I work for Homebase, and althrough I have to be careful what I post due to a social media policy, I’ll try and respond to some of the points raised
Yes and no, we both do DIY but HB considered itself more focused on the home improvement/enhancement side of things, for the last few years management were trying to make us into a John Lewis competitor with less focus on DIY.
Bunnings are much closer to the B&Q style of store, more focus on DIY, which is what we will eventually move over to. We’ve already started to make changes. If you go into your local store now nearly, all of the home enhancement category (cushions, picture frames, vases, ornaments etc.) has been heavily reduced to clear the stock out.
Compared to how it used to be, yes they are a lot more fuller then before. Bunnings don’t like wasted space. there is guidance on how the stores should lay out the extra stock, with some stores following it better then others. when done properly it should look full but tidy.
Bunnings is a low cost business. HB used to spend millions on point of sale (POS), most of which got thrown away (each store would generally get the same amount of POS regardless of there size, so small stores always got way too much). The hand written, while not as nice looking, is a lot quicker to implement.
One of Bunnings key messages is ‘Always low prices’ (I believe in aus they use ‘everyday low prices’) for that reason stock does have some odd looking prices to make them cheapest in the market (They’ve not quite fully achieved this goal, while a lot has come down, some items and not as good as they could be).
They also don’t like ‘gimmicks’ such a BOGOF or 3for2. We used to sell compost with multi-buy discounts, so they would be £4.99 each or 2 for £8. Bunnings dropped the price to £3.97 a bag so you got the deal price regardless of how much you brought (this has caused perhaps the most confusion with customers).
That is where we are heading, at the moment we are trying to do the ‘Bunnings way’ in stores that wern’t designed for it. Once refits start next year store we will look more like w/houses. (closer to B&Q in fact)
This is very true, we’ve been given more freedom about where we can put stock (previously stores were quite strictly controlled, with a little bit of leeway). But stock volumes have increased a lot more then we were used to, and we have to find somewhere to put it.
Very much this, we have a long way to go as of yet before everything settled, we have systems that need to be replaced (for example, our till systems are more then 20 years old). And we have to learn a different way to do things. The next couple of years are going to be tough, but i do believe we will be in a better place at the end of it
Wesfarmer, purchased Homebase for £350 million, profit for the previous year was £500 million (net) so the brought us and still had change left. So thank you for your contribution!
I’d imaging Kingfisher group (B&Q’s owners) must be quite worried, given the size difference between the two. Before the takeover HB was struggling big time, in fact I would have put money on us being gone within 5 years, if not sooner.
