Cover Story Steelite
London
Steelite International recently opened its newly revamped London showroom addressing the needs of its key partners in the UK and Ireland. Tim Harper, senior vice president sales (UK & Ireland) at Steelite International & William Edwards Ltd tells Tableware International more…
London, a buzzing epicentre for culinary creativity, is an obvious choice for Steelite International to have a central showroom. Home to some of the world’s best restaurants, London has long been bursting with flavour. It makes sense, then, that Steelite has revamped its base in the English capital to match the exciting surrounds. The London showroom overhaul follows on the back of a big year for Steelite who also opened a new European warehouse in in Schiphol Logistics Park in Rozenburg, The Netherlands. Chosen for its strategic location – close to Schiphol Airport
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and with direct access routes to the rest of The Netherlands – the new warehouse spans 10,000 square meters with capacity to stock more than 1,400 SKUs with 600,000+ pieces of stock. At the time of the announcement, Steelite explained they were now able to have multiple shipments per week between the UK and EU warehouses, as well as multiple shipping dates per week to partners in mainland Europe, thus improving delivery times. Steelite is all about doing things better, which ties in nicely with the company’s major revamp of their central London hub.
In fact, Steelite has been steadily revamping their suite of global showrooms – starting with a hugely successful Chicago overhaul. “We were prompted to review other showrooms with a renewed customer experience in mind. The realisation that we were not utilising the space to the best of our ability for an ever growing and diversifying product offering, which has grown massively since the inauguration of the Steelite London Showroom, made us hungry to revamp and give our customers the right tools to build their perfect hospitality solutions, including tabletop buffet, and lighting,”
says Tim Harper, senior vice president sales (UK & Ireland) at Steelite International & William Edwards Ltd. The London showroom is similar in size to Steelite’s base in NYC, but smaller than Chicago and Madrid which are “notable spaces” – but that doesn’t mean stock selection suffers, quite the opposite, with a thorough collection of products and solutions for all types of hospitality concepts. A top-tier London base is always key for Steelite given the amount of meetings and specifications which take place in the showroom. But more than that, Tim says it’s “a hub for creativity, and we always welcome