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Above left: Boards inside the company’s warehouse in Cocking, West Sussex Above right: The website has been improved during the pandemic to facilitate better navigation and clearer information
“There was a big demand increase and our web presence was fundamental. If you looked at the web traffic it was phenomenal in that patch, with a huge wave of people wanting to improve their homes. Because of our web presence we seemed to get a fair share of that and we were running 10-20% ahead of pre-Covid levels. Now in spring 2021, we are more than 30% ahead of pre-Covid levels.” Pre-Covid, English Woodlands was a £3m turnover business. For the financial year ended September 30, 2020, the company recorded annual turnover of £3m, despite having recorded Covid-related sales decreases in the March-May of that year after lockdown was first introduced.
Sales levels have continued to grow and over £1m of business was recorded in the first 10 weeks of 2021, with February sales up 50% on typical pre-Covid levels. A turnover for the current year of £4m is projected, which would be a 33% uplift on 2020. Part of that increase is due to the acquisition of the Northwood Forestry business in January.
Northwood owner James Burnford announced to his customers in November, 2020 that he was retiring and would be closing the business. Northwood, based at Pulborough, about 10 miles from English Woodlands, supplied hardwood including beams, cladding and flooring to mainly the builder market and was a notable local supplier of good quality French oak. English Woodlands purchased its stock and assisted with the employment of two key Northwood workers (sales manager and stock manager) and looked to service many of Northwood’s customers.
ONLINE TRADING Instead of cutting its marketing costs during the pandemic, English Woodlands doubled its marketing and sales spending.
“Unless you have sales you have nothing in a business and we focused very hard on our
digital applications,” Mr McNally explained. “We always had a good digital presence, but what was difficult was you could not buy timber from us digitally. What has fundamentally shifted is we have customers from all over the country now buying boards and products from us online. “This transition in the way people are engaging with us over the last six months, I reckon would have taken six years or more to achieve [under normal trading conditions]. Mr McNally said the company’s experience mirrored digital transition trends cited in Prof Scott Galloway’s book, ‘Post Corona – From Crisis to Opportunity’. In the book Prof Galloway says it took many years for our online retail sales to get to about 6-8% of total sales, then it got to about 18% over the last decade and then in one period of eight weeks it jumped to 28%.”
It is not only the facility of having a web shop but the information, photos and logistics software that makes it possible to sell individual timber boards and packs. The company’s logistics system can show how many boards are in a pack at any one time and the measurements of each board. When boards are sold, the system removes the boards from the pack. “At any one time we are able to sell the pack knowing whatever is left in it, whereas in previous situations you would have no idea. We’ve started marketing that with videos to push pack sales.” The English Woodlands website has been fine-tuned, with the ‘Shop’ and Stock’ buttons taking more prominence on the home page. A ‘Get a Quote’ app button has also been created to capture enquiry data and allow customers to build their quote for different products, rather than just sending a form.
“There is the ability to add a product to a
basket and get a delivery price. We are selling timber this way literally all over the country.” Mr McNally cites the wine industry as an
example for the timber sector to follow. “The wine industry has been way ahead of us as an industry. If you are going to spend £135 on a bottle of wine, you get the whole treatment, such as a visit to the wine cave and you are treated like royalty.” Some individual timber boards cost many hundreds of pounds and are unique wood to make high end furniture and joinery. A bespoke shopping experience with all information, and photos with a zoom function is necessary to encourage these kinds of purchases.
“Our challenge at the moment is what is the ability in terms of logistics technology to pick, pack and despatch – it’s the ‘Amazon’ technology. “It has taken five years to get to this point and people thought we were ridiculous trying to sell one board at a time. But many of our customers who are coming to buy one board, then end up buying more than one board, they click and buy a number of boards. The delivery/collection side isn’t the constraint we thought it would be and people are happy to pay the price.” Typically, web shop orders have a three to five day turnaround.
The work on making the website smooth and easy to navigate is shown in the growth of visitor stats – traffic has increased from 557,000 in March 2020 to 1 million in February 2021, while the stock/shop section has grown 135% to 592,000 in that time frame. The packs section alone has seen 934% growth to 2,000.
VIDEOS AND SOCIAL MEDIA Videos and social media interaction are also key areas developed by English Woodlands. A video professional comes to the Cocking site every six weeks and films about 10 videos at a time. Some 60 videos are now on the company’s YouTube channel, including customer testimonials, like that of house renovator Brian Kelly. ►
www.ttjonline.com | May/June 2021 | TTJ
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