INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: MIKE SMITH – EFG HOUSEWARES ALWAYS AT YOUR SERVICE
DIY Week’s Editor, Neil Mead, speaks to Mike Smith, Head of Commercial at EFG Housewares, a national wholesaler of homeware and many other products about the developments taking place in his business and how retailers can prepare to face the current challenging economic and trading conditions.
DIY Week: What is your main focus at the moment? Mike Smith: That is a reasonably easy question to answer; just trying very hard to maintain the large number of customers that we acquired over the Covid period. And I’m absolutely delighted to say they have happily stayed with us, continue to spend with us and seem to enjoy our service level over the more established delivered players.
DIYW: Is that physically visiting your premises or are these online or both? MS: Both. Our website is very much a business in its own right now, but we always encourage people to come to the warehouse where they can, purely to see the depth and the size of our range, one that was already massive but that we added to during and after the Covid pandemic. I’m very proud of what we’ve got, and we like people seeing exactly where we are, even for just for a first off because it’s much easier to see it physically than on a website obviously.
DIYW: When we last spoke you had some new ranges that you were bringing on board and distributing. Are you continuing with those? Have they been successful? Are there any others coming along? MS: That is a conversation that is actually going to roll into 2023. We are very happy with where we are in terms of the new product that we brought through and we’ll also have some exciting developments in the early part of ’23, with some new distribution partners and agreements in place.
DIYW: What do you see as your biggest challenges at the moment? MS: The economic outlook is not brilliant. I think the government seem to be hellbent on making life harder for us. I think with the uncertainty we don’t know really what is going on. We’ve got larger mortgages; we’ve got increased fuel bills and obviously
24 DIY WEEK OCTOBER 2022
Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine, it’s affecting everything from transport to market confidence. It’s almost a perfect storm really.
DIYW: How do you think that affects business? MS: Confidence. I think people are potentially far more mindful of the money they’ve got in their pocket and it’s important for them to keep that money in their bank accounts. We are relatively insulated at EFG because of the amount of everyday essential products we sell. We are fortunate that we don’t sell luxury items, we sell the things that you need in your house every day. However, during previous economic downturns we have enjoyed growth, (because of the reasons above), so we are confident that history will repeat itself.
DIYW: You had a new strategy last year which you entitled ‘bigger, better, and stronger’. How is that progressing? MS: Again, that continues to run with the amount of products that we have as a business. We continue to add to that and that comes from more product, better availability, and better service. That’s the background behind bigger, better, stronger. We are the UK’s biggest independent cash and carry in terms of turnover and site and the ranges we carry, and we will continue that on into the future.
DIYW: We’ve touched on this already, your website was updated fairly recently, and I know you are continuing to work on and develop
it. But what difference have you seen since the update? MS: It’s still not perfect by any means but it’s better, much better than it was, but we have some new developments in the works now that will cement it as a business in its own right and one we hope will continue continue to grow and grow quickly. We are fortunate in terms that we’ve got a new system being rolled out finally in December this year, that will allow the website to be even more functional with better data, better information, to make the customer’s life that much easier. We are aware that when you’ve got as many products as us, shopping on a website is sometimes difficult, so we need to make it as easy as humanly possible and the changes will be astronomically different post December.
DIYW: We again touched on this a little bit earlier, but are you currently working on any new projects? MS: We developed a project back in April and we named it ‘Super Sundays’. That is something that is working incredibly well for EFG. We pick 12 to 18 products, launch them every single Sunday, at very heavily reduced prices. It’s something that the customers love, both our web customers and our in-person visitors, and it’s massively successful. We promote various products from mops and storage boxes, to Christmas decorations, depending on the time of the year, at the right price and we’ve been staggered and delighted with its reaction.
DIYW: Thinking about the current challenging economic and trading conditions, do you have any advice for retailers that are facing these difficulties? MS: My role has changed slightly and I am now Head of Commercial at EFG, so I went from a sales role to a commercially focused one, so I now work a lot more with the buyers and I’m better placed to answer this now. Stock. If you haven’t got the stock you can’t sell it. But what I would say from what I’ve seen, and the conversations I’ve had, is use a wholesaler. Of course I want you to use EFG, but whereas wholesalers may seem on the outside to look a little bit more expensive than the direct orders, we can help cashflow in businesses. We don’t have large minimum orders. You can buy as much or as little as you want on a daily or weekly basis and that helps customers’ cash flow. Because at the end of the day if you’ve got no cash in your business your business will struggle.
DIYW: What predictions do you have for the business and industry for the next year? MS: Normally I’m buoyant and I remain positive, but there are too many variables I think to speak with any level of accuracy. We need to make sure that our stocks are right, and our business is best placed to continue providing an excellent service as we’re doing.
DIYW: When I came to visit your premises towards the end of last year, you had some new building works going on and I think you were moving into a new part of the building. Is this now finished? MS: Yes, we’ve been able to add 10,000 square feet on selling space, which has allowed our buyers to spread their wings a little bit and have a lot of new products following our good, better, best strategy. We are very proud of it and it adds another string to our bow of customers being able to buy everything under one roof.
www.diyweek.net
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
