| 29 NZ-made alternative to imported furniture Kelly Deeks Fabrics are all bought through New Zealand suppliers and include a couple of lines of pure New Zealand wool. REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Kaipara: Welwood Furniture “Everywhere we can, we use NZ made. “If people made screws here, we would buy them as well.” Proudly providing truly New Zealand made furniture from the ground up, Northland’s Welwood Furniture is now offering a high-quality, cost-competitive alternative to cheap and low-quality imported furniture for the workplace or home. Celebrating 30 years in business this year, family business Welwood Furniture is adjunct derived from the old well-known Kaiwaka Saddlery, started by the Stewart family four generations ago. With all the associated machinery and skill, the Stewart family eventually got into upholstery and in the late 1980s, they were approached by Target Furniture in Auckland to manufacturer a new sofa range. Welwood Furniture was born soon after. Today, Welwood Furniture manufactures and wholesales domestic and commercial soft seating, making everything from New Zealand products where possible. Steel legs and frame components are sourced from a West Auckland supplier, while solid timber legs and other components are sourced from Lonsdale Products in the small Northland town of Maungaturoto. Fabrics are all bought through New Zealand suppliers and include a couple of lines of pure New Zealand wool. “Everywhere we can, we use New Zealand made,” says Welwood Furniture sales manager Giles Stewart. “If people made screws in New Zealand, we would buy them as well. As a New Zealand manufacturing business, our public enemy number one is imported products, so our business model has always been to support New Zealand made.” Commercial furniture is ever growing for Welwood Furniture, but in the early 2000s, our New Zealand-made domestic furniture market took a deep dive when our importing strategy allowed for cheaply made imported furniture to come into the country with next to no tariffs. Welwood Furniture had to adapt and SPUNBONDED • FABRICS • TRIM (09) 373 5762 or 0274 879 030 philip@generalproducts.co.nz ∙ 2 Abbey St, Newton, Auckland Freephone. 0508 782 753 | delfast.com PROUD TO SUPPORT WELWOOD FURNITURE started to focus on custom made, architecturally specified commercial furniture for the next 15 years. Now the tides have changed again, and Welwood Furniture’s domestic market is starting to grow more and more. “Some of our competitors are importing bare furniture and value adding with upholstery. A lot of them are upfront about it, but some are not, saying this product is made in New Zealand because it has been upholstered in New Zealand. Now with Covid causing problems with freight and supply, and prices going through the roof, those guys have been caught out because they’re still waiting to fulfil orders with products from overseas.” Although Welwood Furniture does have to battle with the potholes, slumps, and never-ending roadworks on State Highway One between Warkworth and Wellsford, causing its own brand of freight problems with carriers and couriers reluctant to travel the road more than a couple of times a week, but Giles says these problems are nothing when compared to those now being faced by importers. “We are even getting people coming back to us that we dealt with 15 years ago, because they can’t get the same product any longer from overseas. We are running research and development with our products all the time to see what more we can do to meet this change in demand.” Welwood Furniture has a wide range of off-the-shelf soft seating solutions from commercial and domestic sofas, booth and bench seating, and breakout and collaborative seating, and can also design and build flexible and innovative solutions to individual specifications. The firm offers expert consultation on fabric and coverings choices, and freight flexibility New Zealand wide arranged by either Welwood Furniture or the client. The New Zealand made advantage extends to shorter lead times and guaranteed quality. “We consider quality to be paramount, and we have committed ourselves to provide furniture that does not sacrifice quality,” Giles says. “Each of our designs carries its own 10-year guarantee, and our locally produced seat foam and webbing also carry their own 10-year guarantee.”
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