NORTHAMPTON: Wickes is ploughing £10m into lowering prices funding a MyCard loyalty scheme later this month.
It has reduced more than 1000 prices this month and will launch two further “major price reductions” this year says brand marketing director Tony Holdway.
By the end of the year Wickes will have slashed prices on 5,000 lines he said. Some plumbing lines have been reduced by 20% while timber prices have come down by 15%. “People want low prices all day every day so this plays to our customers’ needs,” said Holdway.
“These are serious reductions. We’ve chosen the products that are most going to help our customers. They will be core products for DIYers.”
Holdway said Wickes would still mount promotions during the peak period but that it is “definitely moving towards” a a permanently low price architecture.
Wickes will run advertising to spotlight the initiative as well as flag the new prices clearly in stores under the Red Pencil Prices banner.
The loyalty scheme will shut on June 22 but the 1 million members of MyCard will be able to redeem points over the next 12 months.
“In an ideal world we’d do both but we made a business decision to push the investment into price,” said Holdway. He said the new pricing was primarily aimed at trade customers but that consumers would benefit too. In the present climate he said trade customers are trying to keep work quotes as low as possible. “This is the biggest thing we can do to help,” he said.
Rival B&Q adopted an “every day low price” stance this year on big-ticket items to create a more transparent pricing policy and avoid a hard-to-manage spike in the January sale period.
