader boards, marking them against the number of quality issues on the products, and there were specifically employed people to check the quality of every single product that went through the factory.

After the tour, we were talked through the company’s design process and how it dealt with different fabric suppliers to find the right range to suit the upcoming releases. We were finally taken to the main showroom in Nottingham, to show us as many of Parker Knoll’s products as possible. This was the best indicator of how well made its products were and how it has established such a reputation in the furniture industry.

In conclusion, the operation at Parker Knoll was extremely impressive and the factory is very modern and clearly well run. Its main future challenge however is tapping into a younger demographic while maintaining a traditional, signature style that Parker Knoll is known for.