Homebase boss clears backlog and reopens 20 shops

Homebase chief executive Damian McGloughlin is having a busy weekend. Yesterday, he quietly reopened 20 shops after the business mothballed all 158 stores four weeks ago at the peak of the coronavirus crisis. And he will spend today mulling over how many more will follow – and how soon.

McGloughlin kept the relaunch under wraps until the last minute. But a flurry of publicity yesterday means the first stores will be rigorously tested as they emerge from a crisis-induced slumber. 

Speaking about the plan for the first time, it’s clear he is still stung by some of the firm’s experiences – particularly an online overload that left him dealing with tens of thousands of unfulfilled orders.

‘These have been busy weeks for us – as we all have had,’ the one-time executive at Homebase rival B&Q says after taking a deep breath.

‘In my 34 years of working, primarily in home improvement, there have been challenges. But nothing at this scale. I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything like this before. But we’ve been listening to what others are doing across our industry around the world and learning how this might work.’

As an essential retailer, he says, he was not forced by law to close. But soul-searching at Homebase – and other retailers including B&Q – prompted a decision to shutter its shops four weeks ago to better protect staff and retrench the business.

‘At the time Prince Charles had just confirmed he had coronavirus,’ McGloughlin says. ‘Supermarkets were running out of products, they weren’t doing social distancing. Customers didn’t know what to do. So we made the right decision to close the business until we knew that we could protect store teams and the customers,’ he says recalling the peak of the crisis.

‘We’ve always taken the external advice from Government. We could have stayed open but at that point in time, with the backlash and the uncertainty, people didn’t know what was going on.’

Homebase has had an added problem to clear up in the past few days. He says a spike in demand at its online arm ‘ten times’ average in a two-week period ‘became a pressure cooker’ as British workers were told to isolate and shops shut.

Shoppers flooded on to the site making 350,000 orders in less than a fortnight. In some cases almost 50 times the average order size – the scale was ‘unprecedented’, he says.

Meanwhile, with more of his own staff self-isolating, bosses at the DIY chain became increasingly aware workers at suppliers and delivery firms were doing similar things. The result was a painful bottleneck in satisfying orders.

‘Brand is important to me. That’s why I’m dissatisfied. Stores were closing, online went off the scale and the system was ten days behind. People were panic buying and ordering things that are not easy to deliver in the best of times – leisure furniture, spas, paint.

‘Things went off the scale and the system doesn’t immediately tell you there’s a problem – that some things are not going to be available from suppliers. And these are suppliers who may also have been having problems, by the way.’

So, last week, the company set out to mop up the excess demand. It has asked customers, where possible, to collect 30,000 unfulfilled orders from shop car parks. There are 30,000 additional outstanding online orders, which Homebase has promised to deliver as soon as it is able or instead offer a refund.

Each of the 158 Homebase stores has opened a ‘trade counter’ to cope with the monumental collection effort. Counters have been manned by staff volunteers – similar to those run in normal times by Toolstation or Screwfix.

He explains: ‘It’s massively different to what we normally do but we are trying to do what is right. Customers will drive into the car parks, they will sign for it. And, as of yesterday, in those 158 stores we will start a call-and-collect service that allows customers to call individual stores for essential purchases to check product availability and to order.’

At the 20 stores that have fully opened McGloughlin says he has adopted best practice from supermarkets – ‘plastic screens at the checkouts, all PPE, all of that’.

He plans to review the situation tomorrow and will be mapping out a ‘phased plan’ for new openings at a board meeting. ‘We are not going gung-ho ‘let’s open everything’,’ he says. ‘Our plan is baby steps to get this right and we want to do everything in line with all the recommendations of safety,’ he adds.

He acknowledges these are delicate times – with all eyes on how businesses behave in the coming weeks. ‘The best people who come through this and do the right thing will be known for that in the long term. People will remember who did the right thing and who did the wrong thing,’ he says.

‘What is an essential product?’ he says – addressing a question that’s crossed most of our minds in recent weeks.

‘I think we can help with customers’ wellbeing and state of mind. With having something to do and a purpose [at home]. It’s therapeutic. How do people set up an office at home or even in the garden?

‘There is a balance here and it’s not about profiteering. If it was all about that I would open every single shop tomorrow. But we are doing this in a responsible way.’

He adds: ‘If we don’t lead this as an essential retailer, how will other retailers have examples of how to take those baby steps to learn from? We can put what we have learned into practice and we can share that with other retailers.’