B&Q is to offer shoppers click-and-collect service for its third-party online marketplace, allowing shoppers to pick up their orders from as early as the following day, Retail Week can reveal
The home improvement retailer is piloting the new service at its store in Fareham, before a phased rollout to 300 stores across the UK.
B&Q’s marketplace currently offers more than 2 million DIY, home and garden products from 2,000 sellers, with roughly 10% of which participating in the pilot.
The retailer said the offer was a first for a UK marketplace, and would set “a new standard in customer order fulfilment, with the aim of providing greater flexibility, speed, and convenience”.
The service works alongside the return-to-store service, which allowed shoppers to bring their marketplace purchases to B&Q stores for a refund.
In detail: Q&A with B&Q director of marketplace Aime Matondo Fundani
How do the logistics work with this service?
Our approach is relatively simple. When a customer selects a product that’s available for marketplace click and collect, they select their preferred store where they’d like the order delivered. We then send the information about the store and customer to our seller, who then has the possibility to choose between four different carriers, including DPD and Royal Mail, to ship the products to that dedicated store.
Did you have to make any changes to the infrastructure to make this happen?
Actually, no. We’ve been building this service on the foundation of our click and collect for our own assortment. Late last year, we launched returns in-store for marketplace, which gave us a lot of data and information on how to operate marketplace products within stores. We were able to build off those cornerstones in our existing operations to create a seamless journey and experience for the customer.
Is next-day click and collect the primary offer?
It’s from next day, because we do have a number of sellers that are able to match that proposition. However, it won’t be for the entire assortment, at least at the beginning. The way we manage the customer experience is that we send notifications and emails to customers as soon as the product is available in their store, and then they have seven days to go and pick it up. So they can really decide when it best fits them to collect those products.
How important is this to B&Q’s overall digital strategy?
It’s extremely important. Our digital strategy is very much built around our store estate. The majority of our online first-party orders are picked up in stores. More than 85% of our orders are shipped from stores, so the fulfilment part of our digital strategy is really built around the store. We believe it’s a unique value proposition we can leverage. As we’ve been expanding our online assortment through marketplace to give customers more choice, we want to ensure we can connect and integrate that online experience for marketplace with our store estate. We really believe click and collect is going to be a major pillar bringing that online experience and in-store experience together.
B&Q launched its marketplace in March 2022, and it has since grown to 45% of its ecommerce sales, up 17% year on year across 2024/45, and 15% of total sales.
B&Q ecommerce director Virginia Wakefield said: “It’s great to be launching this new service and to be extending our in-store collection services to customers buying from B&Q’s third-party Marketplace sellers at diy.com. Around 90% of our customers begin their shopping experience on the web, and we’re seeing strong conversion of digital customers into store footfall as a result.
“Marketplace Click and Collect will give our customers even more convenience by further seamlessly integrating the online and in-store shopping experience. Our third-party sellers benefit too by being able to offer their customers more delivery options and access to customers who prefer to pick up their orders in store.”
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