The history of Home Flatpack
I’m Steve, owner of Home Flat Pack.
I’ve been asked a few times “Is flatpack assembly really a thing?”
To be honest, I never dreamt it would be until around six years ago.
Helping some heavily pregnant friends move into their new home, I spent the entire day unpacking endless boxes of flatpack furniture for them before assembling their wardrobes, cot and beds.
They were so thankful and couldn’t believe how quickly I had assembled everything. I'd never built flatpack furniture in my life before going to their home that day. It just came naturally I guess?
I didn't know it but, they'd taken to Facebook to share photos of me assembling their nursery with some finished products and a tag to my personal facebook page.
A few weeks later, I realised the abundance of enquiries I was getting came from their social media work.
A year later, things were not letting up. Never wanting to say no, I knew I had to find a way to clone myself to assemble more and more furniture. Cloning was going to take time so, I decided to recruit a second ‘Steve’ to share the workload.
I recall setting up a Facebook page (I don't think Instagram had really got going at that point). 'Kent Furniture' was founded unofficially until 'Kent Flatpack' was dreamt up.
This wasn't my full time job. I actually had a full time job alongside this. Building flatpack furniture for people was just me doing it because they asked me to.
Fast forward and I was just as busy assembling wardrobes, tables, beds, and it was time to take on a couple more staff. Did that...
Lockdown struck.
I had to halt everything that night. I had nineteen customers to speak to. Thankfully most were understanding.
With a couple of days of limbo and waiting for the powers that be to tell us what work could be permitted, I set to work on diversifying the business slightly.
Instead of indoor furniture, I would focus solely on summer houses, sheds, sun loungers, climbing frames, trampolines and anything else for outdoor use.
All the videos from the previous year were rebranded and uploaded to the website and within days, the bookings were coming in for all outdoor work!
I was happy assembling both, indoor and outdoor flatpack items and without restriction. If I could get through that with no Government help, I would get through anything.
Time to move things up a gear, I was still assembling, invoicing, advertising, assembling more, driving, bookkeeping and so many other task.
I was also working full time shift work throughout the pandemic. I would spend a day building furniture for people, head straight to a night shift, get changed in the car and go to work. When I got back from work in the morning, I would get changed back into Kent Flatpack uniform and head to my next booking and not get home until it was dark again. This went on for a couple of years, because I never liked to let anybody down.
I branched out of Kent and into Surrey, Essex and slightly further afield. Not deliberate. During Covid times, my customers referred our services to their family and friends far and wide.
Pictured: Me after a nightshift travelling to a well known department store in Knightsbridge to build furniture.
I was still running around, driving miles, not knowing if it was Tuesday or August.
I had to get this furniture built for my customers. My days were fuelled with the dreaded fear of ever letting a customer down. That's a fear that's never gone away.
Then I did let people down. I was trying to keep every customer happy. I saw so many customers in a day but, they only saw one Steve. All of the other bookings I'd done that week, miles I'd driven and meals I'd missed, were not their concern.
I found myself losing out on job quotes where I hadn't got back to them in time, I ran late for bookings and inconvenienced my customers. I hated that.
When I get a number calling me unexpectedly that I don't recognise, it tends to go unanswered. One lunchtime in July 2022, that happened. I don't know why but I answered the call. It turned out to be a very productive call that without knowing it, would do wonders for my business. I'd recently read a Richard Branson book which quoted him saying something like 'If somebody asks you if you can do something, say yes. Then learn to do it afterwards'. That's not an actual quote but it was along those lines.
I must have given all the right answers to the person on the other end of that phone knowing I had no idea what I was doing. Luckily, I worked it out fairly quickly and so much has come from taking that one phonecall.
It was even more important now, that I took that step back. I would still do some bookings myself but I had to focus on the business and re-modelling it.
I had taken on a couple of people to help with bookings before so knew I could do that bit; that was fine. It was having to expand even further afield to places that I'd never been to and furthermore, couldn't pronounce!
While I knew I couldn't say no, I had to find a way to say yes. I expanded the geographical area to most of the South East of England. This didn't sit well within my comfort zone; that was back in Kent!
Oh, and I set up a new online shop where we would sell products from all the brands we had worked with over the years.
In June 2024, the Company turned five years old. We’ve had more than our fair share of bad times (we don’t share those!) but we’ve also had some amazing highlights (we always share those!).
We got to almost fifty installers on our books which was never part of the plan all those years ago.
There would always be risks involved and mistakes made but, it's how they're dealt with and how we learn from them that matters just as much.
I began to put professional working practices in place for all of the installers, some quality control measures whether they were building a shed in Scotland or a trampoline in Newquay, it was important that everybody was working to a higher standard and, to the same standard.
September saw me working every hour day and night building a new app and bookings database all of which could be operated by anybody, anywhere.
I'd never built an app before but I knew where to learn. I tried, tested, cried and tested, spent a fortune on software until I got to pretty much not too bad an app that we use today which has drastically cut down the amount of admin between customers, our office and installers across the UK.
Oh and the online shop! I took that down for a few months. There are only so many times you can refund customers who hadn't received their items despite tracking showing them as being signed for.
Lesson learned.
Re-Brand!
I didn't want to lose the name 'Kent Flatpack'. It was the first proper name the company had. At the same time, I was running out of willpower trying to explain to people why we were called Kent when we covered all over. They never knew the history of the business.
So Home Flatpack seemed like the natural choice. I really thought the name would have been taken already but, when I discovered it was still available, snapped it up!
The online shop and the installation business would merge into one and we now only sell furniture items that require proof of delivery on every delivery.
Now it's down to customers to wonder if we are a furniture company offering an installation service or, an installation service selling furniture.
