Wickes

Wickes is one of the UK’s leading DIY and Home Improvement retailers.

Operating over 170 stores across Great Britain, Wickes is a key destination for both enthusiastic DIYers and trades-people.

Wickes is now owned by Travis Perkins, who operate over 750 Builders’ Merchants across the country.

The challenge

Key to maintaining and growing market share in the increasingly competitive home improvement market is ensuring that Wickes stores are ideally located to meet customer requirements.

Specifically Wickes required:

	Accurate turnover predictions for new store locations, including new formats
	Objective assessment of current store performance
	Transparent site assessment, for presentation to the Wickes board - with clear supporting information to give context and the facts behind predictions
	Easy to use, in-house system, with the ability to combine site knowledge with objective models
	Ability to identify priority locations across Great Britain, based on a detailed understanding of drivers of store performance
	Accurate catchments to support the distribution of the Wickes brochure, a key marketing tool for the business.

The solution

CACI built a suite of bespoke gravity models to predict catchments for the four distinct product categories that make up a Wickes store. These account for the different competitive strengths, and therefore different catchments, of all of the competing players in the market.

Bespoke behavioural models were then built for each of the product categories to predict the turnover for a new store of any configuration, in any location, in Great Britain.

These models are run in-house at Wickes in a bespoke client-server SpatialModeller system. The system automatically produces Excel reports, catchment maps and a flexible benchmarking tool used in site assessment decisions.

CACI also carried out a MarketScan across the whole of GB in order to prioritise areas for Wickes to proactively search for sites.

Wickes can also analyse catchments and the MarketScan in further detail through the InSite GIS system in which SpatialModeller is embedded.

The results and benefits

“CACI’s turnover predictions have been a key input to our assessment of sites for many years, and are essential to gain board sign-off for new sites,”

says Nick Sellers, Head of Location Planning at Wickes.

“We like the transparency of the selected factors that go to make up the sales prediction, this enables us to fully understand what has gone into the predictive model. We particularly value the ongoing working relationship between both organisations that gives us the confidence and flexibility in the use of the predictive model.”

Outlet turnover and profitability models