Retailers gear up for ‘off the chart’ demand post lockdown

Consumer demand for new kitchens and bathrooms is going to go ‘off the charts’ when showrooms are allowed to reopen as lockdown lifts, according to leading retailers.

Speaking on the latest episode of the award-winning kbbreview Podcast, Joe Varley (pictured) of Varleys of Newtown in Wales and Richard Hibbert from KSL in Sudbury both said they are planning for a jump in demand when the rules change.

“I think that demand is going to be off the charts, everyone is going to want to do something and, for the next three years, we’re going to be very busy people,” Varley said.

“The Welsh roadmap is very vague and they haven’t really announced any detail of what is happening, but I’m excited to reopen. I’ve got a lot of good ideas and I feel that my business will go from strength to strength.”

Hibbert agreed, saying that he’s actually warning potential customers that there may have to wait for their project to be completed.

“We’re planning for very high demand,” he said. “We’ve had so many enquiries and so many people wanting to go ahead that we’re telling them now that product supply, labour and everything else is going to hit a bottleneck come the end of lockdown. And, in fact, that has led some to say ‘OK, let’s get it done now before lockdown ends’.”

He also warned that retailers must be careful not take on so much work that it causes more problems down the line.

“‘Feast and famine’ brings different pressures,” he said. “When you’re quiet, there’s pressure ,but when you’re ultra-busy there’s a different, fast-paced, pressure. We’re planning heavily for being massively busy so we can weather that storm too, because there’s a lot of businesses that have taken on too much work and been just as negatively affected as being really quiet.”

You can hear the full interview with Joe Varley and Richard Hibbert on the latest episode of The kbbreview Podcast. Listen now using the player below or search ‘kbbreview’ in a podcast app such as Apple Podcasts.

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