Payless DIY

Payless DIY was the name of a chain of DIY stores in the UK during the 1980s.

Background

The name was first used in 1983 to re-brand the Marley Homecare chain. The rebranding was done under the chairmanship of Tom O'Sullivan, MD Ted Lansdowne and Marketing Director Doug Spickernell to counter public perception of the Marley name as good, reliable but expensive. The transformation was inspired by the model adopted by Wickes in the U.S.A. i.e. larger stocks of trade-related goods, particularly timber and building lines and a classic 'pile it high, sell it cheap' approach. Not just a PR move, prices to the public were slashed across the board and attracted many 'jobbing' builders who could buy at the same prices offered by builders' merchants. The strategy was a great success with average stores' turnover rising between 20% and 33% in the following year. By 1989, Payless was the UK's third largest DIY chain, with sales of £230m.

Marley Homecare was a part of the Marley Group which included the Marley Tile Company, Marley Extrusions, Marley Roofing and Marley Floors. Starting initially as Marley Retail Limited in 1959, it was the first company to bring DIY to UK High Streets. Based in Sevenoaks, Kent, close to the manufacturing bases at Lenham and Riverhead, initial trading was from small shops, selling only Marley-manufactured products. The range diversified in the late 60s when there were over three hundred outlets across the UK. Larger stores were added, starting with the Ramsgate store in 1982.

It was purchased by the Ward White Group, which included Halfords, who injected extra funds for expansion and left the existing board in place. In 1985 Payless bought the Madeley Group of DIY stores in the North and West of England, retaining their staff and field management and rebranding them as Payless stores.

At the end of the eighties, Ward White was bought by the Boots Group. Boots negotiated a merger of Payless with W.H.Smith's Do It All chain. The Payless Sevenoaks Head Office was closed and the Do It All premises in Dudley, West Midlands became the Head Office for the new chain. Payless and WH Smith references were dropped and the merged chain became simply Do It All and marketed to appeal mainly to female consumers/interior designers i.e. the building and timber products were no longer promoted; with consequent loss of the building sector. Following poor trading, WH Smith extricated themselves from the merger and then Boots sold Do It All to Focus DIY in 1998.

The Focus group retained some of the Payless own-brand ranges and successfully bought up Wickes - later selling them at a substantial profit ^[1] to Travis Perkins. Now, in June 2011, Payless has come back to bite Halfords, to the tune of £7.5m who, back in the Ward White days, had guaranteed the lease of a number of Focus/Payless stores.^[2]

A final twist is that the Wickes and Travis Perkins group has bought up to 13 of the former Focus DIY stores.^[3]

References

1. "Focus DIY history:Guardian"
2. "Halfords takes Focus charge:Guardian"
3. "Wickes to buy Focus stores:BBC"