Hey everybody, I'm working with a big DIY retailer to create a better home improvement store, kind of like a B&Q of the future. The question is what's the best/worst thing about DIY stores today?? Expert advice and guidance seems the first thing for the public DIY-ers but what about people that work in the industry?
Website as searchable as Screwfix's with estimate stock levels for your local store. It's hard to make this 100% accurate but the damn store computer is scanning everything sold, so it should be possible to feed that back real time so you have a pretty good idea if your journey is going to be a waste of time or not.
[1] as opposed to something being 10 quid for 5m and 8 quid for 10m of the same, the like of which I've seen in B&Q on more than one occasion.
It's difficult - a good B&Q actually carries a pretty serious range of products these days. Sometimes their prices are pretty keen by public store standards (eg plaster, bulk aggregate).
Yup; the question has all the look of one of those 'Academics' (Or 'Expert Consultants') doing a study; when personally they don't know the difference between two screwdrivers and a chisel!
Really? I didn't know you could buy kiddies in DIY stores :-) Seriously, I don't think children have any place in a DIY store. It's full of sharp, heavy, pointy things. Keep 'em away, so they can't hurt themselves, or others.
Rubbish. Do you suggest I leave them at home on their own then (apart from it being illegal)? Sometimes I have a hard time with some of the nonsense that gets spouted here.
That is EXACTLY why I want a double kiddie trolley - so I can keep them together and away from the pointy bits and out from under the feet of grumpy old gits.
Also, kids should learn how to be in places with pointy bits - just cocooning them away is over-nannying them. Requires responsible parenting, but refusing any kids isn't the way to get that to happen.
I don't know what those 3 things are, and how they're related.
A DIY retailer IMHO is Toolstation (or Screwfix, before they went crap). It's exactly the same as a "professional" counter, because why shouldn't it be? If there is a "professional only" counter these days, it's somewhere like my local builder's merchant. The stock is limited, frequently damaged, out of shelf life, overpriced, they'll cheerfully sell you the wrong grade of something through sheer ignorance, but Old Bob behind the counter knows all his chippy and bricky mates who go there reguarly. Besides, it's the customer's money, and who's counting the cost of bricks when they're paying labour too?
A "home improvement store" is Focus. They sell lampshades. If they sell nails, they're in packs of 10, for a fiver a pack.
B&Q is somewhere in the middle, with the additional crap self scan checkouts. B&Q don't do either thing well any more.
As you are presumably trying to make money out of this, then you want the audience for those crappy TV home improvement shows with the crappy stick-on water features. We don't do those. If we do watch TV, it's Grand Designs and we bitch about how the poor guy did his stress calculations wrong or installed his U value upside down. Nor do we pay money for anything we can avoid, or get cheaper elsewhere. We're the last people you want as customers: we're awkward, knowledgeable, tight- fisted and there aren't enough of us to make it worth bothering with.
PS - Thanks for asking though, and don't mind the curmudgeons. I _like_ to be asked what I'm looking for, especially when you do it reasonably and politely.
Its easy to say better quality products, better range and better prices, but obviously that wont happen. So all that remains is the peripheral stuff, not what I'd want primarily, but I can see being useful at times.
And that might be a publicly accesible computer that shows customers how to do various projects, how to do load calcs, insulation calcs, all the sort of things people need to know but dont always to do a project. Remember one of the biggst obstacles to the general public doing projects, and thus buying stock, is not knowing how to do it.
Add a self serve tea machine nearby, and if the stuff were actually drinkable it might go somewhere towards encouraging people in. (ps the only drinkable _and_ vending machine compatible type of tea is lapsang souchong)
What do I personally want from the sheds? Nothing tbh. If the stock were better quality it'd cost more, if it were cheaper it'd be even worse, and if the range were better it'd all cost more.
Clive George wibbled on Thursday 14 January 2010 16:15
And I've never had any complaints taking them into the builders' merchants (arguably less kid friendly than B&Q), but then they stay next to me and not under the feet of the other punters and they don't tend to play with the expanded metal mesh!
The rational of DIY is that *everything* should ideally be done by, and for, the benefit of thyself.
To aid this efficiently procurement should be immediate and as close to point of supply as possible with the minimum of middle-men accepting commission, unless said middle-men are able to offer large bulk save discounts and sensibly promote new products, backing up them with support. Customers should be able to check stock levels remotely (web) and at the store entrance with the absolute minimun of fuss. Computer terminal.
Customers are to be assumed intelligent, and to be offered a range of items that fall into categories. Not find a dumbed down display of the single top selling (or promoted) item, and then later in the shop not even find matching accessories for it.
Staff to be technically trained for this profession, with levels of advertised certification. That works for the IT industry, so why not stores? If not possible, then perhaps guide customers to somewhere (books, other stores, forumns) where questions can be answered. Don't really need glum looking ex-supermarket checkout operators.
Take a look into the tools or electricals section in Home Depot US, and the helpfulness of their staff, and where B&Q is lacking will be pretty plain.
On the other hand, Lifestyle showrooms where folk can walk around, take a look at fancy arrangements and styles and _then_ have the work done by someone else, aren't really DIY stores. They are IKEA. No need to combine the concepts, or dumb one down tragically to fit with the other.
Space, and lots of it. Room to swing a cat, or at least to get three carts side by side in the aisles so there's room to get through even when two people are browsing on either side.
A good *range* of products, from cheap to expensive.
Spares. One of my local places sells lawnmowers - but I can also get blades, pulleys, belts, silencers, throttle cables etc. from them, too, right there on the shelves, for the same price they are online.
Small items sold by weight. Aforementioned place has big bins with different fixtures and fittings in; I can bag 'em myself right there, weigh them with the provided scales, and pay up front. No acres of overpriced packaging involved, and I can get the exact quantity I need.
Computers in the store for public use, so I can search for an item and it'll tell me if they have it, how much it is, and *where* it is.
Things I don't like:
Self-service checkouts. Employ some real human beings to do the job far quicker than I can do it myself, please, and without all the frustration involved.
Staff pouncing on me every two minutes to see if they can help. If I need help, I'll ask.
Lack of metal stock. Seriously, most places are happy to sell all manner of tools for working with metal, but they're crap when it comes to metal bars / rods / sheets.
Don't they usually have a bunch of free leaflets for the common stuff these days, and sell all manner of books for the more complex things? Any computer in the store would have to be something that didn't get hogged by a single user for long periods.
Yeah, my favourite local one does that every once in a while along with free hot dogs and biscuits.
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