Last week I discovered a very good range of home ware I didn’t even know existed. Neptune has been going for 20 years and is like the love child of The White Company and Marks & Spencer. Although clever home interiors readers will know about its great quality and nod-to-trends styling, I bet there are loads of you out there who were like me and had never heard of it.
The brand invited us to its press day (this was only its second ever, as far as I understood) and I was seriously impressed with the extensive range of furniture, paint, lighting and decoratives. The press show styling was fantastic and I came away wanting lots of the product, in particular the range of paint colours, the tableware, the unexpectedly great faux flowers, the pots and the new Isla Finch cotton velvet fabric sofas.
There was some clever installation jiggery with the blackened steel and vintage oak coffee tables, which had been hung upsidedown on the walls in the kitchen (see second image) to create industrial style shelving, and the kitchen worktable was actually two large coffee tables secured on top of each other. Since I’m having a bit of a ‘black’ moment in terms of home-dec’ this appealed, I also loved the black sink and black Wardley dining chairs.
For those of you who live near one of the stores, you will already know that the brand opts for old pubs and interesting architectural buildings rather than white box stores to show off its range in a more lifestyle manner, and there is to be a big push to open more of these. This is ‘destination retail’ and is bang on trend, as we’ve mentioned (many times) before here at TWR, if brands want us to bother to go out of our way to visit a store, it had better be a great experience once we get there.
I spoke to Giles, one of the founders, who seemed genuinely dedicated to the brand’s commitment of great design and quality at a good price. They are a vertically integrated company, meaning they design, build, manufacture and sell (almost) everything themselves. Some items are made in Asia but Giles claimed they are looking hard at bringing back as much manufacturing as they can to the UK, to help speed lead times up and control quality.
It seems like a brand worth keeping an eye on to us.
Check out the website for Neptune here
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