COMMENT AND OPINION | Paul Crow
PAUL CROW OPINION
The MD of Ripples reflects on the disruptive last year with its numerous lockdowns and ever-changing restrictions and concludes that people, service and teamwork were what helped see them through
We have nothing to fear A
year ago, I was tapping the gauge of the fi nancial resources meter while trying to fi nd any clue I could on how long we had to
go before the pandemic ended. We were well placed to go a long way, we just didn’t know that would be far enough.
About two weeks later, I spoke to someone who specialises in online bathroom retailing and they told me they were hitting sales fi gures as if Covid hadn’t happened. With that, I started to question whether we had got it wrong.
When people book an appointment, they are more likely to order. We didn’t have such a facility before the pandemic and we will now keep that in place
As I spoke to suppliers and other people I know in the industry, I noticed the same nervous unease. There were the same questions over and over again: Who do they furlough? How long for? How long will their stocks last? And, most importantly, which of their customers would come out the other side?
Time to refl ect
Having a time out on the day-to day-provides you with a rare opportunity to refl ect on where you have been and where you are going. For 33 years, we have worked hard to promote Ripples as the company that loves bathrooms – the people you should visit if you want to love your bathroom too. And we pledged to excite, surprise and care as much as we could for the customer and their bathroom project. We were now being tested. We’ve worked hard to foster a culture – the Ripples Way – where we always supported each other, enjoyed work and made it a place you wanted to earn your living. Something many of our suppliers comment on. This culture was now paying dividends for us as, time and time again, everyone from every department went above and beyond. Customers responded too. They were ordering from us despite never visiting our showrooms or seeing the products – and it wasn’t because of our prices. Don’t get me wrong, we were commercial if we had to be, but we didn’t change our pricing policy.
One by one, all our suppliers stepped up with offers of
However fragmented and independent the industry may be, it is united in its efforts to do the right thing with good people.
2 16 TEAMWORK
Our franchisees and our teams proved to us that our business model delivers the best for them and this is why we were even able to grow.
Our top three lockdown lessons 1
DO THE RIGHT THING 3
help and an equally welcome ‘leave it to me’ attitude that disguised the concerns they must have had for their own business. With the jackets and ties replaced with T-shirts and jeans in their home enviroment, it was oddly easier to capture the human side of the relationship via a screen than it has ever been in a meeting. Whether this is because people were working from home, being more altruistic and authentic, or whether I myself was more likely to notice it, I honestly don’t know, but it was nice to see.
QUALITY SERVICE AND PRODUCTS Regardless of what others want to do
with the internet, we will continue to use it to tell the world that we are really good at retailing bathrooms based on innovative design, high levels of personal service and high-quality products. We fi rmly believe there are exciting and
prosperous times ahead and we want to tell our customers about it.
Likewise, our installers too. Had they ceased working, we would not have taken much business. Instead, they ploughed through the backlog, often working signifi cantly extended hours due to the social distancing restrictions, and still found time to quote, smile and help us line up the next customer.
If we look at what we could take from the Covid
period it is that when people book an appointment with you, they are more likely to order. We didn’t have such a facility before the pandemic and we will now keep that in place and improve it. Marketing-wise we hit some new highs, whether it was people downloading our Ripples Style Guide or visiting our web page, and it’s given us confi dence to invest more into this area. Covid has taught us we have nothing to fear.
· April 2021
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