They'll never cut back on craft!!

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Chess

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Today's business news!

Crafting boom at Ideal Shopping

15 Sep 2008 By Rachael Taylor



Sales of craft products are booming at multichannel retailer Ideal Shopping, with sales up 24 per cent year on year. The product area outperformed other struggling sectors of the business, particularly homewares and fashion, which led to a profit warning from the retail group this morning.

Ideal Shopping said that the growth was supported by a strong increase in subscribers to its Create and Craft Club. The scheme now has 26,000 members; more than double last year’s numbers.

Ideal Shopping’s Create and Craft website relaunched at the beginning of last month and sales have increased by more than 50 per cent since then. The group has been investing in its online offers and said that it will continue to implement a repositioning the business to offer a more customer-focused, multichannel proposition.

At the end of July, Ideal Shopping launched a range of 50 craft video projects onto the BT Vision platform, which is accessible in almost 300,000 households through BT’s video-on-demand service. Ideal Shopping said initial feedback on the content had been very good, and plans to step its use of the service as BT enhances the functionality later this year.

Ideal Shopping chairman David Williams said: “We are continuing our programme of core business developments, which will improve our service across an increasingly multichannel business. The development of online is a key initiative, and we are particularly encouraged by the successful relaunch of our websites since June. Over the next few weeks, Ideal World will also benefit from further significant improvements in the ways we interact with our customers, making it easier to shop with us both by telephone and online.”

I loved this comment too, blaming their falling fashion sales on the credit crunch!!!


Williams said: “Our first-half results reflect the well-publicised consumer downturn, which has undoubtedly impacted our customer base, noticeably in sales of homewares and fashion."


BTW, is it just me, or is 26,000 Club members not really the H.U..G..E number they keep hinting about, especially considering that to begin with they have slashed the price, and secondly they go on about the hundreds of thousands of new viewers they're getting from Freeview etc?
 
Not alot IMO but if you compare it to the amount of viewers and sales they get it probably is alot.
I see they failed to mention its because of all the 4 day deals, POTD, 24hr craft etc etc etc and that they basically sell nothing else worth while so craft WILL be their biggest seller, were as QVC have a broader range of items and do not need to rely so heavily on craft.

In short crafting will be their biggest seller as thats basically all they are flogging, everything else is pure tat.

Strange really as they have so many items on their website that look good, why do they only show 1 or 2 items per hour when their website is chalk full of stuff.
 
Oh well, at least their three channels will be getting viewing ratings of 26,000 unless they start selling more interesting stuff. Why have they let the other side take over when they used to be such good competition? Have heads got to roll at the top before they'll do something? They need to remember that variety is the spice of life. I'm sure I'm just one of many that no longer watches.
 
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