Maplin chief executive Oliver Meakin spoke to Retail Week about putting service at the heart of his business and the impact of Brexit on price.
What have you been on the look out for at CES this year?
Smart home is key in that we’re seeing massive growth. Smart home has grown over 150% as a category this year for us, and we see it as being a big growth opportunity.
Predictions are the market will double over the course of this year and then double again in 2018.
We see that as being driven largely by the Amazon, Apple, Samsung and Google – a lot of people have a smartphone and want to control their home from that and those four players are going to accelerate that adoption.
Nevertheless, it’s still very complicated technology.
Where Maplin is streaks ahead in the UK is around the service and advice that colleagues offer, be that in-store or online.
Because it is complicated and at an early stage consumers want advice, we think it’s a big opportunity for us.
Early adopters know what they want, but most people know this technology can enable them to do things but still require that advice, and that’s why we’re putting a big face on it.
Why should a shopper go to you for that kind of purchase, rather than Amazon?
Amazon is great if you know what you want to buy, which is why it works brilliantly for books, DVDs and music.
If you’re not sure what you want but you have an idea, that’s where you need some advice to explain what the different options are, coupled with making it work in your home.
That’s why we’ve launched an offer around installation and are in the process of extending it substantially.
What are your investment priorities in the year ahead?
We’re continuing to invest a lot of money in our digital proposition platform to create a seamless experience for customers online that will link into stores.
From a proposition perspective, smart home is a big investment and we’re going to relay all of our stores and be giving more space over to smart home by July of this year.
The other thing we’re focusing on this year is expanding our services.
We’re trialling a home survey at the moment which allows a Maplin colleague to go to a customer’s home and talk through what their requirements are and advise what smart home technology they need.
We’re going to try and go nationwide on that this year and then be able to offer it online as well, so shoppers can book appointments through our website.
What are your plans for your store estate in the year ahead?
We’re in the process of refitting and modernising our estate at the moment.
“We’re spending a lot of time with our suppliers to work out what we can do to reduce the costs, but we are going to have to put prices up and that’s going to have to happen soon”
We haven’t done a major store refurbishment in over ten years and smart home is a big growth area so we’re going to use that opportunity to refit all of our stores over the course of the next three years.
We’ll also be modernising the brand.
A lot of people view Maplin as the electronic specialist, which is what it was before.
But, in fact, we just help people with tech now, so we’re dropping the ‘electronic specialist’ strapline and replacing it with ‘connecting brilliant ideas’ as part of a strategy to make us more relevant to customers.
What impact has Brexit had on your business?
Pretty much everything we buy is dollar denominated, so our costs have gone up by 15%.
We’re spending a lot of time with our suppliers to work out what we can do to reduce the costs, but we are going to have to put prices up and that’s going to have to happen soon.
Inflation in tech will be between 4-6% by September of this year.
We have to pass some of that 15% increase through to the consumer and see what it does to sales volumes.
When your costs go up by that margin you cannot shoulder that as a retailer.
Oli Meakin was interviewed during market research company Context’s omnichannel event at CES 2017.
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