The international retail group tried something different at its June conference to promote the exchange of ideas.

Kingfisher Marketplace

Kingfisher’s top 250 managers went back to their roots at the group’s annual management conference this year. But, rather than selling products, they were pitching the best ideas to have come out of the business at 23 market stalls.

The retailer’s management convened in late June in Barcelona for the conference, which had the theme of ‘One Team’. The market stalls were set up on a hotel terrace and every delegate was issued with a booklet detailing more than 60 ideas that were being ‘sold’ in the market.

Senior management figures including Kingfisher group chief executive Ian Cheshire, B&Q chief executive Euan Sutherland and even Kingfisher chairman Daniel Bernard got into the spirit of the event, acting as cheerleaders for groups of stalls.

Sharing best practice

Cheshire’s view is that it is vital for the business to be more than the sum of its parts, and that means sharing ideas and best practice. He says Kingfisher being the kind of business it is, the marketplace was a great way of doing that.

Cheshire says: “The key thing for me was that it wasn’t a PowerPoint presentation. As retailers, we’re all traders anyway, so working on the market stalls came naturally and it generated real human connections. It is much more likely to achieve something than another slide presentation.”

B&Q UK director of organisation development Mike Hawes reckons the marketplace was one of the highlights of the conference.

“It was the first time I had seen the operating companies brought together in such a human way,” he says.

B&Q employees from the UK were encouraged by the chance to present their ideas to their peers from other parts of the business.

“It was recognition that they had completed an excellent piece of work,” Hawes comments. Feedback to the UK teams on the success of their ideas had a wider impact, he adds. The UK business will in turn be investigating how it can introduce some of the good ideas it saw into its own operations. A system used to track bonuses for store staff, for instance, presented by Spain’s Brico Depot, will be introduced as soon as possible, says Hawes.

Kingfisher already understands the benefits of sharing ideas around the business. In France, for example, it has sold 160,000 copies of a DIY guide, much of the content of which came from a very similar title that B&Q had already published in the UK.

A two-way street

The flow of ideas around Kingfisher moves in more than one direction, and not only from its more mature businesses to those in emerging economies. A programme being set up by B&Q China, for instance, has been recognised as one that may be applicable in other parts of the company.

Under the programme, staff at B&Q’s Chinese business will undertake a six-month secondment to another part of Kingfisher somewhere else in the world, to develop leadership skills and open their career horizons. What the Chinese staff learn is further disseminated when they report back on their experiences overseas.

Hawes observes that it is ideas like this that have helped to change perceptions in the group about where innovation will come from.

He says: “B&Q is one of the biggest operating companies in the group. But some of the smaller companies were pushing boundaries in ways that we had never imagined.”

He adds: “We are all shooting for the same thing. We can get there more quickly with ideas from colleagues from within the group. I think everyone bought into that principle.”

Kingfisher gave Retail Week a peek at some of the ideas on show at the event in Barcelona and we share them here.

A Flying Start

B&Q China’s leadership programme - Flying Start - is for highly performing staff in lower to middle management roles. The programme seeks to challenge the mindset that the flow of retail managers will always be from the West to the East, and to underline the international career opportunities for those working in all parts of Kingfisher.

The programme, which will be launched later this year, will see staff from B&Q China work in an equivalent role for six months somewhere else in the world. Those that take up the challenge will have to commit to working for the company for a further three years following their overseas placement. Candidates will be required to share what they have learnt and their experiences when they get back.

You Can Do It

B&Q’s French DIY chain, Castorama, and its English sister, B&Q, have already benefited from sharing the idea and content for a DIY handbook.

For many years B&Q has published a book called You Can Do It.

In 2006 Castorama decided to launch a version for the French market. It created 30% of the content for the book from scratch, with the remainder translated and re-worked from the English version. Castorama was able to re-use many of the photographs from the original B&Q book, as well as the DIY descriptions.

Since the book was first published in France in June 2006, it has sold 160,000 copies and is stocked in stores such as Fnac and Auchan, as well as in Castorama.

Its initial 30,000 print-run sold out in a few months and an updated edition published in 2008 included a 48-page supplement on environmental homes.

A new edition of the book is planned for 2011.

Online Research

Another idea promoted by B&Q to other Kingfisher businesses is the online customer research panel it has set up - B&Q Voice, which the company estimates has cut its customer research bill by 30% in its first year of operation.

The social community panel was set up as an alternative way to collect feedback from consumers, and also to have more in-depth, two-way conversations with them.

B&Q had already created a panel of more than 80,000 consumers, who respond to email surveys sent to them by the retailer, as well as participating in ad hoc focus groups. This was seen as a one-way communication and relatively expensive - incentives were required to attract responses.

With B&Q Voice the retailer has invited selected members of the existing panel to join a closed online community, which includes surveys, blogs, chat rooms and live conversations. Since its launch, 7,000 customers have signed up and there are 94 active forum topics and 39 blogs. About 100 original ideas for improving the business have come from customers through B&Q Voice.

The online community panel has created for B&Q a more agile and efficient way to carry out its direct research in a way that allows the retailer to get closer to its customers.

Castorama’s iPhone App

In February, Castorama launched France’s first iPhone app for the DIY retail sector. Developed by Castorama with IT support from Kingfisher, the app includes a spirit level and calculator to allow customers to work out how much paint, tiling and flooring they need for a job. Other features include a barcode reader, which links to product specifications from the Castorama website. Since its launch, the app has been downloaded more than 170,000 times.

B&Q is working on its own version of the app, which is due to launch in the next few months.