A recent Toolstation event gave us the opportunity to meet and talk with more than 400 store managers face to face.
Held at Celtic Manor, Newport, the event brought together key manufacturers and suppliers with the company’s management and executive management teams.
Ideal Standard was represented by Neil Bills and James Bakewell from Business Development and Georgia Barker-Wright from Marketing.
Neil said: “This was an opportunity for us to gain insight directly from their teams to understand their engagement in the Ideal Standard product range and their knowledge of our products, as well as understanding what is ultimately important to them to choose us over other competing brands and products.
“Having spoken to James MacKenzie, Toolstation’s Managing Director, the importance to them of online presence is clear as now over 50% of their account holders start their journey online.
“This is the insight we needed to build a clear sales plan to pull sales through by increasing our awareness and advocacy with their branch teams – now the important work starts; to evolve our plan to increase sales further!”
Attendees were drawn to the Ideal Standard stand by the ever-popular Big Turn On tap game. They were also handed a specially designed Ideal Standard Toolstation brochure which demonstrated the breadth of our product available in branch, in the distribution centre for next day delivery and range extensions online.
Interesting takeaways from the event included the importance of packaging for transportation to their customers; they don’t always promote their own brand over a branded product with higher margin, and; Click and collect and online is a growing part of their business with more and more orders for online product being placed at the branch counter.
Top, James (left) and Neil (right) are pictured with Toolstation buyer Bryony Woodman.
Middle, Georgia supervises our popular tap game.