2024 how's it been for you?
Another year another time to review the past 12 months. A time to evaluate where you are now, where you thought you would be and what you have planned for 2025.
Through all our retail interactions this year, with suppliers and large retail, we see there have been many challenges this year and there are many still to come that will play a significant role into 2025.
Karl Thomas, Head of Consumer products Daley Hub Ltd
“In 2024, I’ve been inspired by the remarkable resilience of the retail sector during ongoing cost-of-living pressures. It’s been great to see how brands and retailers have worked more closely than ever, reviewing supply chains, packaging, and product ranges to shield customers from rising costs. This commitment to protecting retail prices wherever possible has shown the power of collaboration and a genuine focus on supporting consumers during challenging times”.
The drive to extend and widen ranges has, for some, facilitated better options and service for customers. However, we still see huge challenges when making a selection out of 100’s of options of a single product that are on offer, a topic that we feel retailers are still yet to solve. This reminds us the old “Jam experiment” the paradox of choice “if a person is presented with too many choices, he or she is actually less likely to buy”.
Read the full paper here https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/345/345%20Articles/Iyengar%20%26%20Lepper%20(2000).pdf
Encouragingly though in our conversations we see retailers wanting to engage in new products but are challenged with the long lead times and quite limiting restrictions, such as onboarding delays, lengthy account set ups and working capital restrictions and the ongoing shipment issues have increased stock holdings for retailers as well as suppliers.
John Chater, Head of Food and Drink Daley Hub Ltd
“We’ve seen more businesses this year struggle to offer a clear proposition and go out of business and the specialists, those in online hold and grow their market share. Some of the Retailers to go aren’t small – Carpetright, a near £500m group ended up being sold to young rival, Tapi, for £3.7m. Sadly, it also looks like we’ve also said goodbye to Homebase for the last time too as a brand we will see above a shop.
The tile sector woes continued with CTD falling into administration, after Tile Giant did similar in 2023. Meanwhile the online focused Tile Mountain has just cracked through the £100m revenue mark and looks to expand its physical store profile when others are closing theirs.
Screwfix’s momentum continues and start-ups like TradeKart look to add value to online by supporting the trade with deliveries to home or site within as little as 1 hour, in fact they have just started a partnership with Toolstation.
2025 holds the joy of more inflation, NI & wage increases that need to be covered but hopefully we’ll see more innovation and bold retailing in the New Year”.
For suppliers, we see a real hunger from areas such as Europe, Scandinavia and China to name a few, to enter into the UK market. We feel their optimism. We have visited many shows this year, Canton Fair, Koln trade fairs, Garden, Retail, Paint UK shows. What is working well in our work is developing and defining clearly the compelling offer, how and why the retailer should range the product and proposition, making it easy for the buyers to see how they would fit into their ranges saving the buyers time that they do not have in their demanding roles.
The best example of a great trade show is, we feel, Screwfix Live show where over 180 suppliers interact with customers, the stats from 2024
Visitors, +40% vs last year – awesome opportunity to interact with them!
Trade visitors accounted for a massive % of sales
Visitors from far and wide inc Scotland, Wales & Ireland
This makes Screwfix LIVE one of the biggest free-entry trade shows in the UK!
Ben Lainton Director of Trading at Screwfix comments :-
“I am Super Proud of what we achieved. We’ve spent the last 6 weeks gathering feedback from vendors, colleagues, and customers, to understand what visitors loved, but also the challenges we can improve on, and have concluded that for 2025 we need to upscale (or step-change) our thinking. So after careful consideration I’m excited to announce that Screwfix LIVE 2025 will once again take place at Farnborough - but with some big changes and improvements. In early January we will provide more details”
So as 2024 draws to a close, the year ahead will have new challenges but also offers a huge opportunity for those who embrace the challenges….so be agile and resilient.
King Tian, Shanghia Office China Sourcing Agent Ideal Home Solutions and Associate Consultant Daley Hub Ltd
“The year of Dragon was struggling for everyone with many uncertainties. Businesses are looking forward to seeing the ball bouncing back from the bottom hopefully in the Chinese Lunar New Year of Snake”.
The future belongs to those who prepare for it today!
Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year from all at Daley Hub
Kerry, Clive, John, Karl, Paul and King
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