London Stone - Location Planning
About the brand
London Stone is a specialist supplier of porcelain & stone paving, interior tiles, decking, cladding, fencing, garden furniture and more. Their proposition, allowing customers to see, feel, and view the products in an appropriate setting, offers a key point of difference vs. mainstream DIY stores and merchants.
The Challenge/Task
With multiple routes to purchase – including in-store, online, via telephone or via trade account – London Stone needed to determine the impact of physical stores beyond just in-store sales.
London Stone also needed to understand who their key customers are-to size the UK market – and to robustly determine the characteristics of a location that will support a successful store.
WHAT WE DID
Pragma worked closely with London Stone on the following workstreams:
Profiled London Stone’s customers by store, year, and purchase method (online, in store or via telephone) and utilised transaction value data to identify high value customer groups by purchase method. From this, priority groups were identified based on key demographic features, which were quantified within areas of the UK to identify key areas of focus
Identified the store catchment extent, utilising the delivery address of in-store customers to identify the drivetimes from which customers visit each store and the customer share (number of visits compared to the target customer population) by drivetime
Identified the appropriate drivetime for stores, based on customer share by drivetime band and the maturity of store catchments, based on a comparison of catchments and customer share by store by year
Overlayed all customer sales with store catchments to determine the impact of the presence of a store on sales
Quantified the number of UK locations that possess the attributes required for a London Stone store (those that contain a minimum number of priority demographic group residents within the identified drivetime band to sustain a target level of sales), excluding those with significant overlap with existing stores and other future store locations, minimising threat of cannibalisation
Prioritised the locations offering the greatest potential for strong sales performance and estimated the future annual sales that could be achieved from future locations based on the ratio of sales to key residents achieved by current stores
The Result
The insight and output from the final report has provided a robust foundation to support London Stone identifying the optimum locations across the UK to roll out new stores.