Kitchenware retailer ProCook reported on its full-year results this week, with total revenue increasing 11% to £69.5m and underlying profit before tax soaring 50.9% to £1.5m
In a year of progress, the retailer is on its way to hitting its medium-term target of £100m in revenue, 100 UK stores, and 10% operating profit margin.
Retail Week speaks to chief executive Lee Tappenden and chief financial officer Dan Walden about ProCook’s recent successes, along with how it is striving to keep momentum through nationwide store expansion, introducing new products, and getting the most out of technology and data.
What steps have you taken to improve sales and profit?
Tappenden: Last year we opened 12 new stores and overachieved where we thought we would be. We started this financial year with three new stores and have a clear pipeline for the balance this year. Secondly, we’ve got quite a lot underway in terms of products. New product development in electricals and we launched our coffee range, which did really well at the end of last year and is building momentum, which we’re pleased with. The third would be looking at our retail service and trying to double down on offering a more focused service experience in our stores.
How has the launch of small kitchen electricals performed?
Tappenden: Electricals make up 5% of sales. While it’s early days in terms of customer awareness on this range, it’s a constantly evolving process where items that aren’t performing well will get deleted from assortment, and new units will continue to come in. There’s another piece of work to be done around colour within electricals as well, which is more peripheral, but it does add some more excitement and customer interest to that category as well.
Walden: The third and fourth phases came through in the last financial year. So that was products like pizza ovens, ice cream machines, sandwich toasters. Phase four was around coffee, which we launched during the final quarter, and received some fantastic PR and also massively resonated with customers.
Where are you targeting for new stores?
Tappenden: The 12 stores we opened last year were a mixture of regional shopping malls and affluent market towns, and we believe we can be successful in both. Most of the store openings that have come up because of availability have tended to be more Southern based. Going forward, there’s some opportunities further north as well, which we’re pursuing.
We do have one more outlet store planned, which is the Cotswold Tewkesbury outlet, set to open in mid July.
How important is tech and data to ProCook’s growth?
Walden: We’ve got a customer database that dates back many years, with many millions of customers, transactional history and performance information associated with it. We use data for retargeting, but we’ve got a lot of tech activities underway, and many that were completed last year that helped us improve our marketing efficiency and user experience on the website.
We’re using technology, data and algorithms to help us optimise warehouse pick and pack and replenishment to our stores. So technology is critical to our business, and it’s something that’s continually evolving, and we continue to look for new opportunities to add technology that makes it better for customers and colleagues. We also added a new facial age estimation AI based tool last year, which helps us with age verification for the knives that we sell.
How integral is the ecommerce offering to the overall business?
Tappenden: It’s really important to our business, currently about 36%-37% of our sales. We would see that percentage participation maintained as we open more stores. So it is critical, and we see a benefit as the lifetime value of a customer that shops with us in stores and online is significantly higher. We’re spending as much time and effort improving ecommerce as we are opening new stores.
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