Celebrating 20 years of exceptional design, Hubble Kitchens and Interiors has become synonymous with luxurious, contemporary kitchens, seamlessly blending style and functionality. Our signature German kitchen furniture from Leicht, paired with forward-thinking, tailored designs, continues to reflect not just the architecture of the home, but the unique personalities of our clients. As we mark this special milestone, founder Richard Hubble looks back on the company’s beginnings, sharing the inspiration behind the family’s passion for crafting extraordinary spaces.
Whilst a boy at school, afternoons were often spent at my dad’s factory helping manufacture his range of string instrument bows and accessories. Looking back, I realise now that this gave me an understanding of different materials, the process of manufacturing production and what’s involved in bringing a product to market, which was very impactful and ultimately extremely helpful.
Coming from this background of family engineers and innovative designers, my natural path was interrupted by the economic and social changes of the 1990’s which saw me ultimately spend my formative working career in the music and banking in the City of London. Make a quick buck in cool Brittania!
However, after some years in that fast-paced, money driven world, an itch needed to be scratched and following the birth of my children I wanted to return to my creative and engineering roots for the ‘serious’ part of my life. Earning money alone wasn’t going to sustain my internal passion for the next 30+ years.
So, 20 years ago along with my brother and dad, I started a small family company, Hubble Constantine, taking both of my mum’s Greek & Anglo-Saxon surnames. We started renovating houses in Southwest London & Surrey and relationships with trades and architects were rapidly forged, especially with German Architectural company, ‘3s’ from Richmond.
Witnessing many build projects, we quickly realised that there was a shift in how people were aspiring to live. New projects saw people evolving their homes to open plan living spaces, which at that time was relatively a fresh idea and required a new design aesthetic that was different from the purely functional, high-gloss, formulaic kitchens that most companies were offering.
Picking up on this emerging trend, we soon started to specialise solely in Kitchen renovations and opportunities grew as we gained a reputation for delivering a design quality at high value.
Working closely with builders and architects, we quickly recognised that customers’ budget on full renovations, especially period properties, would soon be soaked up even before the main structure had been formed, eating into costs set aside for the internal fit outs. We became accustomed to the value engineering process, which was often the solution to help maintain individually designed furniture to work cohesively throughout the home, from the kitchen to the bedroom.
Focusing on Kitchen and living design, we were increasingly finding challenges in using the British products that were on offer, as we found them to be restrictive in basic structure, design details and material choices and we struggled to achieve the designs we had envisioned for these new open-plan spaces.
So, I relocated my family to West Sussex to build a factory so we could manufacture our own products that would meet our focus. This boomed immediately. We refined our modern design aesthetic and forged our own look and feel that was a blend of European and British styles, but always unashamedly modern.
Being born and brought up on shaker and cathedral arch style doors, kitchens from Hygena gave me a natural aversion to the Cottage kitchen or Faux-Classic inset frame!
Whilst learning the trade form the ground-up helped us understand what’s involved behind the scenes within the kitchen industry, we soon found limits to our manufacturing base, especially when compared with some of the multi-generational European manufacturers from Germany, Italy, or Spain. The more we progressed and expanded, it was becoming more evident that we wouldn’t be able to compete with manufacturers with such historical longevity.
Some of these companies were 90 years old and were pushing the speed of technology advancement in the industry. A small factory in the UK, serving one showroom could easily be left behind with this kind of advancement.
Though initially sceptical, we started to collaborate with brands such as DOCA, Comprex and Schroder, with mixed success and a different set of challenges, such as communication, an added language barrier and delivery issues. Then, we were introduced by chance to the late Graham Hopper, who had been working with Leicht for over 30 years already. He soon realised that their unique architectural and design-led products were ideal for what we needed to push our vision forward. With their large-scale factory and machinery, they could easily handle bespoke sizing and offer feasible solutions for smaller designs that wouldn’t push the budget out, allowing us to really stretch our legs and move forward in the way we wanted.
After 2008, Leicht started to focus much more on their export business and we grew together over the last decade. Having a close relationship with such a brand, it feels like we have our own high-end, advanced factory nestled in the hills just an hour outside of Stuttgart. No other manufacturer we know of responds to the demand of how the interior is changing for modern homes than Leicht.
Other partnerships have followed, such as the wonderful Italian brand Novamobili, who offer products for bedrooms and living spaces. This collaboration supported our next move forward, offering solutions for the rest of the home, where we can continue a cohesive look and feel throughout and design multiple areas all under one roof. Moving from one showroom to the next for bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, study, or even outdoor areas, is for us soon to be another old-fashioned idea.
So, 20 years on, our strive to achieve a modern design aesthetic, that evolves with the 21st Century way of life, remains at our core. The family business continues and with the addition of designers Tyler Britton-Smith, Stephanie Cameron and Beth Driver bringing new ideas and talent to the table, Hubble Kitchens and Interiors endeavours to push forward as a passionate independent kitchen company for the next 20 years.
This is how multi-generational companies happen. An idea, a lot of learning and sacrifices and an ethos. Watch this space.
