Comment: Halfords has shown what putting the customer first really means

Putting the customer first is a retail cliché, so often mouthed but less frequently put into practice.

But Halfords, as chief executive Matt Davies pushes on with his improvement plan, provided a brilliant example when it updated on Christmas trading.

Parents of previous generations will remember buying a bike for their child’s Christmas, and all the effort that went into keeping the present a secret until the festive morning.

This year, and in recognition of the changing pattern of shopping as consumers buy online and collect in stores, the bikes and car part specialist changed how it handles such purchases.

Halfords reconfigured stores so that it could enable collection of ordered bikes on Christmas Eve, making life convenient for customers and enabling them to keep the big reveal a surprise until Christmas morning. And of course, bolstering its multichannel credentials in the process.

It sounds so simple and obvious, but it took genuine thought about customer priorities and necessitated a change to how stores were run and configured.

The changes appear to have been excellently executed, contributing to Halfords’ 19.5% rise in cycling category like-for-likes over the 15-week Christmas period reported on.

‘Living the business’ and ‘passion for product’ are commonplace in retail-speak, but at Halfords the promise to consumers seems as if it is being genuinely delivered as part of the retailer’s Getting Into Gear turnaround programme.

Chief executive Matt Davies is shaping up to be the consummate retail chief executive of the post-austerity era, when talking the talk will not be accepted by shoppers unless a business also walks the walk.