Our Purpose
Building a positive legacy that contributes and supports our stakeholders, community and environment is fundamental to us.
We believe that home should provide a solid, dependable framework for everyday life. For the sake of future generations, we should consume responsibly; avoiding high fashion items that are likely to fall out of favour, instead taking the long view, investing in well-made, practical things, that have the potential to stay the course.
Our products are born out of a deep understanding of how we live and how a home fits together. They are resilient, timeless designs that balance beauty and functionality. We are aware of our impact on people and the planet and our responsibility towards both is embedded in every decision we make.
We aim to harness the intensive purchasing associated with making a home and focus it on practices that honour the world that we live in.
Beautifully Useful Design
Through intelligent design and responsible craftsmanship make beautiful homewares that are accessible & long lasting.
All products in the NiX range are designed exclusively in-house with our vision in mind, to create beautifully useful items, which are truly functional and that fulfil their purpose effortlessly.
Our products are designed with the meticulous attention to detail our customers have come to expect from the NH&Co service, from the initial sketch all the way to the finish article in our customer’s homes. Designing in house also means that every item is created with the customer in mind and a clear understanding of how the product will be used in its specific context. This utilitarian approach has forged a simple design aesthetic enabling a sensible price architecture.
Our products are priced to be accessible as possible, and we keep a close eye on our costs to ensure we can grow our business in a sustainable way. High prices are often reflective of the cost of sustainably sourced materials and the services we use, as well as ensuring that our makers can remunerate their teams inline with acceptable living standards.
Quality is at the core of everything we do, designing products with functionality as their foundation and beauty in their execution, which are true to their materials and making process. With this utility in mind, all NiX products are designed to last and be passed on to future generations. The keen attention to detail proliferates down from the design to our manufacturing and quality processes.
78% of shoppers say they are skeptical when they hear a brand making sustainability claims. It’s clear that it is not about what you say, it’s about what you do. We acknowledge that we’re part of a consumerist system. Rather than label ourselves truly sustainable, we call our practices responsible, and we commit to providing transparency in everything that we do.
We provide detailed product information to help customers make informed decisions. Our fire retardancy guide for all our fabric and upholstery, our sofa structure guide, and our detailed product measurement guides help to ensure that we minimise returns.
We strive to ensure that our communications and tone of voice are representative of our diverse community of makers, partners, stakeholders, and team members.
Connecting community
We believe that community starts at home, and we have a clear commitment to improving employee satisfaction, diversity, opportunity and fairness. We know we have work to do but we are always striving to be better.
Listening to our people and learning how we can be a more thoughtful, inclusive and inspirational company is core to our ethos. Each year we embark on a detailed and thorough survey of our employee’s satisfaction, and we commit to using that feedback to improve.
Fostering a great culture comes from the right attitudes and behaviours from all parts of the organisation, and our Company Values are at the core of how we aim to ensure people feel nurtured, valued and empowered.
We aim to provide an inclusive setting, one where we celebrate and embrace diversity of opinion and background. We have diversity targets for age, race, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity that informs our recruitment strategy.
We have partnered with United in Design to provide internship opportunities to students from black, Asian, ethnic minority and socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Our employee benefits program is always evolving to help our team members to balance their family and home commitments with their work.
We have introduced:
- Hybrid working to allow people to work from home for two days a week
- Flexible working hours with bespoke start and finish times that provide space for family commitments
- Bike to work scheme to help subsidise and afford a bike for commuting
- Private medical health insurance for all team members
- Enhanced maternity pay to help support family budgeting in the early months of a new arrival
- We provide additional paid days off for our team members to do voluntary work at a registered charity of their choice.
- We have a clear commitment to paying the minimum of the London Living Wage to all team members.
- We prioritise working with makers who champion apprenticeships to secure the future of traditional making and craftsmanship.
Responsible Craft
Sustainable practice lies at the heart of our business. From material to craft to transport and beyond, we make the most responsible choices, for products that create a positive legacy for homes, the community and the environment.
We aim to build long term partnerships with makers who share our philosophy, nurturing those relationships as we grow together on our journey. Our UK upholster supplier is a perfect example.
We profile new makers carefully and select partners considering our purpose, philosophy and alignment to a shared set of values.
We ask all makers and partners to commit to a Supplier Code of Conduct that covers their social compliance, environmental impact and commitment to more responsible business.
Where possible, we aim to work with on-shore or near-shore makers to minimise the mileage and impact of transport, and to give us improved transparency to the provenance of our pieces and locally sourced materials.
Using materials that minimise their impact on our natural environment is a focus. We strive to use natural fibres and yarns that are sustainably sourced and are biodegradable. Organic Cotton is a priority, and we look to use it wherever possible. We only use FSC Certified wood in our furniture and our factories must be able to demonstrate that certification. Where it can improve a fabric’s durability, we will sometimes use recycled synthetic fibres blended with natural fibre, such as our Intelligent Velvet.
Fabric treatment is Okeo-tex standard. When using potential hazardous agents; NiX uses suppliers such as Euroflam who seek out safer ways of protecting and applying agents to the yarns and textiles we process.
ACE
ACE has been developed with the growing demand for more environmentally friendly chemicals in mind. Based on Nitrogen Phosphorus chemistry, there are no chemicals on the OSPAR list of chemicals for priority action in the solution.
Whilst EU risk assessment under existing substances regulations show there is no need for risk reduction measures of current brominated flame retardants used in blackcoating formulations, greater emphasis on the ecological impact of these products is now at the forefront.
An ongoing development of all types of flame retardant is being undertaken by all manufacturers, but the phasing out of some of the 'potentially' harmful chemicals will take more research and that without brominated flame retardants the British Standards that call for a water-soak, would be difficult to meet.
Driving down our broader carbon impact is a focus in our everyday work. We look to minimise the travel for our products and our teams, and we have made a commitment to reduce our water usage and emissions. There is more work to do and we have targets that we have set ourselves as part of Our Future commitments.
Our products are made using a batch production process to improve the efficiency of our factories and to reduce waste and energy. We also look to minimise our stock holding just in time and made to order
Our long-term aim is to be a fully circular business and so we have developed services that facilitate the recycling of packaging and provide customers with the option for us to take away their old sofa, which are then recycled, rebuilt or reupholstered, wherever possible.
All our packaging is designed to minimise product damage in transit yet also to be fully recyclable. We aim to use as little plastic as possible in our manufacturing and logistics operations and we have set clear targets for achieving a zero virgin-plastic operation.