the big interview
ProCook’s branch on South Street in Dorchester, Dorset Adapting to changing times ProCook founder Daniel O’Neill discusses developments at the housewares chain
January after it fell into administration. The acquisition required a lot of attention
from all areas of the existing business. People stepped up massively to ensure the transition went as smoothly as possible - it’s a huge credit to those involved. We put a huge amount of effort and
I
started out as a software developer but went into business with my family in 1995 to start ProCook. I’m officially the
‘Founder’ of the company, but if you were to pull out a particular function it would be creative or marketing director. CEO Steve Sanders does more of the operational side of the business and my focus is on the product, brand and marketing side of retail and ecommerce. 2019 was a great year for us but incredibly hard work as we acquired Steamer Trading in
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resources into Steamer Trading but after almost six months of trying to get the model to work, and a significant amount of investment, it was still struggling. It was clear that the ProCook model was much stronger, so we migrated the stores over. We then found we had a stable of beautiful, much larger, ProCook stores - much bigger than we’d had in the past - but we were suddenly faced with the problem of what to do with that space. We knew we’d compromised tabletop
displays in our existing stores as we’d always prioritised cookware and knives, so it just gave us the opportunity to display tableware in a much bigger setting. This gave it room to breathe and, since then, we’ve seen strong growth in this area.
Expansion plans
The expansion of tableware has turned out to be a great success for us and we’ll carry on growing that now, and rolling it out to our outlet
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HousewaresLive.net
stores and concessions. The mix is looking really strong and it’s getting to a place that I’m extremely happy with; I’m just excited to see how it develops.
“I don’t think retailing of homewares
products is at risk, it’s just going to look different”
This financial year to date (week 48 at the time of writing), we’re running at 13% like-for- like sales as a business, and we couldn’t be happier with that result. The store count is currently hovering at 50 and we're excited to be opening a new store in Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth [the south coast's leading designer shopping outlet, home to over 90 stores with up to 60% off every day] over the next few months - more details to come soon!
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twitter.com/Housewaresnews March/April 2020
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