RETAILER PROFILE: NE APPLIANCES Shopfloor


September 2021 ertonline.co.uk


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Q: So how have you adapted your delivery and logistics operations? BG: Every day we’ve got vans going to Birmingham, London, Wales and Cornwall and these are always full; we’ve also got three vans delivering locally. To be honest business is growing almost too quickly and I cannot find drivers quickly enough to keep up with the demand! You just can’t turn business away. And as soon


as a customer has any form of negative experience with a retailer their opinion and recommendation is tainted from then on. So we’ll do whatever we can to help our customers and get all our deliveries out. One thing I’m really keen to do is build up the


website and offer national delivery, but it takes some working out and serious organisation to scale up to that level. We’ve currently got another warehouse in the


city that is full to the rafters with stock, and there is also our old store which we’re running as an outlet centre; it’s not a massive part of the business, just a way of selling off and getting rid of some older product.


Q: How important is the local community to your business? BG: In Bristol we are almost the only appliance retailer left, so we certainly dominate the area. Our customers always like to visit us instore to see products in the flesh – and there is plenty to see here. But the benefit we have now is the addition of the new website to encourage people in. We’ve got celebrity chefs coming in doing


cooking demonstrations and Facebook live streams to all of our customers – Dean Edwards, who won MasterChef, is local to us. This will really bring the showroom to life and merge our instore


and online offering. It’s just nice for customers to enjoy some free food and drink without the sales pressure, but fully showing off our appliances. Advertised properly, we could see hundreds of customers coming in over the weekend. And talking of marketing, we are a sponsor of


Bristol Bears Rugby Club and they play all over the country so that gets our name out to wider areas. I’d also like to get them more involved in things like meet and greets maybe next year!


Q: What has the support been like from the manufacturers? BG: I presented to all of my partners to explain the rebrand and show my vision of the new business and I got full commitment and support from all the manufacturers, which was really great. This is a real destination store so I wanted branding on the outside to show what we are all about; at the end of the day, it’s a showcase of so many products and the brands really got behind the project and wanted to be part of this journey. One of the best things was ensuring supply of stock for opening day! Especially with all the ongoing


issues and setbacks due to the pandemic. Thankfully we were only short of three products when we first opened so it could have been a lot worse.


Q: What are your plans to take the business forward? BG: I think the biggest growth area for the business will be the website and that is going to be one of my focus points. I now also have two sales reps on the road


looking after all our contract clients and developers – we supply appliances for a lot of house builders, local councils and the like. It takes a lot of managing so I’ve invested in a small team to develop that side. Overall, within three years if I can double my


business I’ll be happy; after that I’m not quite sure! I can never sit still and I can be very impatient; I like things to be done instantly, so when I get an idea I usually run with it! The whole company looks very different now


and if we can maintain recent sales figures since we opened, that would be great. But retail is going through very up and down times, so we’ll see what happens in the coming months.


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