About Designer Creations

Designer Creations is a family-run kitchen and home-office renovation business based in Bishops Frome, Herefordshire. Run by Jon and Mandy Cooper since 2004, the business has worked on hundreds of kitchens across Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, and the wider Welsh Marches over more than two decades.

The Coopers

Jon comes from the building and joinery side — twenty-plus years working in the trades before setting up the business. Carpentry apprenticeship, several years on residential building sites, then a decade running a small joinery workshop that supplied kitchen cabinet makers across the West Midlands. He handles design conversations, project management, and the actual installation work on most projects.

Mandy handles the client side — the initial conversations, the design proposals, the colour and finish selections, and (importantly) the administrative coordination that keeps multi-week renovations on schedule. She also handles the small business operations: bookkeeping, supplier relationships, the boring-but-essential parts that keep a small business running.

Between them, the business has been able to grow to where it is now — handling 12–15 full kitchen renovations a year, plus a steady stream of smaller jobs and home-office fit-outs — without losing the personal touch that distinguishes a family business from a chain.

How the business has changed

When we started in 2004, kitchen work was mostly cabinet-only installs — we'd come in, fit a new kitchen, leave. Over time the work has expanded into full renovations — structural changes, plumbing, electrics, the whole project. That shift was customer-led: clients started asking us to manage the surrounding work rather than coordinate separate trades themselves. The skills weren't a stretch for Jon's background; the project management side was the bigger learning curve.

Today the typical project is a 6–12 week renovation rather than a 1-week install. We work with a small set of trusted trade partners — structural engineer, electricians, plumbers, decorators, floor-layers — most of whom we've been working with for ten years or more. That continuity matters: everyone knows how everyone else works, problems get raised early, and our clients have one project plan rather than five.

The Bishops Frome workshop

The business operates out of a workshop on the edge of Bishops Frome, in the Frome Valley. The workshop has the kitchen-build space (for any cabinet modification work that happens before installation), the design office where Mandy meets clients, and storage for materials in process. Most client meetings happen at the workshop or on-site at the client's home; we don't run a public showroom because the design conversations work better in context (your kitchen, your light, your specific space) rather than against a generic showroom backdrop.

Why we work in this area

Bishops Frome is in central Herefordshire — well-positioned to serve Hereford, Ledbury, Bromyard, the Malvern Hills towns, and into Worcestershire. Most of our projects are within an hour's drive of the workshop. The Welsh Marches has a strong tradition of period properties (Georgian townhouses, Victorian villas, half-timbered farmhouses, stone cottages), which means we get to work on kitchens with real architectural character rather than identical new-build kitchens. The mix of period and modern keeps the work varied.

How we work with clients

Every project starts with an initial visit — free, on-site, usually 60–90 minutes. We use that to understand the space, what's working in your current kitchen, what isn't, and what your priorities are. Budget gets discussed openly — there's no benefit to either of us pretending a £15,000 kitchen is a £40,000 kitchen, or vice versa.

Most clients meet either Jon or Mandy in that initial visit; for larger projects, both of us. From design proposal onwards, the project has a single point of contact through to completion. Decisions go through one of us — not a chain of estimators, designers, fitters, and project managers in different offices.

Trade certifications and insurance

• Designer Creations Ltd — Companies House 08362913, incorporated 16 January 2013 (the limited company structure; the business itself has been operating since 2004 prior to formal incorporation)
• Public Liability Insurance — £5 million
• Employer's Liability Insurance — £10 million
• Members of the British Institute of Kitchen, Bedroom & Bathroom Installation (BiKBBI)
• Part P certified electricians on every job involving electrical work
• Gas Safe registered installer for any gas appliance work

The next 5 years

We have no plans to expand significantly. Jon and Mandy run the business; that's the shape it's going to stay. We've turned down a few opportunities to franchise or expand into other regions — the value of the business is in personal involvement on every project, and that doesn't scale.

What we are working on: gradually shifting more of the work towards full renovation projects (rather than supply-only), continuing to expand the home-office side, and building a longer-term apprenticeship pipeline so that the trade skills we've accumulated don't entirely disappear when we eventually retire.

Get in touch

Email [email protected] for project enquiries, design conversations, or to ask about anything on the portfolio. We answer most messages within a working day.