Housing Units is a Manchester institution. Its five-acre site in Wickentree draws shoppers from far and wide with its unrivalled range making it a true retail destination, generating annual turnover in excess of £22m.
Much has changed over the 65 years since the company launched in 1947, but Housing Units still remains a privately owned family business that cares and is committed to providing great service, quality and value
“We engaged RPS and immediately formed a solid working relationship. They highlighted the real opportunity that a retail
performance system could bring and the journey we would need to go on to achieve this. We have had an increase in ATV
of 16%”
Retail Operations Director, Stuart Fox.
Housing Units
Retail Operations Director Stuart Fox recognised that the business faced challenges. “On the back of several years of continued growth and to take advantage of growth in the economy, we wanted to improve the service standards in our stores from good to great,” he says.
“We had a set of KPI’s in some areas of the retail operation but they weren’t standard across the business and didn’t analyse performance in enough detail to make informed decisions at floor level. There wasn’t enough time being spent on developing the service and selling skills of our sales teams.
“We strongly believed that we were missing some opportunities and through greater visibility of and focus on performance, we could drive better sales.”
RPS performed its Retail Performance Diagnostic and immediately identified the internal barriers to performance that were holding Housing Units back. RPS then devised a bespoke Performance Improvement Programme that gave the Housing Units’ retail management team the ability to identify deficient sales KPIs and the actions needed to improve the sales numbers.
Now the business is hitting sales numbers and delivering the brand promise in-store. The team is closing more sales and
improving the ATV.
