ANALYSIS | Retailer round table
Round Table
Running a retail business can be fraught with issues. But you are not alone. This month we’ve brought together MHK buying group retailers to talk about the day-to-day matters affecting their businesses and get some practical tips and advice on how to deal with them
QUESTION 1:
To get the lie of the land, let’s kick off with how’s business at the moment?
THE RETAILERS
TORBEN SCHMID Owner, Torben Schmid Kitchens, Truro A small, family-owned kitchen showroom selling around 40 kitchens a year. Launched two-and-a- half years ago the business is retail focused, but does work with small, high-end developers. The husband-and-wife team employs one part-time designer and three subcontracted teams of fitters.
PATRICK MCGRATH Managing director, McNally Living/Kube Interiors, Ireland and UK A larger operation, Kube Kitchens employs 85 people and has nine studios in the UK and Ireland – two operate under the McNally Living brand. It does around 2,000 kitchens a year with a 60% retail and 40% contract split.
JOHN MCNEIL Owner, Haus 12, Newcastle
Launched 15 years ago this is a small, family business operating out of a converted railway viaduct in Newcastle city centre, specialising in premium German kitchens. Haus 12 is predominantly retail-driven, but it does work with developers on small-scale schemes.
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Torben Schmid: The customer has changed slightly, so what we’re finding is that we have to do a lot of additional work to help get the sale over the line at the moment. But generally, we’re still busy. We’re looking at four weeks on design; we’ve still got customers chasing us on pricing and design queries, so we’ve got loads going, but it has changed. I’d say that queries and business are back to pre- Covid levels.
The pressures on supply that we experienced over the past two years have eased but one pressure has been replaced with another. We’re now dealing with clients that have smaller budgets against higher prices, so the onus is on us to try and be cleverer with the design process so that we can still deliver the kitchen they want but within their price bracket.
John McNeil: We’re seeing a very similar picture. We now use six German kitchen suppliers because our customers are much more geared towards finding the best possible quality and style that they can, at the price they can afford. So,
we’re trying to service that as best we can. What I find reassuring about the challenges today is that everyone seems to be in a very similar position – both in the UK and Europe.
Patrick McGrath: We’re experi- encing a little of what the guys have described too. We measure footfall across all of our showrooms in the UK and Ireland and it’s around 2% down overall on last year for the first five months. Which is quite good given what consumers are reading and hearing about inflation and all the other bad news that’s in the press about the cost of living. We measure conversion levels across the business too and that figure is also slightly down overall. We are having to work a lot harder to get customers’ deposits.
QUESTION 2:
How are you adapting to this change in consumer behaviour?
PM: To tackle this change in consumer behaviour and conversion rates we’re doing a lot of work with our designers around back to basics. What we’re doing is trying to encourage our designers not to ‘over-design’. By that I mean,
• August 2023
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