The future of DIY

You mean the staff?

Adam

That won't stop anyone, it just makes things go underground.

You may have a point. Maybe I should say: start with one good store somewhere with big catchment, do it really well, train your staff, and then put on-line on top before going country-wide.

I don't know how Screwfix started, but I didn't think they had stores until later in their business development cycle. (then they got bought by (forgot), and subtle alterations ruin things, but there you go, way of the world - accountantitis and cost-plus-syndrome probably)

R.

Yes. We've got a combined DIY store / tool rental place in town, and the rental rates are actually pretty reasonable if you want something in lumps of a whole day - but I don't think they'll rent by the hour (and the tools to buy are extremely expensive given that I can typically get the same ones just down the road at the farm place for far less)

TheOldFellow wibbled on Friday 15 January 2010 16:16

Seen too many companies that were doing well (from nothing a few years back) being sold for profit, then the new company ruins them.

Severed limbs everywhere

Stuart Noble wibbled on Friday 15 January 2010 18:25

Put it next to the kebab shop.

where? (looks round madly)..not in my immediate vicinity..

I missed the obvious "good idea, but it'll cost you and arm and a leg" line, didn't I?

Ikea in Bristol probably sell them.

Fairly often now, there have been outbreaks of creatively reproduced, and beautifully printed, product labels appearing throughout the store. Some have been genuine barcodes for the thing in question (but you'll think forever afterwards that you really did buy a "Kn=F8bj=F8ckey" lampshade), others have been for a generic plastic bogbrush, a giant sofa or something very obviously wrong.

No-one knows if it's punters or staff doing it. But it's a very Bristol sort of thing.

I found that as my confidence and skills grew, what I wanted from a DIY shop changed rapidly anyway. There is a place for plumbing fittings in a plastic pack hanging from a hook, with fitting instructions on the card

- but you move through that fairly quickly to wanting a bulk bag at less silly prices.

Yup, and a good range of materials etc

While there are a few trades represented in the regular contributors here, most of us are not professional DIYers (if such a thing is actually possible).

Andy Dingley wibbled on Friday 15 January 2010 19:22

Very good :-)

Possibly for DIY, but mass production has made it difficult for anything portable. Why build yourself a magazine rack (the sort of thing that used to be a school woodwork project) when you can buy one at Ikea for 4.99? You can't even buy the wood for that. It only becomes worthwhile when it's something bespoke (to fit a particular space, say), or is designed around something you can't buy (eg a bit of driftwood found on the beach).

I tend to treat this as an anti-science: how you can take some cheap mass-produced product and turn it into something else. (He says, typing this over a wifi connection using a GBP1.20 Wilko kitchen sieve as reflector)

That would be good... otherwise it gets left to the local college, who probably don't have the facilities.

B&Q et al do offer DVDs of 'how to tile' and that sort of thing, so they do get involved to some minimal extent.

(On a similar line I'd be up for a course on something like 'advanced car maintenance' - how to change the head gasket, rather than how to check the oil which is what most colleges seem to offer)

Theo

Funny you should mention that, since (a quick Google tells me) the OP used to be a Consumer PR Manager at IKEA :-)

Theo

Trouble is, if you sell 3 nails at 3p each, you don't even cover costs for the time to count them.

One way to do it might be clever use of price breaks. How about: (for some item where the packet price might be 99p for 10)

That encourages people to buy more in bulk, but only if they need to.

Then use supermarket-style weighing scales and recognition chart at the checkout to price them. Then you don't have to have anyone manning the pick'n'mix desk (apart, I suppose, from worrying about people slipping them in their pockets).

ALDI's staff work by simply throwing the items at you off the end of the checkout. A bit hazardous if it's a length of metal pipe or a tin of paint.

Theo

Theo Markettos wrote: Why build yourself a magazine rack (the sort of thing that used

because you can build a far far better one?

A strong candidate for "meaningless job titles of the 21st century".

and out of any wood you choose .

mark

Biggest deal for me is probably range of stock. It seems to be more and more common that I go to B&Q or Wickes and come home empty handed or at least not with everything I went to get. That might be them getting worse or me getting more adventurous or more likely both.

Don't waste space on scatter cushions, carpets and fitted kitchen displays like B&Q is currently doing. I want to buy ironmongery, plumbing fittings, electrical parts, timber, building materials and so on. When I want furnishings (and it's not that long since I had a whole empty house to furnish) I don't go to a "DIY" shop.

Have a decent website which displays all your products. There's no need for an online sales facility (for me, anyway), I just want to see what you have (and at what prices) before I go, so that I can plan the project. Decent pictures, dimensions, etc, not just a one-liner cribbed from the supplier's catalogue. Live stock figures for my local branch (it's 2010, don't tell me your stock-control system can't talk to your Web servers) so I know I won't have a wasted journey. A search facility that doesn't suck (get a Google appliance in if you can't do it yourself).

A few kiosks around the shop where I can (probably on a lightly-modified version of that same decent website with good search) search the catalogue to find out whether an item is stocked and where it is (ie shelf number). I seem to spend a fair bit of time wandering around looking for things, before I can find a member of staff to tell me where it is (or that they don't stock it; see above).

Reasonable opening hours. B&Q's are ok; if you close at six you won't get much custom from me, since I tend to drop in on the way home from work during the week, acquiring the materials to do the job at the weekend. Decent opening hours all weekend would be good, so lobby the government to stop restricting everyone's activities based on some people's religion :-)

I don't really need advice from staff - I get that here :-) True experts could be handy I guess, but that's hard to achieve and any less is not really useful. I don't go to a shop to find out how to do something anyway, I go to buy the materials (and occasionally tools) that I need.

It would be nice to be able to buy more in the way of timber, eg a nice length of beech or oak as well as carcassing softwood and MDF, but to be fair that might be a bit specialised for a general "DIY" store.

I do occasionally find automatic checkouts handy as an "express lane" when I've just nipped in for a packet of screws or whatever, but for any more than that they're a waste of time and highly annoying. Keep the staffed checkouts and limit the auto kiosks to perhaps two, with nowhere to put piles of stuff plus suitable signage, so that they just get used by people with a couple of small items in hand.

...and just to cap it all off it would be good to match TLC et al in prices. If you did everything else I've suggested but weren't the cheapest I would still use it for "everything in one place, right now" convenience, but you'd miss out on my big orders like bathroom refits, workshop wiring, etc.

Pete