free-standing designer kitchens
The Milestone Factory is situated on a typical, thorn-veld farm in KwaZulu-Natal. The dusty, untamed but vibrant setting has inspired the design of our kitchens, particularly the African Allure range. We care about the environment and our beautiful country and strive to be environmentally friendly wherever possible. We use wood that comes from nearby FSC forests sustainable forests and recycle and use alternatives to plastic whenever we can in our packaging process.
In 1999, Milestone Kitchens was a three-man team, functioning in the garage of Silvia Miles’ home. Now the garage has grown into a 650 square meter factory and the three-man team has expanded to employ and train up to 30 people from our local community.
We are able to compete with the best kitchen companies in the country. We have all worked hard to establish a successful business and we are very proud of our product.
We think our team is amazing (we’ve been told it’s worth buying a unit just to meet us). We’d like to give you a short introduction to the brains behind the magic.
DISCLAIMER: This is not a dating site.
Silvia is the founder of Milestone Kitchens. She started Milestone furniture in 2001 and then saw a need and specialised in freestanding kitchens in 2010. She handed the managerial reins over to her daughter Sabrina in 2020 but is still part of the business in a creative capacity (i.e. she does the fun stuff).
Silvia has a gift for making spaces beautiful, she is also a mother and an excellent cook - this combination has (rather effectively we'd say) translated into an expert ability to design practical and beautiful furniture for kitchens and spaces, and evolved Milestone Kitchens into what it is today.
Silvia has a BA degree in painting and geography (cum laude I’ll have you know) with honours in painting, and her PGCE. The PGCE has been really useful for the day care program we run for our staff kids. The rest of her qualifications… Well we are still not sure what they have to do with freestanding kitchens, but we do know she is a damn good kitchen designer!
Sabrina runs Milestone Factory. She has a Bachelor of Engineering in Industrial Engineering and understands all things entrepreneurial. She is very energetic; her hard-working and progressive character is central to the running of Milestone Kitchens. She is responsible for the day-today running of the factory, our production, our staff and everything else involved in bringing a clients vision to life! She loves that Milestone Kitchens brings skills to a community where it would otherwise be very diffult to acquire skills. Sabrina is constantly learning from her mom (and the Founder of Milestone Kitchens), Silvia.
Sam has a BA degree in Visual Multimedia. Sam is a huge part of what happens behind the scenes at Milestone Kitchens. Her main job is to create 2D and 3D kitchen designs and quotes for potential clients, but because we are a small company she does lots of other stuff too! Sometimes she is on the factory floor quality checking, sometimes she is designing magazine or social media ads, sometimes she is doing fancy computer stuff in the “back end“ of our website (wherever that is…?), sometimes she’s loading a truck, figuring out what happened to Bryan’s tape measure or working on Our BRAND NEW kitchen planner #comingsoon #staytuned.
Sam is steadfast, hard-working and determined. Milestone Kitchens has become waaaay more “21st century” since Sam joined. She has been with us for 3 years and is now an integral part of the team.
Phindile is our Showroom Manager. She runs the showroom in Parkhurst, Johannesburg. She is in charge of all things showroom-y: stock lists, sales reports, deliveries, quotation requests, enquiries, the showroom layout, managing the other showroom staff and more. Her favourite part of her job is liaising with clients in-store about colours, tops options, handles and other design details for their Milestone kitchen.
Phindile is stylish and beautiful and super efficient. She has such a dry sense of humour we sometimes have no idea if she’s joking or not! We often wish she wasn’t based in a different city, not only because of the aforementioned sense of humour but also because she is effective and hard working. Phindile has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration, and has her eyes on a course in digital marketing. Milestone Kitchens hopes to support her in this journey.
In conclusion, whether to meet the wonderful Phindile or to see our gorgeous units, you SHOULD visit 52 6th street, Randburg, Gauteng.
Tess is an ardent, talented, very creative, proudly South African, recently graduated Video Journalist from Rhodes University - and no, we are not biased. Her job is to capture the essence of MK in videos and to help our clients better visualise our concept. This is a recent venture for us but we have (we hope), some exciting things lined up, so watch this space!
We believe that local is lekker and better. So we only employ and train people from our local communities. Our carpenters and painters take great pride in making quality kitchens for the families that we work with.
The vast majority of our carpenters and painters have been with Milestone Factory since the early days, some as far back as 2002 (I think you could say they’re happy here). Most of our staff began at MK unskilled and have learnt their skills on the job over the years and are now invaluable in an economy where skilled labour is scarce.
- Phindile, Pinetown