Kitchens Industry Trade Paper Covers Dawn Raid

( Reporting in the January 2007 issue of KBB Review - "the leading magazine for anyone working in the kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms industry" ).

The printed article, as it appeared in the pages of the magazine, included Vance Miller's reply and it is reproduced in full here in Acrobat format (PDF).

The full text of the Vance Miller 'right to reply' sidebar from the article is reproduced below.

my right to reply - Vance Miller

Hello . . . It’s me, notorious kitchen rogue Vance Miller, the bloke that’s just had 130 cops knocking on his door at 4.45am on a Thursday morning.

I read January’s KBB Review and noticed there were no comments from myself, so I thought I’d better give you my side of the story as it seems no-one else wants to.

So here goes, 4.45am Thursday morning, knock on the door, I peer through window and see a street and a half full of police cars and police vans.

Oh s***, thinks I, what the hell have I done now?

As I search for my pants, whilst rubbing sleep from my eyes, I wonder what the hell I’ve done. Obviously it's a murder, or they they think I’m Osama Bin Laden's pal. At this stage I’m convinced that they are taking me away for something very serious here, so I open the door and in run lots of policemen who swing me around and handcuff my hands behind my back - so there is no doubt in my mind "It’s definitely me they want".

So I ask what am I being arrested for and I’m told for conspiring to defraud. I enquire further and I’m told that it’s not a police job but a trading standards job and I’m being arrested for conspiring with others to secretly swap real wood carcases for chipboard ones.

At this stage I’m wondering if this is just a strange dream or is Jeremy Beadle about to jump out? Could you imagine how relieved I was to learn that it was all about a carcase and not a terrorist bomb or a murder? So anyhow I get carted off to the local copshop, whilst 40 trading standards officers search my two bedroomed home for eight hours. What on earth took 40 officers 8 hours to search a two bedroomed house?

21 hours later after lying on a spunk stained mattress in a cell and talking to no-one, I’m released without any charge. "What the f*** was that all about" thinks I.

I go directly to my mill where I discover there’s been another 90 cops and trading standards officers and they have taken away every single piece of paper, every filing cabinet, every computer, my telephone system, my security system, all my deliveries, enquiries - absolutely everything, even twenty grand that was in the company safe - once again "Oh shit," thinks I, what on earth am I going to do with 500 workers tomorrow, anyway all the staff bonded closer together and off we all went to work, to deal with the crap we had ahead of us, we have no records of any customer’s complaints yet, we deal with every customer services call swiftly.

I start to wonder why Oldham Trading Standards would cause so much trouble for consumers when they are supposed to be there to help them? Why have they been trying to close my company down for the last five years? They have tried everything in their power, first of all they had my company closed down, then I set up another, so they ban me from being a director, I then set up as a sole proprietor - so they invented a "stop now" order, that doesn’t stop me - even after they send me to jail, they then take away my operators licence so that I can’t run a truck, my answer was to buy 60 vans - so the Ministry of Transport sets up a testing station outside my factory gates where they weigh and test every one of my vans for over a week. They then ask all my advertisers and the A.S.A. not to carry my adverts and even threaten newspapers with court action if they accept my advertisements.

It seems there’s nothing they will stop at to close me down, they have instigated every single Watchdog appearance, Rogue Trader appearance, now they have 130 officers involved in a pathetic attempt to prosecute me for swopping real wood carcases for chipboard ones, why on earth would I bother to do that? when my wood costs me less than chipboard costs me. Anyway, they seriously disrupted my business, and all this stems from one source - and that is Oldham Councils Trading Standards. So a week after my raid a local business contractor comes to visit me and shows me plans that Oldham Council have made for my mill without asking me, he explains to me that five years ago Central Government gave Oldham Council 58 millions pounds to spend on a re-generation plan that involved my mill. So I now have in my possession a set of plans made to change my mill into blocks of offices and yet no-one has ever come to speak to me about it. All the small businesses around my mill have had compulsory purchase orders put on them but as my mill is over 1/2 million sq ft it would be impossible to re-locate me. It would wipe out their 58 million, especially when you add the business disruption costs. So Oldham Councils Trading Standards had a better plan - that was to bankrupt me and take my mill, they’ve now even got the Assets of Crime Team involved as they are saying that all my money has been made through crime and therefore I should forfeit my mill.

So in summary, these little s***s at the Council who have never had the chance to spend 58 million and never will again, have come up with a plan to get rid of me so that they can share out this lolly in lots of brown envelope deals and backhanders. So I have found myself right in the middle of this bullshit and it makes my job hard, but they will never stop me because my product and my staff are too strong.

So here’s answering the statements made in this KBB article:

  • Trading Standards say that they are now doing forensic examination - what on earth are they doing? Taking blood and saliva samples off my filing cabinets?


  • Trading Standards say the operation was completely successful - how can they say that when the operation could have been carried out by one trading standards officer and one policeman - they used 130 officers? If one policeman with a warrant told me that he had a court order to take away documents and files - how could I stop him - yet these people send 130, nothing more than a publicity stunt by Oldham Council to get me on TV, they even invited all the TV, Radio and Newspapers to my arrest, the camera was even in my kitchen when they handcuffed me, they will do absolutely anything for bad publicity on me. The newspapers the next day had the headlines, "Guns, Ammunition, Drugs and large amount of cash seized in dawn raid involving 130 officers". All they got was 2 spliffs, a spud gun with half a potato and some money from the safe - at least they got some publicity.


  • So what about these 60-100 complaints each week that trading standards receive about my company? Well a month ago I sent out a letter to every Trading Standards Office in the country asking them to confirm exactly how many complaints they have received over the last 12 months. I now have the replies and it’s a staggering 13 complaints between 200 offices. A far cry from the 4000 that Oldham Council say they have received. Where are the other 3987? Nobody knows.


  • So what about the statement from Oldham Trading Standards "It’s going to be difficult for him to carry on". Well they were right, it was difficult - for about a week! We are now firing on all six cylinders again.


  • So once again another failure for Oldham Council, that makes it about 7-0 to me, and they’ve spent about 2 millions pounds over the last five years playing this silly game and caused God knows how many consumer problems, what can I say except, that with all that money and time they have had, if they really wanted to help the public they could have given me twenty members of staff for the last five years - surely that would have been more consumer friendly.


  • So what about Oldham Trading Standards comments that I could face 14 years in jail? I think these guys are on drugs or something and if they’re not then perhaps they should be. "We are hopeful of a prosecution" - my goodness, five years of hardship and 130 coppers later and they’re still relying on hopes and wishes - these guys probably still believe in the Tooth Fairy!


  • "Miller’s reaction to the accusation has been bullish, as is typical". Well for once they’re bang on there. They have just bought a whole lot of work for themselves - so instead of taking care of consumer complaints they are going to spend the next seven months rooting though all my computers and forensically investigating my underwear with the ‘hope’ that they may find something I have done wrong. It sounds a bit like Tony and George spending their whole time looking for something that Iraq has done wrong rather than getting on with what they are paid to do and that is looking after their own country and people.


  • "Meanwhile industry insiders remain sceptical as to whether a further prosecution will be enough to deter Miller from returning to the trade once released" - well Mr & Mrs Insiders, (1) I ain't going to jail and (2) even if I did go to jail my company would run very smoothly whilst I was away, in fact, perhaps even smoother as thy would have no-one to play ball with whilst I was away.


  • "If he continues to trade, we will continue to monitor him" - go and get a life - it seems to me that just having a little piece of me in their little lives is what gets them up in the morning, mind you I bet it doesn’t help them sleep.


  • And just to prove who's not doing their jobs correctly, the Assets of Crime Team - the people who were going to take my mill from me - have just been closed down by Tony Blair personally, the reason? - They have lost 58.3 million pounds in the first year. Perhaps it was when Tony read about the 130 officers coming to see me that he decided that these guys are quite happy spending lots of taxpayers money and getting into the papers rather than actually achieving anything.


    • So now I’ve poured out my heart to you, if your still reading, let me now tell you all about myself and my company and why the KBB review didn’t bother to print my side of the story. The last time the KBB wrote a good article about me they were inundated with complaints from all my competitors in the trade saying that if they wrote about me it would up my profile and would harm their business - and as most of my competitors advertise in the KBB Review it wasn’t politically correct for them to write any good publicity about me - they weren’t allowed to run my advertisements - or the other advertisers would stop advertising with them.

    Why does the industry not want you to deal with me? Here’s why:

  • 1.   I sell solid oak framed doors for £10 each - whereas my competitors charge between £20-£40, I’ll even sell you them for £6 each if you buy in bulk.
  • 2.   I sell lengths of solid granite worktops for £59.95 - my competitors charge more like £300.
  • 3.   I sell a Nardi Fan Oven, Hob, Splashback and Chimney Extractor all in stainless steel with a two year warranty for £189.
  • 4.   I sell a 500 Highline door in PVC for £1.60 - yes £1.60!
  • 5.   I sell carcases made from real wood for less than my competitors charge for chipboard.
  • 6.   I sell a stainless steel sink and tap for £25.
  • 7.   I charge 14p for clip on hinges or 10p in bulk.
  • 8.   I sell Integrated Dishwashers for £145, Integrated Fridge Freezers for £110 or much less in bulk.


    • In fact everything I sell, I sell for a damn sight less then anyone else does.

    So now about me, I am 41 years of age and I have spent the last 14 years in the kitchen industry. I started selling B&Q rejects and obsolete stock 14 years ago from a two bedroomed terraced house in Bury, Manchester and I am now the largest privately owned kitchen company in the world.

    I am the owner of the largest mill in England where I run my operation from. I manufacture my products in the UK, China, South Africa, Turkey and Italy. We are now a worldwide company shipping products from our own factories to the kitchen industry in many different countries, I am the owner of my own Granite Mine in Mongolia and two forests in China and one in South Africa, I was the first person to develop an integrated Fridge, Freezer, Dishwasher and Oven in China.

    I have spent seven of the last fourteen years travelling the world in search of the best value products in the kitchen industry and when I say travelling the world I mean 30 hour train journeys to forests, factories and granite mines and a whole lot more whilst my competitors sit on their fat arses complaining about me.

    So, to finally get to the point, if you want to have a serious advantage in the kitchen industry then you should be talking to me and taking advantage of what I have to offer - I really have worked very hard in the kitchen industry during the last 14 years, I have found and developed products at prices no-one in the world can compete with. When I built my factory in China, it was built in the forest where the wood comes from (sustainable, of course) - no-one in the world has this kind of advantage. The British kitchen industry doesn’t want you to know what I have to offer - it would kill the wholesale kitchen distribution industry - that’s why my name must be tarnished with false stories of poor customer services.

    The British kitchen industry doesn’t want you to know what I have to offer.

    I would like to invite you to either my mill in Oldham or even one of my factories abroad where I can show you exactly what we do and what we have to offer. I promise you that when you leave you will know that Maple Industries are very, very serious about this kitchen industry and you will fully understand and see for yourself why we are the largest in the world at what we do. To give you just a rough insight into Maple Mill in Oldham we carry in stock at any one time over two million kitchen doors - that’s more stock than the whole of the British kitchen industry.

    Please do come and see me and I’ll treat you to dinner and put you up in a four star hotel - on the house - and just to top it off you can start to double your profit margin.

    One of my staff will be contacting you during the next few days to see if we can talk you into coming and visiting us or just feel free to give us a call at any time.

    I assure you of my best intentions at all times.
    Vance Miller
    Tel: 0871 2000 407


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