Merchandising
What happened to the one stop shop?
Matthew Wilkin, sales and marketing director at DART Tool Group, explains How joined-up merchandising can help to capture missed revenue.
E
lectrical wholesalers benefit from some of the strongest customer loyalty in the trade sector. Many electricians rely on a small number of trusted branches, visiting frequently and oſten under significant time pressure. For many contractors, the wholesaler is part of their daily routine, a familiar stop between jobs or at the start of the working day. Relationships with counter staff, confidence in stock availability and the reassurance of consistent service all play a role in maintaining that loyalty. However, while this loyalty delivers dependable footfall, it does not always translate into complete baskets. It remains common for electricians to split their purchasing across multiple suppliers, sourcing cable from one wholesaler, lighting fittings from another, and then picking up accessories, fixings or consumables elsewhere.
Crucially, this pattern is rarely driven by dissatisfaction. Most electricians are not deliberately avoiding a particular wholesaler or reacting to poor service. Instead, it reflects how branches are laid out and how customers think when they are buying.
Electricians are task-focused and job-led. Their priority is completing work efficiently on site, not navigating product categories or remembering every small component required for an installation. When complementary items are not clearly linked to the main purchase, they are easily overlooked.
The cost of incomplete baskets The consequences of this disconnect affect both sides. Wholesalers miss incremental revenue that should naturally sit alongside core sales, while electricians lose time making additional stops, placing emergency orders, or returning to collect forgotten items. In a sector where time is money, that friction undermines the very convenience that the physical wholesaler is meant to provide. There is also an important margin
consideration. Core electrical lines such as cable, boards and containment tend to be highly competitive on price, often acting as footfall drivers rather than profit centres. By contrast,
24 | electrical wholesalerMarch 2026
“Signage and zoning that reflect job types rather than internal categories help customers orient themselves quickly. Instead of thinking in terms of aisles and departments, electricians can think in terms of tasks.”
many of the smaller items that complete a job, including fixings, glands, connectors, consumables and accessories, typically carry stronger margins.
When those products fail to make it into the basket, the financial impact is greater than it first appears. Basket completeness is therefore not simply a measure of volume, but a reflection of overall sales quality and profitability.
Connecting categories to match how electricians shop
Joined up merchandising offers a practical response to this challenge by aligning branch layouts with real world buying behaviour. Rather than organising space purely around internal categories or supplier groupings, it focuses on
how products are used together on site. This approach starts with recognising the natural relationships between items. Cable leads to containment, containment leads to fixings and fixings lead to tools and consumables. Lighting fittings connect to lamps, drivers, connectors and emergency components, while switches and sockets rely on back boxes, screws and testing equipment.
These relationships are well understood across the sector, yet they are not always made visible on the shop floor. As ranges expand and branches evolve, complementary items can become physically separated, sometimes located several aisles apart or in different zones entirely. The result is a layout that makes sense operationally but places a greater cognitive burden on the customer.
Strategic placement brings those relationships back into focus at the point of decision. High frequency add ons positioned alongside core lines become part of the expected purchase rather than an afterthought. When an electrician selects a consumer unit and immediately sees the accessories required to install it, the likelihood of a complete basket increases significantly. This reduces reliance on memory and removes friction from the buying process, particularly for customers under pressure or purchasing quickly. The benefits of this approach extend beyond sales. Branches that are easier to navigate feel calmer and more efficient, even during busy periods. Electricians can move through the space with confidence, spending less time searching and more time getting back to site. For newer electricians or those less familiar with a particular branch, joining up merchandising can be especially valuable, reducing uncertainty and hesitation.
Clear wayfinding reinforces this logic. Signage and zoning that reflect job types rather than internal categories help customers orient themselves quickly. Instead of thinking in terms of aisles and departments, electricians can think in terms of tasks. When customers can immediately identify where to go for a specific type of work, they are more likely to browse relevant adjacent products and complete their
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