“You need to invest in your store”

The Dutch Maxeda DIY Group operates three home improvement sales channels. The Praxis chain has 192 medium-sized DIY stores in the Netherlands. In Belgium, the Dutch group runs 136 stores under the Brico brand (in Luxembourg, too) and 13 big box stores under the Brico Planit brand  in Belgium. Franchised stores contribute about 20 per cent of sales, while 80 per cent comes from stores operated by the company itself.

Currently, Maxeda is aiming for an online share of 12 per cent of total sales. Its current online share has doubled in the last four years to around 6 to 8 per cent. "We expect to continue that trend," Maxeda CEO Guy Colleau said on the Global DIY Network. John Herbert, general secretary of the international home improvement retail association Edra/Ghin, met Colleau on the internet platform for his 16th interview in the series "Meet the CEO”.

In the interview with John Herbert, Guy Colleau made it clear that, despite the strong growth of e-commerce, he sees the stationary trade as the most important pillar of the DIY business. Colleau confessed he had never believed that the whole business would go digital. The reason is that "we are making a very complex business", he said. Both aspects are necessary: "You need the brick and the click, not just the click," added Colleau with conviction.

His line of argument is that hardly any other retail industry has to deal with 40 000 to 50 000 SKUs or more in its assortment; even Ikea has only 8 000 or 9 000 articles. Customers often don't even know the exact name of the product they are looking for, whereas in the fashion sector, for example, they only have to enter the brand they seek and their size when shopping online.

The second reason is that customers don't just buy one product in a DIY store. "We are selling projects," Colleau says. Under these conditions, "a store is very useful". Of course, multichannel is the only promising strategy. That is why Colleau is convinced that "you need to continue to invest in the customer experience, you need to invest in your store to make it better, to make it stronger, to make it nicer for the customers, and you need to invest in digital – both."

The third point the Maxeda boss mentioned was investment security. Anyone who opens a store in a good location is making an investment for several decades - which will yield profits over several decades. "In the digital world, everything is old after two or…