Major question marks

There is an English proverb which says how much more impressive it is to keep your head when all around you are losing theirs. That must be just how the leadership of B&Q feels at present – transferred to a world where everyone else seems to have gone crazy.
Suddenly there are big question marks surrounding all the major DIY retailers – except B&Q, the market leader. The management of Focus Do It All has spent most of this past summer trying to buy Wickes, which it has finally
succeeded in doing by means of a marriage which, according to the comments of some analysts, was not made in heaven.
For at least ten years the management of Great Mills has resolutely denied that it would ever sell out to one of their competitors, despite being one of the smaller players in the highly consolidated British DIY market. But now suddenly the group’s owner, building supplies concern RMC, has declared that the DIY business is indeed for sale.
And last but not least, Homebase has got in on the act as well, with the group’s parent company Sainsbury announcing that this business could also be for sale to the right bidder.
So what is going on? One possible answer is simply that B&Q has won. The market leader now looks impregnable to such an extent that the only answer competitors can come up with is either to gang together into increasingly un-likely combinations – or pull out of the market altogether.
Andrew Ross
DIY in Europe UK