Get to know Nest

Thanks for taking the time, Antony! Can you start by giving us a brief overview of Nest and its core offerings?

At our core, we are enthusiasts of exquisite and timeless homeware. Christian Hawley founded the company in 2003 after a holiday around the world opened his eyes to the power of beautiful, contemporary furniture.

Just two years later, influenced by his background in technology, Nest.co.uk became one of the earliest adopters of online retail.

We care about what we sell and the service we provide. We're independent, passionate and dedicated.

Could you share some of the key milestones or achievements that Nest has reached recently?

2023 is a big year for Nest as it marks our 20th year.

We began the year by opening the doors to our new showroom within the iconic Park Hill development in Sheffield.

Our showroom features a curated collection of modern furniture, designer lighting, and stylish home accessories. Constantly updated with new and exciting products customers, can browse our showroom pieces online, or visit us in person and chat with our knowledgeable design consultants.

This year will also see us move into a new purpose-built headquarters in Sheffield, which will house both our offices and distribution centre.

Finally, at the end of the year, we will publish an anniversary edition of the Nest brochure. Edition #03 will be filled with inspiration featuring a collection of timeless designs, thoughtful articles and an exclusive insight into our customers’ homes.

Are there any particular products or brands that you’re all excited about at the moment?

We launched a new brand to our collection at the start of August: Montana

Montana is a Danish brand, renowned for modular storage systems with carefully curated colour palettes and sustainable credentials.

Look out for new product launches during September from some of our established brands such as Louis Poulsen, Fritz Hansen, &Tradition and GUBI.

And on a personal note, if you could only buy one product from Nest.co.uk, what would you choose?

It would probably have to be the Vitra Eames Lounge Chair.

It’s one of the most famous chairs in modern design history and is instantly recognisable thanks to its distinctive curved plywood and inviting leather upholstery. And we are just about to launch a new fabric upholstered version.

You can read more about it here.

In what ways do you strive to exceed expectations when it comes to your customer service?

We are a small independent retailer, dedicated, passionate and honest.

We genuinely love what we sell, we listen and are proud to deliver a personal, friendly service with every purchase.

Customer feedback is very valuable to us, regularly reviewing our customer journey we are able to make changes and improvements based on what our customers want, tailoring the journey to them and their needs for a smooth experience.

Our customers are our top priority, they will not speak with machines or be met with auto-responses. Instead, they will chat with a member of our committed team who loves what they're buying just as much as they do and is honoured to be able to help.

We recently discussed homeware eCommerce in another of our blog series. What trends do you see shaping the industry landscape in the near future?

I wouldn’t describe it as a trend as such but sustainability continues to grow in importance and is increasingly recognised as a differentiating factor in homeware products.

More and more brands and products possess sustainable credentials, such as utilising recycled materials, FSC wood and greener courier services.

As mentioned in your article, we find AR and VR experiences interesting, too.

How do Nest stay ahead of these trends and remain innovative in such a competitive market?

To help our customers easily understand which products have sustainable credentials, our website now signposts eligible products with a ‘conscious design’ badge on PLPs and PDPs.

We focus on only selling products that the customer will buy once and love forever. Buy once and buy quality.

Along with that, we are constantly working with Venditan on developing and improving different areas of the site for the customer.

Could you share some insight into our relationship? What specific challenges have we helped you overcome?

We have worked with Venditan to tap into expertise in areas that we weren’t as experienced in, for example, EPOS and stock replenishment solutions for the launch of our new showroom.

Recently, we redesigned the layout of our product pages. The aim was to make them more streamlined to aid the product specifying and purchasing process.

Higher quality imagery with zoom functionality was also added to show product details and highlight lifestyle imagery, suggesting how the products could look in our customers’ houses.