David Jaffe, head of marketplace growth at Kingfisher – and one of the speakers at this year’s ChannelX event on 17 June at Convene, London – explores some of the key challenges and opportunities in the current UK retail environment and how Kingfisher is rising to meet them.
How are customer shopping habits changing and how is Kingfisher adapting?
Customers increasingly expect each interaction with a retailer, whether online or offline, to be smooth and effortless – with value, speed and choice key priorities. They expect the physical store to be an ecosystem of connected services; a hybrid retail space that they can interact with and also – particularly in the case of home improvement – a place where they can see, touch and feel products.
Since 2020, Kingfisher has focused on using stores to fulfil online orders, rather than large fulfilment centres. This is a core part of our digital ecosystem, where we drive greater footfall to stores, allowing for spontaneous purchases and expert advice. Leveraging our banners’ stores (like B&Q and Screwfix in the UK and Ireland) gives customers greater speed and convenience. Around 90% of online orders are fulfilled from store. This enables unbeatable fulfilment times for Click & Collect orders – as little as 15 minutes at B&Q and 1 minute at Screwfix, and with 20-minute site delivery available through Screwfix Sprint.
How do you decide where to invest next when it comes to digital tools and services?
This brings up the usual ‘buy or build’ conversations, for which we use an internal decision-making framework. In my Marketplace world at least, we primarily look at the ‘2×2’ matrix of impact vs effort in both scenarios (of building ourselves or buying externally). We try to stay clear-eyed about the downside of buying, for example considering integration requirements combined with the total cost of ownership and how configurable a tool is to meet our needs.
One thing I’m currently working on is scaling up recruitment of third-party merchants to our marketplaces. This involves carefully choosing merchants and onboarding them smoothly, including across multiple banners where appropriate. For example, we look at whether they sell products that align with our strategy, including around pricing, and how we can ensure that they will provide our customers with high-quality product content and customer service. Getting to the point where we feel confident in those areas has required both the buying and building of sophisticated new tooling.
How are you using customer data to give people a better or more helpful experience?
Loyalty programmes, like the new and very popular Screwfix Rewards, are brilliant for gathering customer data, and they give us valuable insights into how customers shop and interact with our banners. This allows us to create personalised experiences, from surfacing the right products for them, to tailoring communications so they feel relevant, or shaping our ranges to meet their specific needs. We even use this data to better understand customer demographics and make smarter decisions about where to open new stores, ensuring every interaction feels thoughtful and designed around what matters most to our customers.
What role do stores play in Kingfisher’s long‑term digital strategy?
Kingfisher launched new research as part of its ‘store of the future’ campaign last year, highlighting what customers are looking for from our industry and spotlighting how central physical stores are and will continue to be.
With respect to our marketplace offering, we’re looking at what’s called the ‘infinite aisle’, which combines vast product choice with trusted curation that gives endless consumer choice and variety. This will be combined with ‘phygital stores’ and frictionless shopping, where stores of the future provide the hands-on, sensory, trust-building advantages of bricks and mortar, enhanced with the insights and personalisation of digital.
What do you see as the biggest challenges/opportunities affecting your business in the coming months?
For our marketplace business, a big opportunity is in supporting our marketplace merchants to be able to sell and ship cross-border to all our European customers. This is a multi-year project, where we see huge potential for ROI and also better merchant experiences.
In terms of challenges, I’d call out last mile delivery. Bridging the gap between a digital marketplace and a physical retail footprint is a significant operational hurdle. For many retailers, marketplace items are “invisible” in their physical stores, leading to a fragmented customer experience.
We have sought to bridge this gap by launching and now scaling Marketplace Click and Collect, for example at B&Q, giving us an opportunity to further drive footfall into stores. The goal is to make the transition from a digital screen to an in-store counter as seamless as possible, turning logistical complexity into a unique competitive advantage that pure-play e-commerce sites cannot replicate. The challenge we face is how we further scale it quickly and smoothly, both for our merchants and customers.
David will be speaking at this year’s ChannelX event at Convene, London on 17 June – a must-visit for any retailers interested in successfully scaling commerce in platforms beyond their own website. Find out more and register to attend here.
