What Howdens paid for a business built on letting customers plan online

Anyone can buy a kitchen, bathroom or bedroom from almost anywhere in the country now. So what makes someone find and choose you?

Everyone already knows that isn't where renovation planning starts anymore. It's almost shifted to the final sense check, to be able to see and feel the product before handing over your money. And many will forego that step too - get sent a sample, or just go on the visuals on the website.

Many will deliver anywhere in the UK, and will often sell you the kitchen to DIY or use your own trades to fit. It used to serve to narrow the shortlist a little, but it doesn't do that job any more.

I wrote last week about a couple of the big brands that have their own planners, IKEA and DIY Kitchens being some of the best known of them. And then there are many independent floor planners trying to do a similar job, letting someone design a room long before they've picked a brand or spoken to a designer.

DIY Kitchens did £136 million in revenue last year, £37 million profit at a 27% margin, and has grown over 17% a year for five years straight - not a one-off spike. Almost all of that success built around letting customers design and plan their own kitchen online first.

That was significant enough for Howdens, one of the UK's biggest kitchen retailers, to pay £390 million for the business in June. Their CEO named the planning tools as a primary reason for the purchase, not the factories or the pricing - customers get “self-service planning, design and ordering tools,” his words.

Type “floor planner,” “kitchen planner,” “room planner,” “bathroom planner” and “bedroom planner” and a handful of close variants into Keyword Planner for the UK, and together they add up to close to 60,000 searches a month for planning tools specifically - not inspiration, ideas or specific retailers.

Which is really the answer to the question I started with. Beyond a nice website and some ads - the same as every competitor is doing - what you can actually do differently is give people the real planning they're already looking for and currently finding elsewhere.

“Your potential customers are planning online already, just not with you.”

If that planning happens on somebody else's site, that's whose conversation you're not part of by the time it matters. Show up at that earlier moment - giving them the tools they need, on your own site, with access to your products and expertise - and you're far more likely to be who they come back to when it's time to choose and buy.

The ones who still walk into the showroom after planning elsewhere aren't really the concern - that's a lucky break, they showed up anyway. The real risk is how many more planned elsewhere, bought there too, and you never knew they existed.