Happy New Year from the staff at UK Whitegoods, let’s hope that 2009 is a good year for us all. As ever at this time of the year I would like to thank all the people that help us make this site possible, the moderators especially, by helping people for free in the forums.
As usual, through 2008, we have tried to keep everyone informed and entertained about all that goes on within the appliance industry and I think we’ve done not too badly. Certainly the statistics would suggest that the site is well enough read with over 1 million page views per month and often over 60,000 visitors a month these days.
2008, The Bad Bits
There’s lots of bad news, too much in fact. So much so that I started this article a few days ago and dropped it as it was depressing me let alone anyone else.
2008 wasn’t such a good year for the industry. But then, it wasn’t a good year for many industries with the so-called “Credit Crunch” really taking hold later in the year largely leading to the failure of a few businesses within the industry, not least of which were MFI and Antonio Merloni who own Servis UK.
Many repairers lost thousands of pounds due to these companies collapsing, some were in the tens of thousands.
These events also had serious knock on effects and it’s far from over so 2009 isn’t going to be a great year and I’d anticipate tough trading conditions, especially for businesses that carry a disproportionate amount of debt. Along with many analysts looking at other industries I’d expect further casualties in this one. But I’ve written about that in other articles so I’ll try to stay away from the doom and gloom stuff.
For a start the average repair cost from an independent repairer is under £100 for most appliances and most provide a world class service. So, as people look more toward saving money as well as negating the negative environmental impact of just scrapping machines, perhaps repairs are a more viable option.
Couple that with the massive devaluation of the pound which is going to lead to some substantial price increases at the start of 2009 and repair is set to become a much more attractive option.
Of course before that happens we’ll have the stupid price offers as Currys, Comet, Argos and the rest all clear the stock that they have, but it won’t last long.
After the dust settles there expect price hikes from almost everyone. As I’ve said before though, we’ve had appliances that are too cheap in the UK for a decade due to the strength of Sterling, that’s about to change.
We are also seeing production levels being cut which may lead to shortages of certain appliances or price hikes to reflect the reduced number out there.
This past year has also seen the virtual death of any UK manufacturing of appliances with Hotpoint in Peterborough closing the doors on production and, now, Hoover have followed suit. Along with other closures, such as Electrolux in Spenymoor, this leaves no UK production to speak of beyond Crosslee tumble dryers.
2008, The Good Bits
There was some good stuff that went on in 2008, especially from a UK Whitegoods point of view. As I said earlier the site has been steadily increasing in popularity with the stats climbing substantially over 2007’s figures.
The repairs@ system has seen over 10,000 service calls passing through it’s doors.
We’ve gotten more and more interest from the press and, with people now looking to save money rather than simply throw things away, that will probably increase in 2009.
Basically, we’ve broken all the records for the site, again.
But there’s also been a bit of an interesting change in attitude towards the site as, in the main, we’re seemingly no longer regarded as trade terrorists any more by many in the industry. We seem to be more accepted for what we are, a group of repairers that are on the ground helping people day to day, including ourselves. Sure, we have opinions as does everyone and we may not always be right, but that doesn’t make an opinion any less worthy of airing.
It is nice however that instead of having to fight a poor opinion of what we do, that many of the manufacturers are actually starting to get the fact that we’re trying to help them for the most part and that many now choose to work with us.
2009
2009 is set to be one of the toughest years for decades for many retailers it would appear as people stop spending money. One of the areas that take the first hit here is the whiegoods industry as people stop moving home or making major purchases, such as a new kitchen, both of which are often the events that instigate the buying of new appliances.
Couple this with the price increases, some of which have already been announced, and its bad news for the retail side of the industry.
This will no doubt affect many businesses that operate within the industry and, already, we’ve seen announcements of job cuts sadly. The small consolation is that this is global, it’s not just in the UK.
Repairers however, especially the smaller independents, I think can look forward to a resurgence of repair business as it’s cheaper and all too often faster to have a machine repaired rather than replace it.
Then there’s the stuff we have planned for 2009 to brighten things up a bit.
We have new ISE products coming online this year, we hope to have more on that at the meeting in February for you. And, the meeting in February should be well worthwhile attending as we’ve opened it back up to the manufacturers, work providers and spares suppliers.
If you wish to attend that meeting please let us know on admin@ukwhitegoods.co.uk and we’ll make sure you have a place.
There will be a major facelift of the site this year. Due to the size of the task, there’s over 10,000 pages to sort out, it’s taking a lot longer than was initially estimated and we’ve been so busy that the time to get cracked on with it just hasn’t been there.
Added to which we’ve been busy adding more and more content all the time to the site, along with the sheer number of posts that are on the forums. There are now over 200,000 posts in there, which is a lot in anyone’s books.
So, there’s a lot going on, much of it behind the scenes work by people that get little or no credit for the huge efforts that they provide and I hope to see a lot of things come to fruition in 2009.
I don’t think that 2009 is going to be the disaster that has been predicted in some ways, there is good news as well as bad. We all just need to watch what we’re doing and, in business, for whom.
But watch the site, especially the forums and the news articles, for information on what’s going on as we try to inform and entertain through 2009 as well as continuing to provide the help we always have and, perhaps a little more.
Kenneth Watt