Toolsatan inside Wickes

[The Medway Handyman]

Popped into my local Wickes today. I know most of the staff pretty well & showed them the latest Toolsatan catalogue - which had the news about three Toolsatans opening inside Wickes branches.

Staff knew nothing of it, but the manager seemed vaguely aware. He thought the three were a trial.

Chatted about the sales of fixings, hardware, Gripfill, silicone, plumbing bits, electrical stuff etc.

He said he wouldn't mind losing the sales of those things, they only account for a small proportion of Wickes turnover. The mainstay is bricks, plaster, timber, doors, fencing etc - more heavy side stuff.

[Bob Eager]

If it's one of those two storey ones, like our local B&Q, presumably the Wickes stuff would be kept on the ground floor, with the ToolSatan stuff upstairs.

Then you'd have a heavy side layer.

[Eric]

Turnover is vanity...

There would be a lot more profit on a cwt of bits & bobs than a ton of bricks.

[Theo Markettos]

We've just had a Wickes open. Toolstation is already established in another part of town, directly across the road from Screwfix. I've been making a number of trips between the two: Wickes for wood, Toolstation for the rest. So would seem to go together quite nicely. Looks like the TS/SF site is on the plans for development in the medium term, so interesting to see what might happen.

However, if Ridgeons would stop hiding behind 'request a quotation' forms and actually tell us what they stock and the prices...

Theo

[The Medway Handyman]

It is Toolsatans policy to open near SF & other places that attract DIY/Trade traffic.

[Halmyre]

If only there really was a thing called the Heavyside Layer. Sadly, all we have is the Heaviside Layer.

[Bob Eager]

Whoosh.

[Geoff Pearson]

I like Tool station: there is one 1/2 mile away: I can browse on line, putt things in my shopping trolley, get a reference number and collect 5 minutes later without filling in forms or thumbing through catalogues. Give in my ref no and the guy has a pick list already in his ipad thing. Efficient and huge stock.

[Jim K]

KFot.20329$ [e-mail]...

+1 Toolsatan's IT IME seems well sorted to the actual "needs" of doing efficient business, not bombarding punters with BS "best match" and "upselling" bollox a la "B&Q-fix"

Jim K

[The Medway Handyman]

True enough, especially at Wickes prices - 400% more than Toolsatan om some items. But it also depends on turnover.

10% margin on a million is more dosh than 40% margin on £20K.

[dom]

:1KFot.20329$ [e-mail]...

SF website continues to be bollix. Odd naming of items, random ordered list s, nonsensical categories, can't traverse up the hierarchy, like not listed with like. All issues TS seem to have fixed, along with listing stock q's at my local store instantly. My only gripe is that TS is still a bit downma rket in some areas, e.g. no alternative to Silverline-junk tools.

[polygonum]

nonsensical categories, can't traverse up the hierarchy, like not listed with like. All issues TS seem to have fixed, along with listing stock q's at my local store instantly. My only gripe is that TS is still a bit downmarket in some areas, e.g. no alternative to Silverline-junk tools.

The old, old, old SF site used to be pretty bad but I could find things. Every iteration since has made it worse.

Despite all these years, the appalling performance of that ancient site has only been overtaken because of the massive increase in server, connection and client power/speeds. That is, hardware has improved even faster than SF have buggered it up.

[Jim K]

lists, nonsensical categories, can't traverse up the hierarchy, like not li sted with like. All issues TS seem to have fixed, along with listing stock q's at my local store instantly. My only gripe is that TS is still a bit do wnmarket in some areas, e.g. no alternative to Silverline-junk tools.

try using "B&Qfix"'s "mobile" site - jesus H I may as well drive to their nearest and pick up a catalogue... the only thing they appear to do is change the screen layout to suit handheld devices - rest of the bloat seems to be still there and renders it unusable on slow connections, even if it works it's hammering your mobile data allowance....

wickes is similarly bloated

toolsatan - no problem....

how Fing hard can it be??

Jim K