Brexit | FOCUS
OUT OF
After four years of uncertainty, the UK is finally leaving the EU. Retailers and manufacturers have been planning and anticipating every scenario but now the deal is struck with the EU and the UK is on its own, what does the industry really think? Chris Frankland speaks to KBB retailers around the country and Vicki Evans talks to manufacturers about their predictions of what Brexit will mean for the KBB industry moving forward
A
n 11th hour trade deal with the EU has allayed many retailers’ concerns about
Brexit, but fears remain that existing supply chain issues may be made worse by extra red tape for goods entering the UK from Europe. The PM’s announcement before Christ- mas of the signing of a free trade agreement with the EU gave a much- needed shot in the arm to retailer confi dence around the UK. After four years of uncertainty, fears
were running high among UK KBB showrooms that import tariffs would lead to wholesale price increases and so put a dampener on sales, which have enjoyed an unexpected boost after consumers not spending on holidays and commuting during the fi rst lockdown channelled funds into home improvements instead. In the latest survey of our kbbreview100 panel of retailers, 93% of respondents
February 2021 · said that they were
optimistic about business post-Brexit.
Contrast that with the survey of our kbb - review100 we conducted in
early December last
year, when almost half (44%) saw Brexit as one of the biggest challenges the UK would face in 2021. Richard Hibbert, pro - prietor of KSL in Sudbury, Suffolk, and national chair of the Kitchen Bathroom Bedroom Specialists Asso ciation (KBSA), says: “The Brexit deal is very welcome and takes away the threat of signifi cant tariffs, which is a huge boost for independent retailers. There may well still be some price increases to come, but at the moment it is early days, and all of
I think that most suppliers have a robust Brexit plan – they have had several years to make allowances for any potential issues with importing goods into the UK
Victoria Anderson, kitchen manager at Elliotts Living Spaces, Lymington
the details are not yet known. “We have all had to adapt to changing
circumstances over the past 12 months and the Brexit deal means there is more to come. It is unfortunate that, after so many delays,
the Government urged
businesses to get ready with only weeks to go, and then the deal fi nally came a few days before Christmas.”
He concludes: “It will be some time
before we can assess the impact. In the meantime, it is business as usual.”
Implications Derek Miller, co-owner of Scope Bathrooms in Glasgow is also upbeat about the trade deal: “As the co-owner of a business that procures a signifi cant number of products via the EU, I had been concerned about the implications of the UK leaving the trading bloc. The majority of these products come to us from the UK subsidiaries of European
27
THE EU – now what? We have a
deal and we are
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