Page 47 - HW October 2019

global eyes
Better Bathrooms rises from the ashes
UK retailer Better Bathrooms having fallen into administration earlier this year, the now online-only operation has returned to profitability just six months later.
Buy It Direct, which also runs AppliancesDirect.co.uk, LaptopsDirect. co.uk and furniture123.co.uk and
is known to have lifted them from similarly dire financial states, bought Better Bathrooms in March.
It then closed all 13 Better Bathrooms bricks & mortar stores and pair of
trade counters (meaning some 325 redundancies) and turned the business into a pureplay model, operating from a central DC and trading under the name
BetterBathrooms.com.
Now with 2,000 product lines,
ranging from clearance stock, to new season ranges, Buy It Direct has even stated its aim to beat Better Bathroom’s £50 million peak revenue within two years of its acquisition.
“Sales are heading in the right direction and our plan is to beat the £50m revenue Better Bathrooms generated before we bought it,
but this time we’ll make sure it’s profitable,” says Buy It Direct, bullishly.
www.buyitdirect.co.uk www.betterbathrooms.com
Keep calm and carry on somewhere else...
DIY AND GARDENING shoppers in the UK are more likely to carry on shopping at bricks & mortar, even if their local outlet closes, than shoppers in other sectors, according to research from GlobalData.
GlobalData says that almost 64% of DIY and gardening punters would switch to a different physical store if their usual outlet closed, rather than resort to online.
Less than a quarter would shop online with the same retail brand, only 12% would shop online with a different brand and only 11% would travel to an alternative location to find the same retailer.
In comparison, across all retail sectors, just under 60% of shoppers would follow their brand elsewhere.
Despite a clear loyalty to physical retail, in contrast the GlobalData numbers also reveal DIY and garden shoppers are relatively agnostic about which bricks & mortar brand would be their next port of call.
Indeed only 35.5% would stick with the same retail brand, compared to the almost 40% average across all retail sectors, all of which indicates that Homebase, for example, with its ongoing store closure program, could well lose share.
“Though closing stores is undoubtedly a sensible move for Homebase, the DIY specialist will struggle to encourage customers to switch to its website or
to travel to the next closest Homebase
store,” underlines GlobalData’s Amy Higginbotham.
“Shoppers will instead be more tempted to switch to more convenient bricks & mortar competitors such
as Screwfix, which leads the way for
convenience in the DIY and gardening market and continues to outperform, while B&Q ... has recently introduced its smaller, more accessible GoodHome format.”
www.globaldata.com
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OCTOBER 2019 | NZHJ 45