B&Q held their first event of the year in Manchester today, and if you’re interested in the marketplace keep an eye out because they’ll be running them every quarter this year. The events are an amazing way to get to grips with their marketplace and why you should consider becoming a B&Q seller and as you’d expect the room was packed!
First some numbers:
- B&Q have 55 years of improving homes and gardens
- There is 92% B&Q brand awareness – just about everyone have shopped at B&Q
- There are 320 million annual visits to DIY.com
- B&Q have 311 stores and 25,000 employees… and they’re still growing
- They boast £3.8 billion in sales in 2023/24 with £154 million in marketplace sales
But B&Q aren’t stopping here, they plan to have 5 million SKUs on their marketplace and £1 billion in annual revenue. And don’t forget B&Q are effectively a niche marketplace without the big traditional marketplace drivers of fashion, footware, accessories and beauty, making their achievements even more impressive.
So if you attend, what can you expect? Well, B&Q ran through:
- Onboarding T’s & C’s
- The onboarding journey
- Key Account Management and Account Management who can help you grow your business
- The cross function Merchant Support Team who can help with finance and payments, customer services and retail media, and support with processes and systems.
- A quick dive into the B&Q Retail Media offering for both on and off DIY.com
- How to win with Promotions and Deals
- Fulfilment and shipping
What I really loved about this event is that it was only a half day and every session was short and to the point. B&Q had a huge team at the event, each of whom specialised in one of the above areas and their format appeared to be to tell you who they are, what they do, three key points that you need to know and then summarise and on to the next topic with another speaker.
This is a format that many could learn from – if for instance you are attending because you don’t yet sell on B&Q you want to know about the opportunity and onboarding, and retail media might be interesting but you’re not ready for it yet. Equally, if you’ve been selling for a year or so, onboarding isn’t relevant for you any more, but the event was so far paced you were soon into the Promotions and Deals that can help you grow your business.
And don’t think because the sessions were short and sweet they didn’t have impact – in the break and at lunch at the end of the event, the entire B&Q team were there to speak one on one. This isn’t an event where the one speaker you wanted to corner disappeared as soon as they came off stage. They are there to interact with you and want to support you to become an amazing B&Q merchant.
I can’t recommend attending a B&Q Seller event enough, but I do appreciate that some will want more in-depth sessions…. so if that’s you then hold out for the end of summer as we hear that they’ll be holding a full day seller event in September that you really really won’t want to miss!
