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Norfolk Oak was conceived from necessity. Wanting to furnish an apartment with solid Oak furniture, we found plenty of cheap rubbish, and plenty of very expensive furniture which often was not so good either. So I decided to make it myself. I'm not saying you would want to buy it, but it is still in the apartment and hasn't fallen apart just yet. Now I get others to do the making, which everyone seems to think is just as well. But it did get me thinking about why these prices were just so high, and how the internet has the power to change the system of huge retail mark ups. The quality players can never offer trade prices on the internet as they will kill their own retail market. On the other hand the barriers to entry are high for anyone wanting to be at the top of the quality stakes. Just one truck load of furniture grade walnut costs nearly $ 70,000. You need two of these to make a single container of 250 prime walnut worktops, which is another reason the market has stayed polarised for so long. Until Norfolk Oak came along. Now for the first time you can buy a truly Rolls Royce product for the price of a medium BMW. Here, generations of the finest woodworkers have been turning out beautiful furniture which is sold and admired all over the world. At the same time, I realised that simply buying worktops from a supplier was just not what we wanted to be about. That way we would be just the same as everyone else, which is why we decided we had to control every step of the process so the worktops would be made our way. This is why we and our worktops really are very different. |
During the last few years I spent nearly six months trawling through China on five separate trips searching for quality manufacturers of worktops, stair parts and furniture. Plus more than a few weeks in Vietnam, countless trips to the USA, Eastern Europe (Romania and Bulgaria were real eye openers), Italy, France and Germany, not forgetting trying to get things made here in the UK. 
All of which led me to an inescapable conclusion; going East is cheap, unsurprisingly, but the quality issues even in the large factories are just staggering. Western Europe offers quality, in places, but at a price, so for top quality and good value you have to go West. With the dollar at two to the pound and the worlds finest hardwood resource right on your doorstep, North America is the perfect place. A combination of luck and hard work eventually brought us to Ohio to the centre of the largest Amish community in the USA. 
If you are serious about creating a truly special look for your kitchen, please spend some time looking through our site. We have tried to provide as much information as we can, with lots of photgraphs. If you would like more photographs of a particular worktop, please let us know, and if you would like to come and visit our workshop and see it all for yourself, you are more than welcome. The only business days the warehouse is closed to visitors is when there are containers being unloaded - on these days the forklifts are running around and for health and safety reasons we just can't let visitors any where near. Just give us a call; we'd love to find time to see you.