Ideal Standard products are now live with two more of the UK’s biggest online retailers, offering significant growth opportunities for our e-commerce sales.
Soft launches have taken place with Drench – the online presence of showroom retailer Island Bathrooms – and Robert Dyas, a hardware and DIY business with 94 stores across the south east which is owned by former “Dragon” Theo Paphitis.
Both have started off with our i.life A and S collections, along with some other products from our brassware, sanitaryware and showering ranges.
The early signs are promising in terms of sales with Drench and Robert Dyas, with both planning to build on their soft launches by going live with significantly more products supported by advertising in Q1 2024.
Ollie Chater, Channel Director – DIY and eCommerce, said: “Omnichannel – where businesses have a strong presence both online and offline – is still the biggest growth area in retail and has bounced back considerably since COVID.
“The split of offline to online sales across the retail sector has balanced back out to pre-COVID levels, highlighting the importance of covering both areas as a brand and business.
“Both of these accounts support this strategy with store and online presence, which will help consumers with the research process when purchasing.”
Drench is thought to be the third biggest e-commerce website in bathrooms behind Victorian Plumbing and Victoria Plum.
The company presents and delivers our products in a strong way through their user friendly and extremely attractive websites drench.co.uk and tapwarehouse.com, which supports our Selective Distribution Strategy, where we choose to partner with those who have a positive impact on perception of our brand.
Bathrooms is a new category for Robert Dyas but they have gained significant traction online in the past two years, mainly due to COVID, but also because of some key strategic appointments.
Partnering with them early in their bathrooms journey has enabled us to build the category with them, which offers significant growth opportunities as their demographic is completely different to our existing customer base in the channel, which will further expand our market share.
Ollie said: “Both businesses add real value to the Ideal Standard brand and help broaden our brand awareness among consumers.
“This, combined with the strong growth in DIY this year, puts us in a really strong position for further market share gains in 2024 and beyond.
“With the unfortunate administration of Victoria Plum, our first ever online partner, we have a huge hole to fill in the channel, and this is why we need to be succession planning.”
He added: “The DIY and eCommerce teams will continue to explore new trading partners, in a strategic way, and we have already got one more key partner signed up to launch in early 2024 which is exciting!
“Watch this space.”