Dunelm has pledged to become the first choice for home and will work on a number of new developments in the delivery space to enable this, including investment in new ecommerce and furniture warehousing and fulfilment capacity, as well as the optimisation of existing facilities.
The retailer, which reported its preliminary results this week, currently offers standard and express home delivery, as well as its own high-quality home delivery service for heavy and bulky items.
The company said it is looking to increase its delivery capacity and perfect order rates, supported by its new dedicated ecommerc facility. It is also increasing the range of furniture it offers for delivery through its own network as well as the geographic coverage, supported by its new furniture warehouse in Northamptonshire as well as investments into supporting supply chain and transport systems.
Currently Dunelm offers a click and collect service for local store stock, with a three hour promise but the retailer is also looking to extend the breadth of products available on the click and collect service. It saw digital sales growth of 115% in the year, including significant growth in click and collect.
“Investments made in our digital proposition, including the new platform which launched in October 2019, meant that we have been able to scale in response to the increased digital demand, expanding our online experience, home delivery services and our contactless, local and friendly click & collect service,” said Nick Wilkinson, chief executive officer at Dunelm. “Our focus in FY21 was also to further improve the quality of our customers’ experience, with customer satisfaction scores increasing across all digital fulfilment channels.”
“We continued to develop our proposition rapidly throughout the year. We extended the range available for click & collect through fulfilment from our central warehouse and improved the speed of order fulfilment. As we scaled to meet the increased demand for home delivery, we significantly shortened lead times, as well as enhanced our post-sales communications to improve the customer end to end journey and remove friction.”
Today the company offers seamless returns through stores or via home delivery channels but this will also be expanding with Dunelm piloting take back schemes for textiles, quilts and pillows as it seeks to improve sustainability too.
“We have begun offering customers opportunities to recycle products and will continue to pilot and test these schemes. In FY21 we introduced an electricals take-back scheme in our stores and we are currently developing a take-back scheme for textiles, quilts and pillows. In addition, we have started introducing local take-back schemes, organised by store colleagues and advertised via our local community Facebook groups.”
Dunelm is also making practical sustainability changes to delivery, such as the introduction of home delivery mailing bags which are made from more than 95% recycled plastic and which are 100% recyclable.
