Bathroom Brands // Advertisement Feature
Stimulate to accumulate
Bathroom Brands has unveiled an audacious strategy designed to stimulate the market for its retailers. For CEO Stephen Ewer, it’s a manifesto for action…
Words: Andrew Davies A
s one of the biggest UK suppliers, Bathroom Brands is always a bellwether for the market it operates in so successfully. And its latest initiatives are more exciting than most as it launches not just a new range, but a comprehensive package
of products, promotion and price reductions designed with one goal in mind - to actively stimulate the flat market. “I think we, like many others, thought the 2024 market would be more
stable than 2022 and 2023, but that’s not what’s happened,” explains CEO Stephen Ewer (pictured). “Trading has continued to be tough and has arguably got tougher. “High interest rates and slow housing transactions have
extended the bottom of the cycle we’re in, and this is having a visible effect on our retail customers.” Feedback from retailers on challenges caused by
market conditions has compelled Bathroom Brands to not just plan for its own business but, more importantly, step up and demonstrate the kind of leadership only a company of this scale can do. “We revisited our overall business strategy, and while our medium-term plan and ambitions remain in place, in terms of 2024 we knew we needed a program of stimulus around price and promotion to genuinely help our retail customers - their success is our success.”
Manifesto Listening to Ewer talk, and reading the plan itself, it comes across much more
as a manifesto than it does a sales strategy. It’s a series of pledges, promises and action points to help retailers drive business against the run of the market. It is built around the ‘Three Ps’ of product, price and promotion and, of these,
price is the most striking. Bathroom Brands has committed to not raising prices for a further six months and has also brought in significant price reductions across many key lines, averaging out at around 15%. “These are permanent price reductions driven by a desire to find stimulus for
our retail customers. It supports them and in turn that supports us,” Ewer says. The promotional activity across 2024 has been equally as bold. In May,
Bathroom Brands created two new promotional initiatives to drive extra stimulus - Crosswater celebrated its 25th anniversary with a big summer sale and Burlington saw free-of-charge brassware with a full suite of products. This is all on top of the 12th annual national sale coming this Autumn which itself will be deeper and longer than normal. “Our retail partners have really engaged with the promotions we have run so far this year and they’ve been very successful in stimulating sales,” Ewer says.
September 2024 kbbreview
“So they’re great examples of how additional promotion can drive higher levels of trading and we’re continuing that with our annual national sale, something that’s
already a fixture of the calendar for our customers.” The longer term part of the Bathroom Brands strategy is its ongoing commitment to design-led new product development. Investing heavily in its own homegrown team, the aim is to ‘democratise’ high quality design and make it more
available to the volume market.
“Our investment in new products is as strong this year as it was last with nearly a thousand new products coming into the market,” Ewer says. “So our design philosophy is to go beyond the product and think about the full bathroom interior solution, so watch this space for further developments on that.” What stands out in the Bathroom Brands plan is how much consultation has
taken place with their retailers. This is not a strategy born in an isolated boardroom. “It’s absolutely vital that we listen to our customers and put ourselves in their
shoes,” Ewer says. “Independent retail represents around 80% of our route to market so understanding what’s going on there both in the here and now, as well as in the future is critical not just to our success but the succes of our retail partners too.” kbbr
Listen to the full interview with
Stephen Ewer on The kbbreview Podcast. Go to
kbbreview.com/podcast
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