Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
Cookshop chain Steamer Trading has revealed plans to virtually double the size of its operation over the next five years.
The retailer’s managing director, Ben Phillips, talked about his ambition in an exclusive interview with HousewaresLive.net’s sister title Housewares Magazine.
“We always said we wanted 20 to 30 stores, with sales in excess of £20m by 2011,” he said. “And with 26 stores and one in the pipeline, that target has been met.”
Now, he went on, the goal has been revised to 50 stores by the end of 2016. “So that’s 23 stores to come, on the basis of four to five store openings a year,” he said.
He was tight-lipped on where the new openings might be, saying he was “looking at a wide variety of locations”. However, while having always been a southern-based business, it recently made its first inroads into the north with new stores in Chester and Beverley.
Phillips also revealed that, having until now resisted going down the online trading route, Steamer Trading is now just months away from launching an ecommerce website hosting the chain’s full offer.
Read more in the November/December 2011 issue of Housewares Magazine, out soon.
