Feel the urge to completely remodel your kitchen after seeing those shiny cabinets and counter tops at the new Ikea in Norfolk? At the same time, does your heart sink at the prospect of assembling and hanging cabinets yourself? One small Virginia Beach business has been specializing in that very thing.
And with the Swedish furniture retailer’s new presence in Norfolk, Virginia Kitchens expects a big boost in business.
Virginia Kitchens was Ikea’s first kitchen installation subcontractor in Hampton Roads and works almost exclusively with Ikea products. It’s also an official installer for the company that makes custom doors for Ikea cabinets, Semihandmade.
Since the store opened on April 10, business owners Neno Nenov, Iva Nenova and Georgi Stoyanov said they have received more than double the amount of inquiries they usually have at this point in a year.
The friends started the business in 2016 after installing Ikea kitchens in their own houses and deciding that plenty of people who wanted Ikea products would pay to avoid a massive do-it-yourself headache.
“It’s easy to assemble a chair or table. But a kitchen is more complicated,” Nenova said.
Virginia Kitchens has installed around 100 kitchens over three years. Starting in 2017, the business became a referral partner for Ikea’s only contractor, Traemand. Another Virginia Beach company, Southside Renovations, was also contracted as a referral partner only a few weeks before Ikea’s opening to assist with the increase of business in the area, according to Traemand.
The business partners immigrated from Bulgaria between 2007 and 2010. Nenova was already in the U.S. when Nenov, her boyfriend at the time, immigrated to the country. They came to know Stoyanov through his girlfriend, who was a friend of Nenova’s.
Nenov had a degree in public relations and was a market analyst, Nenova had a degree in mass communications and was an account manager, and Stoyanov had degrees in marketing and construction management from European schools.
When they immigrated to the U.S., Stoyanov said, their master’s degrees were useless in helping them find jobs in their career fields.
“Nobody (in the U.S.) values experience in Europe. Your education means nothing even if you have a master’s degree,” he said.
Nenov and Stoyanov resorted to delivering pizza to make a living, while Nenov and Nenova studied for master’s degrees in business from ODU.
“It was a tough decision for all of us – immigrating from Bulgaria to the United States. You’re leaving friends, family, everything. Starting here, I didn’t even know how to gas my car using credit cards and such,” Nenov said. “We had to adapt very quickly. There is no shame in delivering pizza and making money because you’re providing for the family. But on the side, each of us was working very hard to develop something.”
The three went on to other jobs before becoming partners in a Virginia Beach marketing business, GetWeb, in 2011. They again went on to other jobs after they closed the business in 2017 because of the growing ease for customers to create their own websites online.
Switching from marketing to kitchen installations was an easy transition for them. Nenov said things are very intangible in marketing.
“It’s very hard to see the results and measure the results,” he said. “With a kitchen, it’s something that you do with your hands. You see the results. It’s very rewarding.”
As the opening of the Norfolk Ikea approached, the partners hired a few more employees and improved their installation process to complete projects faster.
“It is our decision as Virginia Kitchens to focus on Ikea products,” Nenov said. “We like customers who have already decided that they want Ikea. They just can’t do it or don’t want to do it themselves.”
Virginia Kitchens met with Traemand representatives a few weeks ago to discuss the expected increase in business.
Although Virginia Kitchens acts as a one-stop shop for flooring, painting, electric and plumbing through the help of subcontractors, Nenov said they might shift their focus to only installing kitchen cabinets and counters if the demand is too high for the company to handle entire remodeling projects.
Unlike most kitchen cabinets, Ikea cabinets come flat-boxed, which means the cabinets do not have frames and have to be put together piece by piece. That can make it a longer installing process. The cabinets are hung on a steel rail that is screwed into the wall, compared to traditional cabinets that are nailed directly into the wall. The Ikea cabinets are also three inches deeper than usual 12-inch cabinets, Stoyanov said.
“It can be very intimidating, because you’re ordering a kitchen and then all of a sudden in your living room, you have 250 boxes that you need to make sense of,” Nenov said. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s going to take a long time and you’re going to mess up a couple of things before you figure it out.”
Now that Ikea is open, Nenov said they’re eager to see even more business in the area. Virginia Kitchens is booked through mid-May and has projects extending into September.
“We’re not sure exactly what will happen … There will be other people doing this,” he said of other contractor companies that may pick up some of the business. “But we’re very proud of the fact that we’re first, and in a way, the most experienced.”
