Nick Glynne, Better Bathrooms | INTERVIEW
every brand was wary of the internet and saw us as a price-trashing channel that didn’t offer them value. Now they all recognise that, in the right hands, with the right responsible retailer, they can bring value to the category through strong merchandising, or simply having the stock available.
I
t’s been fi ve months since retail group Buy It Direct bought showroom chain and e-tailer Better Bathrooms out of administration. The man behind the takeover is entrepreneur Nick Glynne, who first tried to buy the company in a prepack deal last November before losing out to Roxor Group – owner of BC Designs, Ultra Finishing and The Fireclay Factory.
But when Roxor subsequently failed to revive Better Bathrooms’ fortunes, many thought it was the death knell for a company that had posted losses of nearly £2 million for the 12 months to April 2017. In fact, it took Roxor chief executive Dave Cullen less than four months to admit defeat. However, speaking exclusively to kbbreview, Glynne insists he’s already getting Better Bathrooms firmly back on track. After all, Huddersfield-based Buy It Direct is one of the UK’s largest online electrical and furniture retailers and has a history of turning failed businesses into success stories. The plan, he reveals, is for turnover to be well over £50m within three years. But these remain uncertain times and the recent problems at Bathstore have done little for industry confidence. Glynne admits that bathroom retailing is “a horrible place to be” at the moment and claims the recession is already here for big-ticket items. His current business model is based on the market falling by 15%, he tells me – and perhaps even more in the event of a hard Brexit.
But what Buy It Direct benefits from is a lack of fixed overheads and a cool £10m in the bank. It can also move into different categories very quickly, depending on demand, helping it weather any retail storm. And, unusually for an online bathroom supplier, Glynne has also revealed ambitions to balance the OEM side with a branded portfolio. Advanced talks are taking place with two major suppliers of branded collections as we speak, while next year sees the focus turn to installation.
Q & A
Q: So how is Better Bathrooms faring… A: We’ve stabilised the business and got plenty of stock coming in. I’m absolutely delighted with the purchase and we’ve had lots of referral traffi c from our Buy It Direct customers. We’ve cleared all the stores except two. One is in Leigh and another is opening in Huddersfi eld, where we’re based.
Q: So you’re scaling down the showroom side? A: Yes, everything for us is about scale. We’re predominantly online. Some stores had a payback of 90 years after the investment was put in. If you look back at what happened there, it was fantasy retailing. There was far too big a cost base on the retail side. You can’t ride two horses. There’s no way I’d buy
off a wholesaler who also had a direct arm. We know that we are predominantly online and focus on how we can take costs out and get conversion up. Everyone would love premium showrooms around the country, but it’s really hard to do in these massively uncertain times. I don’t want to be stuck with a fi xed cost base.
One of the signifi cant reasons for the downfall of Better Bathrooms is that they didn’t properly get to grips with traffi c. Traffi c is everything in e-tail. The whole thing is linked to how your website is performing
July 2019 · kbbreview September 2019 · kbbreview
Q: Do you still plan to introduce luxury brands to the portfolio? A: Yes, we’re in fi nal discussions with two major brands that will give us a whole suite of products and differentiate us from Victoria Plum and other major online players. A healthy product mix would be 35% branded and 65% OEM. We’ve had two buying trips out to China since April and seen some top-end factories. There’s some rubbish, but there’s also some really good stuff. We’ll also be bringing it all under our own home delivery service. Where some e-tailers lose their way is you can’t be at the bottom, because it’s a never-ending spiral – and you can’t be at the top. So getting to aspirational customers is our key strategy. There’s a whole lot of customers that value brands who will never go into a showroom. Either they’re time- poor or they’re a sophisticated buyer or they don’t like the face-to-face way of buying something. So it would be a mistake for a brand not to engage with a decent online retailer.
Q: So brands are happy to embrace online? A: When I fi rst started the appliance business almost
Q: What do you make of German online retailer Reuter, which sells branded products? A: It looks like a lovely idea. They’ve got all the major brands, but it depends on their service and their stocking. The site looks great, but the devil is in the detail. You’d never become a small independent now in this climate unless you’ve got something absolutely niche.
Q: How concerned are you by the ongoing uncertainty over Brexit? A: It’s defi nitely affecting consumer confi dence. A hard Brexit would see the market dropping between 15% and 20% in the fi rst year, which is massive. It’s a depression. Looking at Bathstore, anyone with fi xed rents and rates is very vulnerable. All the stats show we’re in recession. Kitchen appliances are down year on year and from what we hear on bathroom suppliers it’s fl at at best.
My hope is Boris Johnson is setting up a fail for parliament to pass Brexit and will then go back to the people and get a stonking majority. Then he gets it through.
He’ll blame parliament for not passing a no- deal and go back to the country based on a weak Labour party and fragmented opposition. So it will be kicked down the road for another six months
Q: How confi dent are you that you can turn Better Bathrooms around in such diffi cult market conditions? A: It sounds horrible, but we’re in a much better position to steal market share than many of our competitors who are either burdened with debt or with shareholders or a fi xed cost base. We’re much more nimble and cash-rich. Trade Appliances in Nottingham went bust and we bought them out of administration. Two weeks later, we were trading and it’s now a £100m-plus business. We’ve done the same with Furniture 123, which is doing signifi cant numbers now. I’m totally confi dent we’ll turn Better Bathrooms
around. Before we took over, there was half-a- million pounds of cost in IT and web and user experience of traffi c. I’ve already got a fi nance director and logistics
director in place. Better
Bathrooms had 350 people. We can absorb those roles into our existing infrastructure.
Q: So what’s the ultimate target? A: There’s no point doing anything unless we’re number one or number two in the market. So we’re massively ambitious. We need to grow really responsibly, but everything we do is about scale and growth.
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