As Halfords reported strong sales driven by strong growth in its services and B2B division, chief executive Graham Stapleton says he expects the motoring specialist will sell more services than retail products for the first time by the end of this year.
In a trading update for the 20 weeks to August, Halfords saw a 14.1% growth in sales with the services and B2B division accounting for 48% of the total revenue.
Speaking to Retail Week, Stapleton said: “It really underlines the strategy that we’ve been deploying, which is much more towards a services and needs-based product business. So we’ve got a much bigger motoring business now.
“Seventy-five per cent of what we sell is motoring, 48% of our business now is services and we believe by the end of this year we will actually be selling more services than retail products for the first time.
“The servicing part of the business will be over half our sales by the end of this year as we continue to invest and grow in that space.
“We have a very significant garage services business now and the aim here is to be absolutely the market leader in the independent garage services space – and we’re quite close to being that right now.”
Halfords’ B2B business also saw strong growth accounting for 29% of total sales. Going ahead, Stapleton expects this to grow even further.
“We launched our ambition in the B2B area in 2018 when we were I think 10% of our total business and we’re now 29%. I can see that being even bigger as we grow out the the commercial fleet services and software business. We’re investing in technology to enable us to do that too. A good example of that is the investment we’ve made into the cycle-to-work business this year.”
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