More Sheep. More Wolf Costumes.

ERT have run a comment thing this week on Iceland’s new appliance shop, by DRL.

There are a number of them that DRL/AO run and, you may have seen the comments in the running thread about discounts in the retail corner bit of late as well.

For a greater understanding of just what a beast this is, look here…

http://www.drllimited.co.uk/brands-clients.php

They essentially hide behind a lot of famous brand names in part, use their own in others but it was built largely on rebranding. They also bought Expert Logistics.

I warned the OFT about this in that report a couple of years ago and told them that this would be a problem. As is often the case, largely ignored.

You see, sh!t rolls downhill and, guess where repairers are. Correct, the bottom of the hill.

In response to Sean Hannams article I sent him the following, without crowing too much about seeing this coming and, it’s been a long time coming in other areas as well.

kwatt wrote:Hi Sean,

Read your comment in ERT this week regarding the onward march of DRL, aka AO, aka Next, aka Boots, aka Iceland, aka….

We get it on spares and service as well with rebranded stores or services being wholly operated by other companies and not the brand name on the shopfront itself. It’s also as annoying to online dealers and service companies just as much as traditional high street retailers.

The unasked question is, how does the industry as a whole stop this?

The answer is what I suggested to government, stop rebranding in this manner by either making it unlawful or, make it so it is more clear to consumers as they are confused by this practice. People think that they are buying goods from HoF, B&Q, Next or whoever, spares from whatever online store or even service from manufacturers when in fact they are not, quite often without even knowing it.

At best, I think it is misleading.

If these brands had to invest in the infrastructure to deliver these products and services the whole retail sector might actually get some stability back.

Regards

TBH I couldn’t give much of a monkey’s about the typical ERT readers and most of them are way past their sell-by date and are all too likely to shuffle off this mortal coil or, retire or, go bust regardless of what you do as they resist change and, as is the norm in the UK, it’s always someone else’s fault and someone else’s job to fix the problem.

But, in this case the repairers, spares suppliers and retailer’s interests are largely aligned for once.

If rebranding like this was kaibosh’d then it may well mean that, not only would B&Q et all be stopped from selling parts, screwing up CDSL among others, DRL dealt a very serious blow removing a bunch of retail outlets from the market but, it might also spell a bit of pain and disaster for DAG and that goddamned Repair & Protect crud that they have going on. That is messing up the industry for the repairers by removing even more chargeable work on top of f******g KnowHow and British bloody Gas stealing a hunk of it among others.

Bottom line, so long as they are allowed to do this, it’s not an even playing field by any means.

The question is, other than me shouting at anyone that will listen, what can we do?

K.