In fairness to Bunnings/unfairness to Morrisons, Homebase has been in almost constant decline since JS sold it. Safeway was improving at the point of takeover. Sales performance at Safeway absolutely fell off a cliff because Morrisons basically sacked the entire store support operation. (In some ways, this helped them because they could point to those abysmal sales when reporting to investors on conversion success.)bilky asko wrote: Fri 25 May, 2018 13.56Bunnings have managed to single-handedly crash the second biggest DIY chain in the country in less than a year.james2001 wrote: Fri 25 May, 2018 11.18 Will probably be the bare minimum to cost as little as possible, probably just Homebase logos slapped over the Bunnings ones, but bunning style branding elsewhere.
It's as much of a mess as Morrisons taking over Safeway, slapping their name and business model onto everything without even seeing if it works, is appropriate or if people want it. A bit of research into whether people wanted the business model changing, or taking away a household name an replacing it with a brand unknown in this country was wanted.
Funnily enough I've heard about 3 Homebase adverts on the radio this morning, never heard any mention of Bunnings in any homebase advertising and they've still been pushing the Homebase brand.
Morrisons managed to take over a business bigger than itself, convert the majority of stores that were in a knackered old state, and use its vertical integration model to its advantage in working with Amazon and as a wholesaler in general, whilst taking at least some ideas from Safeway (unlike Bunnings).
Morrisons had it tough with Safeway, but made it through. Bunnings has had a disaster with Homebase.
Morrisons managed to keep their heads above water in the end by flogging off a lot more of the Safeway estate than they expected to, and certainly many many more than they were required to. In doing so, they missed out on their best shot of entering the convenience market. In mass-binning everything at Safeway they also created an overhead timebomb, as almost every Morrisons process required more man-hours than equivelent Safeway ones.
Neither is a shining example of 'how to do a massive takeover', but if you look purely at success Morrisons stood a much better chance (and came close to sinking under the weight of it twice in a decade). Bunnings were always going to have it tough.
