People are saying Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the greatest threat to life as we know it. They’re wrong. The greatest threat to human civilisation is hiding in plain sight in our living-rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and back yards – flatpack furniture and its weapon of mass construction, the Allen key.
But there’s hope for those traumatised by the thought of a weekend confronted with a knocked-down bookcase and a diagram that can only be decoded by a person with a degree in deciphering Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics.
Director of Kitset Assembly Services, Jennifer Lees has seen it all, and more. The company and its franchisees across New Zealand and Australia are the go-to team for taking just about anything out of cardboard boxes and packaging crates and putting them together.
“Our motto is, ‘Saving marriages … one assembly at a time’,” she says with a laugh.
It’s not just furniture: “Fitness equipment, a garden shed, saunas, barbecues – the list of products that are delivered in flatpack form nowadays is massive and constantly growing.
“When you talk about flatpacks, people just think it’s furniture – but it’s gone so far beyond that. It’s literally anything in and around the house or office.”
There are any number of reasons why homeowners – and others – don’t want to do it themselves. “Some people don’t want the hassle or it’s just too hard. But the time factor is probably the biggest one for most of our customers. People just can’t find additional time to spend their whole weekend assembling one little object where one of our Kitset team can come and do it in a few hours.”
That’s the nuts and bolts of the company’s business. “Our team of Assembly Technicians are well practised, and they love doing it, which is another reason that most people steer well clear of it – it causes much consternation in relationships.
“I will never tire of the phone calls we get on Monday mornings from frustrated wives or partners: Please, can you come and sort out what my husband started over the weekend?”
Lees and fellow director William Flew are proud of the Kitset Team they’re building, “We’re very particular about the people that we choose as Assembly Technicians. They get the fact that we stand by the service we provide our customers, to be able to come into someone’s home and act in a professional manner, to be a cost-effective service – and do it with good humour.
“They come from an extraordinary set of backgrounds, looking for a lifestyle change. We have builders come on board, engineers, bus drivers, sales managers, fire fighters, pilots, even an aircraft engineer. They’re individuals who just want to be able to work with their hands, rather than sit behind their desk. They get out, they get to talk to people, and they’re not just building the same thing every day.
There are franchises available in multiple States, “We’re looking for awesome individuals to join the team who want to be in business for themselves, but not necessarily by themselves because we have a fantastic support network for them.”
The company provides an intensive four-week training period with new team members, supported by proprietary software that handles everything from the job booking to invoicing and customer feedback – which has attained an amazing average score of 91 over several years.
But for Lees and her diverse ‘Kitset Krew’, it’s all about the feelgood factor of helping folk out of a jam: “Our guys are the heroes in these stories. I know it sounds a little bit trite, but not all superheroes wear capes!”