We originally went to Gingerich for a custom built-in for our living room. We stopped by their showroom, (which is lovely), and saw the custom closets as well, and asked for proposals for the built-in and master closet.
Our experience from there was that Gingerich seems to operate as separate businesses, by specialty, under the Gingerich banner, and each specialty operates independently.
Marlin, who oversees the custom shelving and closets, was polite, responsive, timely and professional. He came out to do the measuring for the closet and living room. We talked a bit and we discovered that HIS built-in would be a proposal in laminate/pressed wood (same as how the closets are constructed). We indicated that we wanted real wood and that is when we discovered that the real wood would be done by Kenny, as cabinetry and kitchens was his area. Marlin provided us a complete professional proposal within days.
Measurements were done, some pictures were sent to Kenny of what we were looking for in terms of design and then we spent a brief amount of time with him at the showroom discussing what we wanted. We wanted the built-in piece to look like a large piece of furniture, similar to a picture we gave him. We left thinking we were on the same page and would have something from him in the next week to 10 days. We then spent the next four or five weeks following up, leaving phone messages, emails and getting no response or very slow responses such as: he is working on the design; we will have it shortly; we will have it by next week, etc. When we finally got the long awaited design, it sure filled up the wall, and was an interesting concept, but ignored our earlier input and looked like a bunch of kitchen cabinets stacked together with shelves in between and not the specialty design we had asked for or expected to get, especially after four to five weeks of waiting. And then there was the cost. It was much twice what we expected, but wasn't necessarily a deal breaker had we gotten what we wanted.
In the end, we couldn't tell whether they just weren't interested in this business from us (too small?), or whether they were just too busy working with other customers, but we couldn't see doing a project or projects with a company where we had to do this amount of follow up just to get a proposal. We also didn't like the concept of working with different specialty managers within the same company. (We suppose if you are just doing one project, you might not have this experience.)
Regrettably this experience soured us, as we would have liked to have found a good company to work with, able to do a lot of different projects and to do most all the improvements on our wish list.
|