We’ve barely walked two aisles into the store when Dunelm boss Nick Wilkinson says we pass one of his favorite products. Nestled between rows of camping equipment and outdoor lighting is a somewhat gaudy colored statue of a pheasant, which retails for £20.
‘I have one of those. It attracts real pheasants,” says the 56-year-old.
“At certain times of the year, they come into the garden and try to fight it. It’s also a nice gift instead of a bottle of wine.’
He darts around a corner and explains that Dunelm is becoming more confident in selling quirky items, pointing to a 4-foot statue of a heron, presumably aimed at those in the market for an even bigger bird than a pheasant .
“No one comes in here with a heron on their list,” he grins. “But some leave with one.”
Curtain Raiser: Nick Wilkinson helped Dunelm grow quickly
This seems to sum up Dunelm’s approach.
The business started in 1979 as a curtain selling market stall in Leicester, run by Bill and Jean Adderley.
It is now the UK’s largest home goods retailer and is listed on the stock exchange.
Known for years as a textile specialist, it has branched out to sell other goods such as lamps and furniture.
But the average shopper looking for curtains or bedding might still not know it’s pots and pans or laundry baskets, let alone an entire aviary of artificial birds.
“Dunelm probably isn’t very well known,” Wilkinson admits, adding, “We grew by word of mouth.”
Wilkinson had never heard of Dunelm until he and his wife moved to Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, several years ago and a neighbor suggested the shop as a good place for curtains.
The competition for customers in this sector is fierce. Rivals include everyone from Amazon and Zara to Marks & Spencer and John Lewis.
Wilkinson insists one of the reasons Dunelm is performing well – with sales in the last six months of 2022 up 43 per cent from pre-Covid – is that it not only sells cheap and cheerful goods, but also wants to appeal to a wide range of customers. , with different budgets.
For example, the costs of a double fitted sheet range from € 5 to € 70.
It’s even a Royal Warrant holder, through its Dorma bedding range, which it bought in 2008.
But Wilkinson is fully embracing the low-cost side of the business. When asked what he would say if someone described Dunelm’s stock as “tacky,” he lights up.
“I’d ask them why they thought that,” he says.
“But one’s stickiness is another’s style!”
As we pass carpets, he points to a plain, mustard-colored rectangle, saying it will probably sell better than the intricate, multi-colored creations hanging next to it.
But he says he’s “absolutely thrilled” with customers’ choices, adding “we’re not going to judge you.”
He seems to have been inspired by the former tough Woolworths.
“My wife and I always felt that unless you lived somewhere with a Woolworths, it wasn’t a real town,” he says.
When Woolworths went bankrupt in 2009, Dunelm took over some of its staff.
Wilkinson adds: “We have many Woolworths managers who manage our stores and they are some of the best retailers I have met in my career.”
If Dunelm has a fast-growing profile among ordinary Brits, it’s been a slow-burning – but increasingly credible – success story in the City too.
It went public in 2006 and is now a member of the FTSE 250, valued at £2.3 billion.
The Adderley family is still the largest shareholder with more than 40 percent of the shares, but also has a slew of big investors such as Abrdn, M&G, JP Morgan and Schroders.
Wilkinson joined in February 2018 and under his tenure the shares have doubled in value – despite the disruption at the height of the Covid pandemic.
He says he always goes straight to a store’s furniture section when shopping, and if he had to choose another career, he would have become a textile designer.
However, his favorite pieces of furniture do not come from Dunelm, but from a collection of authentic Afghan and Persian carpets that he and his wife built up in Dubai in the early 1990s. He says, ‘We still have those. Some on the floor, some on the walls.’
Despite this underlying interest in design, Wilkinson studied history at St John’s College, Cambridge. When he was young, his early jobs included a stint in retail at a card shop in London and a summer as a greengrocer in Scotland, where he spent his spare time rock climbing – still his favorite hobby to this day. But once he graduated, he entered the corporate world with a place in the Unilever Graduate Trainee Program where he and his wife met.
After several years with the consumer goods group, he moved to consulting firm McKinsey and later to Dixons Group (now Currys) and Evans Cycles.
He is well paid at Dunelm and took home £2.7 million last year, although this was a significant drop from the £3.8 million he made in 2021 when he received a hefty long-term bonus. In 2020, he voluntarily cut most of his salary as the company worked its way through the pandemic.
Wilkinson keeps a low profile – this is his first ever newspaper interview – but is relaxed and enthusiastic. Eager to keep his name tag on, he gets nervous that it might be rude to the other staff if they don’t know who he is.
“I don’t want to be an undercover boss,” he says, looking around.
His strategy for the company includes opening more stores in the UK, where there are already 177 with 11,000 employees.
Wilkinson is not interested in expanding abroad or growing through acquisitions. He says, “We would never say never to mergers and acquisitions. But it’s not on our list.’
The company is 44 years old, but to Wilkinson it still feels like an early stage company. “We feel like we’re still being discovered in most regions, especially the South East and London,” he says. “Even in areas like the Midlands, where we’ve been present for a generation, we’re still getting new customers.”
But what about the fear that people will count the pennies and spend less on their homes?
According to Wilkinson, this is less of a concern for home goods retailers than for DIY stores, for example.
In a recent trade update, he said winter had been a “challenging” time for clients, and while it looks like the economy might improve later this year, it’s still tough for ordinary people. With this in mind, the company is lowering the prices of about 1,000 items – not in a sale, but permanently – as freight costs have dropped.
At one point we pass more animal-themed items: lamps in the shape of rabbits and brightly colored tigers. He says, “When people have difficult circumstances, they basically want a little bit of joy. And they want some value.
“They want a tiger lamp and the smile the lamp gives them when their friends go, where did you buy it? How much did it cost?’
If that didn’t work out, they could always buy another pheasant.
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