the BIG interview
Marks Electrical targets growth and next day installs nationally
Leicester-based retailer Marks Electrical floated on the London Stock Exchange on November 5, 2021. The business was started by Mark Smithson in 1987, selling second- hand cookers out of his dad’s Leicester garage. Simon King reports
M
arks Electrical is currently riding high; speaking in his glass office in
the company’s head office, chief executive Mark Smithson said that the business is in a good position as the market heads to Black Friday, and the peak selling season. In the six months to September 30, sales
rose 15% to £43.1 million, against a challenging economic backdrop, but also buoyed by strong
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demand for TV, cookers, vacuum cleaners and small appliances. Earlier this year at the IER Awards, the business was named Best Large Independent Electrical Retailer in Major Domestic Appliances. “We’re a very large business, but we’ve still got that family feel,” said Mark, who has retained a share in the business of around 73%. “Because we’re on one site, in Beaumont Leys,
Leicester, it makes it so much more friendly. If you have remote sites, you don’t get to feel the business there. We’re a national size business with an independent feel.” Marks Electrical started its financial year
on April 1 and Mark said that, previously, the business never really used to make any money in the three months of April, May and June. “If we broke even or made a bit, that was
always okay, that was acceptable; it was always tough at the beginning of any financial year,” he said. “In December 2021, we were buying lots of
products. We bought a lot of containers of stock, and those containers got held up for a multitude of reasons and weren’t delivered until the end of March or early April; we had a lot of stock piling in and then it blocked up our warehouse. “We had tumble dryers arriving and we were almost coming into the spring/summer season. “We had a lot of tumble dryers, so we had to
liquidate some of that stock and make room for stock we really wanted to come in.” Mark said that although the first quarter was
tough, the company still did “alright”. “The last couple of months in particular have been really strong, because we’ve got the right stock,” he said. “Our stock is in a really good position – we’ve got a 25% bigger breadth of SKUs in stock now than we had the end of March.”
The buying process Surprisingly, despite his new position as chief executive of a PLC, Mark is not divorced from buying decisions.
“I was doing the buying, until a year ago, for all October/November 2022
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