On consistency

Habitat is a design-led homewares and furniture retailer that sets out its stall on the basis that if you buy something from one of its shops, you will be part of the creative cognoscenti. This may very well be true, but it does rather depend.

If you happen to stroll into the Tottenham Court Road flagship, the chances are good not only that you’ll find what you what, but that the service will be helpful, well-informed and that the store environment will encourage you to hang around. This, in short, is a very good store, somewhere that’s a pleasure to visit at the moment.

Now head around 25 miles due east and you’ll not be too far away from Lakeside shopping centre with all of its associated retail parks. This is a somewhat different proposition from Tottenham Court Road, one that is posited on the car and where the idea is that if there’s a main stream retailer of any kind that you wish to visit, you will find it here.

And so you walk into the Habitat branch to pick up that large light you’ve seen in London. Inspecting the light department, turns out it’s not there.

Upon enquiry, you are told that a member of staff will have a look. Ten minutes later, you’re still waiting…and there’s nobody else in the shop. Then, joy, the person reappears to inform you that it’s not in stock. You ask if they would mind ringing Tottenham Court Road to reserve the light and that you’ll divert and pick it up there, as it’s on your way home.

“Oh, I don’t know that I could do that. I wouldn’t know how to.”

This from a young person, for whom the joys of mobile telephony are unlikely to be a complete mystery.

You exit the shop vaguely irritated and unfulfilled and wander into the massive Currys nearby where you buy a printer you didn’t know you really needed. Back in London, you park, at considerable expense, and finally get what you went out for.

So what’s the lesson? It is that Habitat is very, very good in some of its stores and simply not interested in others.

Restructuring specialist Hilco, which has owned Habitat since Christmas, must be wondering what to do with its acquisition. Well here’s a thought. Use the service levels of Tottenham Court Road as a benchmark and consider closing the (relatively new) Lakeside store unless it can be improved. Oh, and by the way, was in Cheltenham the next day and the Habitat store there was fantastic. Be consistent.