We stock our kits in over 80 shops and branches UK wide. At the moment we are losing shops and retailers due to bankruptcy at the rate of at least one a month. It took me a lot of hard work (4 years) to get each those retail outlets set up to move our kits so when we lose an outlet for our product thats little bit less revenue each month.
Of course I feel sorry for the retailers and it does have a direct impact on our supply. And this year we lost four tile training centres.
On our website we have a form that potential NEW retailers can fill in with some basic details like a contact number and a postcode for the branch. We used to get about seven or eight contacts per WEEK from that four years ago. So over a year that's 200 leads from tile shops and plumbing merchants interested in adding our product to their range.
This year we have had the grand total of 10 contacts....
But its not all doom and gloom. In a way I am grateful we have had ANY contacts. We continue to promote in magazines, online etc so once we climb out of the recession we should be in retailers minds.
These next few years will see the survival of the fittest. For example for us if push comes to shove I can scale down production and staff and sell these from my garage!! Not quite there yet but there are a lot of companies who have borrowed a lot of money and they are feeling the pinch big time.
Lets hope we are all at the bottom and about to climb up.
