Eve Iravani and Michael Mellor with one their chic Iranian marble award-winning fireplaces.
total interiors
With the installation of the UK's first Kolb production line, Montpellier Marble in Cheltenham have moved into the manufacture of kitchen worktops to offer a complete stone interiors range
It started with marble fireplaces, expanded into bathrooms and floors, and now, with the UK's first Kolb processing line, Montpellier Marble in Cheltenham are making their own kitchen worktops to offer the complete range of stone interiors.
It is a success story that Michael Mellor and his wife Eve Iravani started when they first introduced their Iranian marble fireplaces to the UK in 1997.
It was not only the marble from their home country that was exclusive to them, it was also the designs that they created – modern and chic, flying in the face of the Adam-style fireplaces, often produced in man-made agglomerates, that had dominated the market for so long.
In 1998 Montpellier first exhibited at the Hearth & Home exhibition in Harrogate, and since then have won six design awards at the show, including Fireplace of the Year last year for the new Monte Carlo design (pictured bottom right) that was given an unprecedented perfect score by the judging panel.
They now sell around 1,200 fireplaces a year from the retail outlets of their 150 stockists and their own showrooms in Cheltenham.
Montpellier's designs have been so successful that a competitor decided to copy one of them. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but Montpellier spent £30,000 in legal fees to stop them producing the copy. They won, but the compensation awarded by the courts was less important than the protection of the Montpellier reputation.
From the outset Montpellier have been concerned that the quality of the materials and the workmanship in their products should be of the highest standard.
The idea of selling fireplaces in the UK stemmed from a fireplace Michael had in his own home in Cheltenham.
It needed repairing and the man who came to repair it, Colin Coopland of Corinium Stoves of Cirencester, stayed for dinner and said that was payment enough for his work. Michael wanted to give him more and in the end it was agreed that Michael would supply Colin with a couple of fireplaces to Colin's designs.
Back in Tehran, Michael searched round for stonemasons who could produce them. Having found them, the seeds were sown for his own business. He now buys blocks of marble from quarries in Iran and has the fireplaces made to his own designs there for shipping to the UK.
Michael divides his time between the UK and Iran while Eve spends most of her time in the UK running Montpellier and looking after their children. They have two people in Iran buying block for them and they have 90-120 blocks in stock at any one time.
As part of the quality control, which is overseen by Michael's brother, Mark, each fireplace is made from the stone of just one block, so that all the stone matches.
Montpellier saw and process the blocks themselves in Iran and have their own packaging operation so that the finished fireplaces arrive in the UK in the same number of pieces that they left the Middle East.
In the UK Montpellier deliver the fireplaces themselves for the same reason. A few expensive breakages early on when they were using transport companies convinced them it was worth operating their own 7.5tonne truck with a 3.5-tonner for deliveries within a one-day return drive.
Before the fireplaces leave Iran each one is assembled by the people who made it, then taken apart and reassembled in a quality control zone by another group of people. The joints are checked to be no thicker than a piece of paper.
"Retailers know they don't have to take our fireplaces out of the boxes to check them before they are installed," says Michael. "They know they will be accurate."
Now, in the summer, Montpellier have 400 fireplaces in stock in their 1,250m2 premises. That will build up to 700 in the autumn ready for the pre-Christmas rush.
They moved into the new premises, which they bought freehold, in 2006 after two particularly successful years. They converted part of the building into showrooms and set up a small workshop for making cut-outs in the fireplace back panels if they were needed.
The plan was always to lease out some of the building and part of it is now used for storage by Global Granite, a company specialising in the distribution of high-quality Indian granites.
It is a symbiotic relationship. It gives Montpellier the granite they need for their expansion into kitchen worktops and it gives Global Granite the materials handling and logistics support they need without the owner having to be on site all the time.
The new premises have also given Montpellier the space they needed to install the 26m-long Kolb processing line. It could go round corners if necessary, but it doesn't at Montpellier. Those who visited the Natural Stone Show at ExCeL, London, in March had an opportunity to see the line on the Kolb stand where it was displayed prior to being delivered to Cheltenham.
The line begins with a Bluestar DT-3300/3 bridge saw with a tilt turntable to cut the slabs. It then goes to a K4-600 cross cut saw and through a KBL-2 edge polisher. It is drilled and transported to the table of the Genius 3000 for milling and routing, all without leaving the line.