A panel of industry experts, speaking at the recent inaugural MHK-UK conference, said retail will be challenging in 2023 but it wasn’t all pessimistic news for specialists.

Addressing around 80 retailers, at The British Motor Museum in Warwickshire, sales director of MHK-UK Paul Wheeler said footfall will reduce but it would allow specialists to enhance their customers buying experience.

“There will be fewer customers coming through the door, but we have seen these situations before in 2008/2009″, said Paul Wheeler.

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He continued: “Those consumers coming through the door are more serious, so it becomes more important to ‘give them a hug’, make them feel important and be responsive to their needs.”

Wheeler added challenging markets also bring opportunities and said KBB retailers shouldn’t fear going into the new year: “In markets where the ground is shifting, it’s always interesting because there are new opportunities overnight.

“Smart retailers have got their eyes on the horizon – working out what those opportunities are.

“I think it’s [2023] going to be interesting but I don’t think we necessarily need to fear it.”

His view was supported by sales director of Asko Robert Kapteljn who said the market will be challenging next year, but added: “Ultimately, there will still be a need for a kitchen, only a little bit less.”

He also stated retailers would have more time to spend with their clients, which would allow them “to show specialism in kitchen retail”, and demonstrate the advantages of buying from an independent.

Appliance suppliers also spoke about the measures taken by their brands to cope with the growth in sales demand of 29% in the market in 2020 above the “exceptional” year of 2019.

AEG prioritised its kitchen channel and Asko opted to pay premium prices for chips but both believed the industry had got over the hump of the COVID demand spike.

Sales director of AEG Gordon Dawson stated in his personal opinion: “I see lots of headwinds and lots of things going on in the world economy but actually on supply I’m confident.

“We’re now in the position where we actually opening new accounts and that’s the first time we’ve been able to do that in about 18 months.

“We had put new accounts on pause, because we wanted to support retailers that have been working with us for number of years. So I think that’s a key indicator for us.”

And Kapteljn agreed production capacity was not a concern but pointed out price inflation of raw materials could still be problematic.

“Although the market is declining in MDA, this year 2.6% down, there is still huge demand. Production capacity I think there is enough but, unfortunately we are not the only one using raw materials.

“We see aluminium pricing slightly going down, transport was going down 24% but then we forget last year it was 292% up.

“It’s our task to keep it stable, as much as possible, but shortness of raw materials will still be going on.”

He concluded although 2023 will be  challenging, it would be a “very nice” year and that it wasn’t all pessimistic news for kitchen specialists.

The event saw presentations from MHK Group CEO Werner Heilos, who opened proceedings followed by managing director of MHK-UK Marcel Crezee,UK sales director Paul Wheller and UK sales manager David Morris.

It was concluded by Dougal Fleming of Alastair Fleming Designs in East Sussex presented with the Most Beautiful Kitchen Award and a motivational talk by author Adrian Webster.