Ken Monk's Story
Master joiner, mentor, friend, Husband (and Dad)
Ken Monk - Montage Kitchens & Joinery
Every business has a founder. Not every founder leaves behind an industry that’s genuinely better for having known him. Ken Monk did.
Ken built Montage from nothing — a partnership, a run-down factory, and a lot of drive — into one of Hamilton’s most respected joinery businesses. But ask the people who actually worked alongside him, and the kitchens and cabinetry are almost a footnote to the bigger story: a man who gave an enormous amount of himself to an entire industry, and who treated everyone he met, as his obituary in the Waikato Times put it, by the truest measure there is — “how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
This is his story, as best we can tell it.
From apprentice to business owner
Ken was born and raised in Hamilton, and completed his joinery apprenticeship at City Joinery. In 1981, in partnership with Rusty Woollen, Ken bought Pinecraft Industries and renamed it Waikato Woodware, operating out of a rough-and-ready factory on Killarney Road, right alongside the railway line. It was the kind of building where rats stole staff lunches and the toilet was an outhouse round the back — the same outhouse Ken happened to be in the day the acetylene tanks next door went over with a mighty crash. He always said it felt like one of those “head between your knees” moments.
Becoming Montage
In 1987, Ken and his wife Rowena took the bigger leap: buying out Rusty’s share of the business entirely, just a year after they’d married and taken on a mortgage. Together, he and Rowena chose to back themselves instead.
It paid off. In 1991, a new purpose-built factory went up at 1 Belfast Place in Frankton — still Montage’s home today — and the business was renamed Montage Kitchens & Joinery, a name that better reflected what it had grown into.
Building people, not just kitchens
Ken’s first apprentice was Bruce Murray. Over the decades that followed, dozens more came through Montage’s doors — many staying for years, some for decades, a number still with the business today. People who worked alongside Ken describe a boss who was generous with his knowledge, quick with encouragement, and — by every account we’ve heard — almost impossible to catch in a bad mood.
He had a quirky sense of humour, too. Somewhere in Montage’s history is a builder’s apron printed with the words “Just the Duck’s Nuts” — a phrase that reportedly made its way onto a t-shirt for Ken’s 40th birthday. There was a Hi-Ace van that, against all odds and mechanical reason, simply refused to stop running. There were Christmas barbecues at the family home, white-water rafting trips, fishing tournaments, and ten-pin bowling nights with the crew — the kind of small, ordinary things that, added up over thirty-plus years, become the real culture of a workplace.
A life contributing to the industry
What sets Ken apart from most business owners isn’t just that he ran a good business — it’s how much of himself he gave to the wider New Zealand joinery trade, often for no reward beyond knowing it mattered.
His industry involvement began in earnest in 1997, when he was elected President of the Waikato/Bay of Plenty region within the national joinery body. From there, his contribution only grew:
- 2003–2004: President of the New Zealand Joinery Manufacturers Federation. (Master Joiners)
- He helped produce the industry's first Health & Safety Guide, still given free to every Master Joiners member.
- JITO board chairman at the time JITO merged with BCITO
- Trustee of The Joinery Training Trust, to fund joinery training & development
- A driving force behind the NZS:4211 compliant timber joinery standard, travelling the country running seminars to build industry awareness of it
- Co-founder of Zealand Distribution - quality joinery product distribution company
- Recipient of the Owen Wright Memorial Trophy in 2012, awarded for significant contribution to the joinery industry
- An Honorary Life Member of Master Joiners, awarded in 2015, in recognition of his tireless work for the trade
In 2012, Ken became the first person ever presented with the Owen Wright Memorial Trophy, awarded in recognition of a person who has made a significant contribution to the joinery industry.
Three years later, in 2015, Master Joiners bestowed on him an Honorary Life Membership — recognition, in the organisation’s own words, of his “enormous contribution to the joinery industry” and the “untiring work he did on behalf of the industry over the years.”
As one long-time colleague, Barry, put it after Ken’s passing: “Ken’s drive, love and enthusiasm for the joinery industry leaves a legacy never to be forgotten.”
A life given to the community and family too
Ken’s generosity didn’t stop at the joinery trade. He was deeply involved in the fundraising and project management behind the Good News Community Centre in Nawton, helping bring a much-needed community facility to the area — work that, like so much of what Ken did, happened well away from the spotlight.
He also gave his time to church leadership teams, took part in Habitat for Humanity building trips, and got involved in various other volunteer roles over the years, wherever he saw a need he could help meet. He wasn’t one to just sit around and talk, whenever he got involved – action would follow!
And somehow, with all that going on across industry and community life, Ken still found plenty of time for his family.
A sudden loss
Ken Monk died suddenly in September 2017. The news rippled across the New Zealand joinery industry — tributes came in from Master Joiners regions across the country, from JMF New Zealand, and from joinery businesses Ken had never even met in person, all marking the loss of someone who’d shaped the trade for the better.
His wife Rowena was left not only to grieve, but to decide whether to keep the business Ken had built. She chose to keep it — and spent the following seven and a half years steering Montage through that decision, supported by long-serving staff and friends of the family, before handing the reins to Ken and Rowena’s sons, Jared and Michael, the second generation now leading Montage Group.
The legacy
Montage today is bigger than the business Ken Monk started in that rough Killarney Road factory in 1981 — four specialist brands, a growing commercial division, and a team that includes people who worked alongside him for decades. But the values underneath it haven’t changed: quality workmanship, genuine care for people, and a willingness to put in the work the industry needs, not just the work that’s easiest.
Ken Monk built a kitchen and joinery company. What he left behind was something bigger than that.
Visit Montage Kitchens & Joinery, Montage Doors, Montage Wardrobes, or Montage Stairs to see where it’s grown to today.
Transform your home into a unique work of art with custom-made timber doors
Contact us today to schedule a consultation and let us bring your vision to life.
- 07 847 9174
- info@montagekitchens.co.nz
- 123 Ellis St, Frankton, Hamilton
Choose Montage to create the heart of your new home
Contact us today to schedule a consultation and let us bring your vision to life.
- 07 847 9174
- info@montagegroup.co.nz
- 121-123 Ellis St, Frankton, Hamilton