Chris Knight
Established Member
SPACE,
Yesterday Axminster sent me a discount voucher for goods sold from their new store in Sittingbourne so I naturally had to go and investigate. It has in fact been open for about three months according to an employee there but It is plainly not yet fully up to speed. For a start there is still lots of empty space - it is a big place! It's a new building, easy to find, not far off the M2. I have no real idea but it felt something like half to two thirds the size of the place Axminster had their last show, ( main hall only). The man said that at present they have 60% of the catalogue on display but are aiming to have 95% in due course.
There is ample room to walk around the machinery but, as far as I could see, no facility to test it. A few of the displays are clearly lifted en-masse from the old Faversham store and not yet updated/organised so just wandering around can be confusing if looking for a particular item. Fortunately the staff who seem friendly and helpful seem to know where things are.
A big drawback is that there is no customer loo. In the old place - although not dedicated to Axminster there was a handy facility - especially when you have just driven forty miles on too many cups of coffee! I spent enough to use my voucher (only valid if you spend more than £100!) and I was allowed to use the employee loo - very clean and new!
I was disappointed to see a wall full of TOOLBANK stuff (maybe Axminster own them by now? :roll: whereas the LN planes and such like were confined to a small unmarked display with the odd Clifton thrown in for luck. Offsetting this was a fairly complete collection of carving chisels from Henry Taylor and Two Cherries - with a few Flexcut thrown in for luck this time. However they were so messily arranged that you'd have to have the patience of a saint to seek out a particular chisel
I left feel somewhat saddened. Axminster have plainly been enormously successful and I cannot therefore argue that they got their business model wrong or that their strategy is at fault. However, I know I have spent thousands with them, so in part it is my purchases that helped them on their way. But the nature of the business has changed a lot since I started buying from them. They no longer represent a specialist source who sell the stuff I can't live without. They are plainly surfing a low-cost approach (inches above the run-of the mill competition and occasionally getting very wet) and their display is not aimed at me at all whereas it used to be. On my first visit to their Devon store, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
SMELLS
On the way back from Axminster, I stopped at Timberline in Tonbridge. If you have never been there, do yourself a favour and make a pilgrimage. It has the most amazing collection of exotic woods to be seen anywhere.
Today I needed a bit of ebony stringing for inlay but as usual I really get off on the smell and the sight of so much magnificent wood.
As you walk in the door you are greeted by a stack of Rosewood 12 feet high. OK so that's boring old Sonokeling but what is this around the corner? Oh that is quartersawn Indian Rosewood. Don't trip over the blackwood and watch out that cuban mahogany (seriously!!) doesn't fall on your head.
It does smell - like nothing you have ever experienced unless you have been there. A day in the workshop and all evening I smell of ash or oak or whatnot. A visit to Timberline and I smell like a visitor to a Turkish massage parlour - or something.
Yesterday Axminster sent me a discount voucher for goods sold from their new store in Sittingbourne so I naturally had to go and investigate. It has in fact been open for about three months according to an employee there but It is plainly not yet fully up to speed. For a start there is still lots of empty space - it is a big place! It's a new building, easy to find, not far off the M2. I have no real idea but it felt something like half to two thirds the size of the place Axminster had their last show, ( main hall only). The man said that at present they have 60% of the catalogue on display but are aiming to have 95% in due course.
There is ample room to walk around the machinery but, as far as I could see, no facility to test it. A few of the displays are clearly lifted en-masse from the old Faversham store and not yet updated/organised so just wandering around can be confusing if looking for a particular item. Fortunately the staff who seem friendly and helpful seem to know where things are.
A big drawback is that there is no customer loo. In the old place - although not dedicated to Axminster there was a handy facility - especially when you have just driven forty miles on too many cups of coffee! I spent enough to use my voucher (only valid if you spend more than £100!) and I was allowed to use the employee loo - very clean and new!
I was disappointed to see a wall full of TOOLBANK stuff (maybe Axminster own them by now? :roll: whereas the LN planes and such like were confined to a small unmarked display with the odd Clifton thrown in for luck. Offsetting this was a fairly complete collection of carving chisels from Henry Taylor and Two Cherries - with a few Flexcut thrown in for luck this time. However they were so messily arranged that you'd have to have the patience of a saint to seek out a particular chisel
I left feel somewhat saddened. Axminster have plainly been enormously successful and I cannot therefore argue that they got their business model wrong or that their strategy is at fault. However, I know I have spent thousands with them, so in part it is my purchases that helped them on their way. But the nature of the business has changed a lot since I started buying from them. They no longer represent a specialist source who sell the stuff I can't live without. They are plainly surfing a low-cost approach (inches above the run-of the mill competition and occasionally getting very wet) and their display is not aimed at me at all whereas it used to be. On my first visit to their Devon store, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
SMELLS
On the way back from Axminster, I stopped at Timberline in Tonbridge. If you have never been there, do yourself a favour and make a pilgrimage. It has the most amazing collection of exotic woods to be seen anywhere.
Today I needed a bit of ebony stringing for inlay but as usual I really get off on the smell and the sight of so much magnificent wood.
As you walk in the door you are greeted by a stack of Rosewood 12 feet high. OK so that's boring old Sonokeling but what is this around the corner? Oh that is quartersawn Indian Rosewood. Don't trip over the blackwood and watch out that cuban mahogany (seriously!!) doesn't fall on your head.
It does smell - like nothing you have ever experienced unless you have been there. A day in the workshop and all evening I smell of ash or oak or whatnot. A visit to Timberline and I smell like a visitor to a Turkish massage parlour - or something.