Retail
Expand your reach beyond store hours. Opus enables 24/7 shopping, capturing additional sales and attracting customers who prefer a convenient, self-service experience.
At £500bn sales UK Retail is a significant sector with over 300k businesses, employing 2.7m people. Whilst 50% of this is food & fuel the balance is across clothing, home and others. Ecommerce has grown to 27% of the total sales but still requires a large number of stores. With rising costs and pressure from the internet store closures are at an all-time high of close to 1,000 in 2023.
The market for building products is valued in excess of £70bn, with 75% sold via distribution channels such as Builders merchants, specialist outlets, trade counters etc. With Internet sales making up only 5% of sales, there is far more reliance on trade counters and stores plus phone ordering for delivery.
In both models there is a tendency for stores to ‘clump’ together so builders merchants, electrical and plumbing supplies for example will be on an industrial estate outside of town.
Challenges
Stores are a significant investment for a business, and they need to profitable which means siting them in the right locations. A dense population is a key aspect to consider to generate the right amount of footfall, which can lead to clusters of similar businesses in the same locations i.e. retail parks / industrial estates and in similar towns.
This can lead to ‘destination’ shopping, customers travelling to an out of town retail park to find a number of shops with food and coffee shops to support the ½ day out.
Smaller towns and rural areas can thus suffer from access day to day to larger retail brands, unless on-line or to building products, certainly at the cheaper price in urban areas. Those same retail parks also need attractions to draw people into use those services
The Opus Possibility
Opus has numerous options to support here. A secure, access controlled container on a retail park could bring engineers to collect parts and grab a coffee whilst there. Smaller locations may not be able to support a retail store but could a container of fast moving lines cater for a brands shoppers?
Improve access to smaller building products in a forward location to reduce lead time and improve brand loyalty by reducing the distance and time for more rural customers to travel to larger towns for products
Speak to our team:
If you are in retail and would like to learn more about Opus, speak to our client success team who will be happy to discuss implementation and capabilities.