So I'd say yeah, for the offering perspective is the way
that we we're going to play with it is how do you how do you make
sure that you're driving choice and that you're there, that
you're the player. And now I would say the the
biggest change that I've seen in the last couple of years is that
customers are the ones that are telling what they need and not
the other way around. Hello, and welcome to the Retail
Podcast. Now today we're in the studio
and we're joined by David Gomez Cardona from Kingfisher, who is
Group Marketplace Director. And David, I'll have those
straight to you. Yeah.
I mean, thank you. Thank you, Alex and thanks,
thanks for the interest of I mean, I've always been
fascinated by how digital platforms connect people and
businesses. I started my career in logistics
in the USA while ago, but quickly and felt the need to
actually pivot to e-commerce. I was really attracted by the
how by how fast-paced this industry was, right.
So my journey has taken me from Colombia to France and now the
UK by helping building retailers build and scale their
marketplace business. So from driving digital
transformation and TV scan to launching the warmer lands
marketplace business, well, I've been deeply involved in
marketplace expansion, expansion at those different markets.
Now I can feature a focus on well from 1:00 by expanding our
online marketplace, driving digital growth and helping our
banners innovate in e-commerce overall.
And as you were saying, I mean, people may ask who we are, who's
Can Fisher so well? Can Fisher is a leading home
improvement retailer in Europe. We're present in around 8
markets with five different brands from B&Q, Castrama,
Bricodepo, Screwfix and Costas. And we have our nine 1900 stores
with around 80,000 colleagues in these eight markets, each of
them the different business, different approach and quite a
strong local expertise. And of course, at the heart of
our strategy behind it, we have what we call the power biking
feature philosophy, which in a nutshell, it's we really, we are
quite keen to actually, let's say, use the differences that we
have in each of our banners. And the difference that we have
actually makes us stronger. So we use this to scale and to
drive synergies, innovation and efficiency, while empowering
banners to still agile and, and actually locally relevant.
And when it comes to my work, well, it's, it's all, it's a
blend between strategy, digital transformation and leadership,
helping our businesses scale their own own presence well for
string trust, functional collaboration.
And I would say like, what really energises me behind all
of this is seeing how technology and e-commerce come together,
right? And to solve real customer
issues for retailers, how to scale in this, in this, in this
world today. And I would say, yeah, I mean,
outside world, I would describe myself as I love a good
conversation around travelling, geopolitics, cuisine and stuff
like this, right? So yeah, this is what I can tell
you. OK, no, fantastic.
I mean, it's really interesting that the journey that I can
imagine you have gone and your industry has gone from the times
of when we were all in our houses thinking about what, you
know, what home improvements we're going to do then you know,
lockdown opens up and stuff. I'm curious, how is that?
You know, when you look at the Kingfisher strategic priorities,
obviously marketplace says I I can definitely see e-commerce
digital marketplaces at the heart of growth.
But is that right? Is that is, I mean what would,
what would the strategic prior, what would you see being the
strategic priorities? Yeah, totally.
I mean that's, that's a great question.
I mean, I think today team features e-commerce strategy is
about meeting those customer needs on this customer needs
growing expectations around speed, convenience and choice,
right. When you tell me, David, this is
not new. This is something that I mean
it's not, I mean really maintain anything revolutionary here,
right. But we're seeing like different
demographics behaving in different way.
So from young consumers, young generations to those that are in
more urban areas. Well, expectations are actually
changing quite rapidly, whether it comes from rapid delivery to
convenience and click and collect, returning a product in
store to the rise of social commerce that is actually
shifting the market itself. Yeah.
And usually this goes beyond like retailers natural
capabilities. So I think that as part of our
holistic e-commerce strategy, we're seeking on actually
leveraging the strength and the number of our store assets to
meet our customers demanding needs.
And what I can tell you is that so far, if you look into our 1P
to retail e-commerce business, around 93% of these orders
actually peaked in store and click and collect represents
around 87% of our first party e-commerce sales.
And well now so it's, it's, yeah, it's the way that we're
leveraging on this. And well, when it comes to to
marketplace, the market role and how do we play a role into it,
into this, well, we're really leveraging marketplace to
accelerate both speed and choice, but as well convenience.
So there is a great opportunity for us in the marketplace to, to
drive this acceleration. And I think you were mentioning
it before, but we, we're targeting to, to, I mean, we
have a huge ambition actually representing 1/3 of the Group
e-commerce sells to our marketplace in a medium term.
Yeah. OK.
Wow. So just curious on one of the
trends, if you have seen a trend in terms of how quickly people
want things because it used to. I'm just, this is just, I'm, I'm
your general opinion, not necessarily what King
Kingfisher's focus is on. But are you seeing is there, is
there a need? Do people want things in four
hours or one hour? Or are they happy with the 30
minute, 24 hour window? That's that's.
I mean, personal opinion, I think it depends on what is the
product behind when you're looking to retail as a whole.
I can tell you that consumer, I mean consumer goods, grocery,
grocery was one of the industry that's fastest.
Like, I mean, that shifted the fastest into e-commerce and then
to marketplace, while home improvement DIY as a whole take
a little bit longer. And when seeing, I mean, taking
this way will be commercial related to plate and everyone
else. And the reason why you say this
is because it's directly linked with speed of, of delivery from
customers. If we focus on home improvement
DIY, well, a customer that is building a kitchen or that is
building, I don't know, like a bigger project wouldn't mind
probably to wait like even more than two days or 2-3 days to
reach your product. While if you're fixing something
urgently where you will need to have it, I would say in 30
minutes, and this is specifically what I mean, what
we've done, I mean with Screwfix, with the Screwfix
Sprint, but actually delivers anywhere in the UK in less than
one hour to the customer. You go into the app and you can
you can get everything in less than one hour, whether you want
it delivered in or collected in the store.
So specifically for Screwfix, that's any of the products on
their e-commerce website you can get within that time frame?
Yes, that's right. And then how does that go into
when you look at marketplace and the banners that your
marketplaces serve? So how does, how do you then
decide when you're going into new markets, what does that look
like? To say the way they were looking
at it, it's, I mean, at the end, marketplace is not like the end
goal, but it's more around how do we serve those 3 principles
of speed on convenience and choice.
Truly, we truly believe that marketplace is a great tool to
get right. So if you look at it, take a
step back and think about where do we stand when, how we done
and how we're serving this. We open the UK change first home
improvement marketplace with indiawhite.com B&Q, right?
This was in 2022 and at the time we're targeting how to go and I
would say improve our choice for customers in the UK.
We went from circa, I would say 50,000 SKUs back in February 22
to today more than 1.5 million products that are available for
customers. And this now we're presenting
around 40% of B and QS all Excel.
So which is huge acceleration both in terms of chones but as
well today in terms of capabilities for I mean
possibilities for our customers. But this design not only develop
doesn't allow us to, to, to, to accelerate and strengthen on
improvement our choice of customers, but as well enable
our banners to reach new customers to when we look at the
retrospectively, well, we know that in DIY that come around 50%
of our customers actually need customers to be in queue and
around 25% of them have never been to the store.
So in the in the country which is the UK, you may say, hey,
BNQ, everyone knows be in queue, yes, but we're actually
accepting, actually accepting new customers to to a
marketplace, right? Yeah.
And this is not the case only for I mean for, for B&Q in the
UK, but actually as well for our other marketplaces.
And now that we're live with the marketplace in, in all key
markets. So basically in B&Q in the UK
with Bricordeco in Spain and Portugal, Castro in France since
March 2024. We most recently launched our
our marketplace in Castrama, Poland, a market that I mean,
it's really a market where we're strong and we're really looking
forward to using this power of marketplaces to accelerate our
our digital growth. And yeah, that's that's what I
can tell you. So I assume there's still a big,
because your expansion has been phenomenal.
You still see that expansion across the regions basically.
Yes. So we continuously like that is
that expansion for sure. And we, we totally today then
this growth that was going to have in the market were already
established is going to be fully accelerated by our capacity to
to grow our digital business. And all of that, as we were
saying, underpinned by our strengths within within
classical retail stores and that connection that we can make
between between both the e-commerce world and our stores.
You mentioned about people shopping online that aren't
necessarily physical shoppers, but is there a conversion number
to that or is that part of the strategy to get those people to
convert to become physical visitors or not really?
I mean, is that or is the other way round?
I'm just confused. How would you look at that?
Do you look at that as positive? Yeah, sorry.
I mean, I guess this is, this is something classical within I
mean when you're a retailer and you're developing a main overall
detail business beyond marketplaces this So it's
something that it's, it's natural, but I would say it's
not the end goal. I mean our end goal today is
really to say, hey, we're strong in, in retail, classical stores,
retail. How can we leverage that to
continue delivering and actually developing a new business and
serving these new customer needs, right.
So we'll have the customers here that are only buying online and
we need to serve those customers.
And in the same time, we have customers that are going to be
continuously looking to shopping offline while we have that kind
of a mix. And this is what we're trying to
address with with this approach, right?
I mean, if you're looking to, I would say one of the, the
biggest value propositions that we have to in the marketplace
in, in B&Q is actually the capacity of accepting returns in
stores. So as a customer, you can easily
and without any worries go and buy in the
marketplaceindia1.com, get a product delivered to your house
and if there's an issue you're not satisfying, you change your
mind or you can actually bring it back to the store.
And this is something that is quite a need for, for the
marketplace business. So, and we see it as really,
really value added for, for customers in, in different polls
and, and service that we've had with them.
But the next step is really into our Omni channel connectivity is
to develop the click and collect capabilities as well to fully
engage all of this to happen and to really drive customers wine
purchasing, converting it online, go in and pick it up the
product in store. And then the, the the growl is
here because we'll manage to drive customers from the web to
store, but actually from store to web as well.
So this is where we want to really connect both of these
worlds. It's not one way and we think
it's both ways that things are going to happen.
When you look at the wider market and you know there's some
of the challenges and trends that you see within obviously
within your space, what do you see those?
What are they as as you continue to grow?
It's a great question. I think there is there's
something that it's that we see more and more when when what
you're in our detail offering is AI mean stores working hand on
hand with with our marketplace on e-commerce offering.
So I think there's no huge opportunity for for retailers
out there. I mean, there have this kind of
setup, which is if you're a store member, store staff and
you have the capacity to not only answer your customer needs
because what they have in front of you with just the stock that
they have in your store, but actually with a wider offer.
This is this is one of the, this is a huge opportunity.
So today's stores are of course, are having their own main role,
but as well-being more of a showroom and a place for us to
physically show offering to customers, but actually drive
them and agnostically convert them, whether it's in store,
whether it's online, whether it's delivery.
So this is this is one of the one of the challenges, but as
well trends that we're seeing in this space.
I could talk as well about probably how do you innovate
continuously draw on speed and convenience.
What I was mentioning just earlier, while we have the case
of screw fix with, with the delivering in in one hour, but
not only as I think as well. There is there's something
around depending on on your city's landscape and how you're
located. Well, actually, there isn't a
challenge to actually deliver inside like the main, the the
the downtown of the city as fast as possible.
And this goes as well through different store models that we
that we can develop. Now it's a last but not least,
there is something around how do we how do we continue adapting
or how do you continue basically leveraging on a footprint that
is international today to be able to serve customers around
markets. And it is something that with
the marketplace we are fully addressing which is key for us
is all the partners that we work with today, let's say in B&Q.
It is a key outer valley for us to to enable them to access
other markets where we're pressing as well to do something
that it's not only a trend within marketplace and
e-commerce at home, but it's it's something that it's that is
keen. There's an opportunity when you
have this kind of set up. I'm too.
Curious on your thoughts because there'd be things that you may
have had to to combat. I mean, if, if, if, if we take
that from a, from an offering perspective, yeah, I would say
one of the main challenges that you would have as a retailer is,
is to be able to, to stay. I mean, to, to be there for your
customer needs, your customer request while remaining, I would
say loyal to what your brand represents.
So if I, if I take example, let's say of, of B&Q or I mean
of Castrama today we're, I mean, these brands actually are all
within home and improvement as a whole, right.
So we need to stay loyal to what this brand represents and to
what we are, I mean, we were known for.
So of course you would like to, I mean, as a brand, you would
like to be to be there and to be there when a customer is looking
for something to related with home improvement, right?
And he can go, I mean, it's, this is quite, this is quite, I
mean, it can be quite fast at some point.
I mean, the lines are quite blurry and do what we're trying
to do with let's say in the case of B&Q is like focusing on this.
So we are expanding our our scope of of, of territory of
actually really where what is our play field, but remaining
loyal to this, right? So whenever a customer is is
buying today, looking for, let's say everything related with
kitchen, kitchen material, kitchen appliances, well,
probably in the past we wouldn't sell this, but well, today we're
actually fully covering this need.
So where are you looking for the last airfryer?
We're looking for the last oven when we really need to make sure
that we're playing there and we want that piece of a cake,
right? And we want the customers to
actually feel that they can find everything for the homework
being here. So I'd say yeah, for the
offering perspective is the way that we we're going to play with
it is how do you how do you make sure that you're driving choice
and that you're there, that you're the player.
And now I would say the, the biggest, the biggest change that
I've seen in the last couple of years is that customers are the
one that are telling what they need and not the other way
around. And there's no longer a store
saying, Hey, this is the product that you need is what I have to
rub to proport to you. It's not like it's like it's me
that is driving. It's me that is comparing.
It's me that defines as a customer.
What is the price that I'm willing to pay?
What are the conditions that I that I have as a customer?
So, so the role has changed in the last couple of years.
That's fantastic. Look, David, I won't keep any
more of your time. I will take any more of your
time. I want to say thank you for
coming on the show and I look forward to maybe seeing you in
the UK sometime. No, thank you.
Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Alex.
And it was great being here and the people for next time.