PC Retail

It's been a while since PC Retail last spoke to Dabs (November 2006). How has the last year been in general for you?
Over the past year, I'm pleased that the Dabs business overall has grown, and grown strongly in a number of areas. We're particularly seeing good growth in the B2B segment, where we've invested in salespeople to manage relationships with customers and as a result get more of them and get them spending more. So there's certainly a good return on investment in terms of investing in sales people.

In the last 12 months, we've also launched the BT shop online. It offers all the products you'd normally get in one of BT's physical retail shop, as well as all the services, on top of an extended range of products from third parties. It's pretty easy for us to facilitate, and it's a good revenue stream for us overall.

Netbooks have really exploded in recent months, in many senses bolstering the strength of the entire industry. Have you noticed a significant rise in sales of this price point?
Yes, absolutely. As a category, notebook sales have grown pretty spectacularly. Some people say this is as a result of prices declining, I think that has certainly accelerated the growth, but also it started when notebooks were much more expensive than desktops and notebooks started to become desktop replacements as they are today.

Mobility is huge now in terms of what people expect from the functionality of a device, and obviously being able to connect to the internet anywhere either via wi-fi link or LAN or 3G or Bluetooth, is all helping energise that category's growth. So really the device doesn't really matter anymore. Whether it's a notebook, whether it's a phone, whether it's a PDA, it doesn't really matter how you connect, it's just your personal preference.

It depends how much functionality you want with the device and how you want the information presented as to what device you go for. And notebooks have really been the star when it comes into people's mind about what they can do predominantly in the home.

From a historical point of view the components and peripherals categories are still very strong within the mix but it is the notebook are that has seen the spectacular growth in recent months.

Does Dabs.TV help address the issue that a lot of people have with buying online, that they often can't see much of the product or get much of a feel for it?
That's the reason why we've launched that aspect. I do agree with you that there are certain categories of product that customers like to get up close and personal really to understand what suits their requirements, particularly when there's a lot of products that are handheld, as it were.

Cameras are a very good example of that, notebooks as well. Just by understanding the weight of the notebook and its dimensions for many people isn't a great substitute for actually holding it. Many customers would prefer to pick the product up themselves and experience it in the flesh.

But we believe the TV aspect bridges at least part of the gap where customers might consider not actually purchasing until they've actually seen the product.

As a former DSGi man, what would you say is the chief difference between working for a High Street retailer and an online retailer?
DSGi also has a big representation on the web. I guess it's the emphasis really. The emphasis of providing multiple channels for customers to be able to buy through has a different emphasis within DSGi than it does here at Dabs. While multi-channel retailing is what both organisations are about, the profile of those routes to market are quite different.

In terms of the logistics I do believe that Dabs has – despite everything that happens within developing a business – remained core to its strengths, remaining relatively simple, and that's part of the beauty of the organisation really. It has robust processes, but at the same time it allows for flexibility, whereas as other organisations may struggle when trying to be agile and react to market conditions.

As well as serving the consumers, you also sell to businesses, as well as smaller PC builders and service providers. How easy is it juggling all these different business types and does it offer any advantages?
We don't just promote our business and services to a single segment of the market. But we do typically target smaller organisations, whether that's in the public sector or the B2B area.

Many small businesses purchase a little bit like consumers. As you move up the business pyramid (in terms of customer size) then it is important to have a certain level of additional management, which we're able to provide through account managers to be able to facilitate the additional demands and expectations of those larger customer groups.

We would struggle to have the same level of success without the sales people managing those relationships and being able to cater for that additional demand.

To what extent do you think the focus of technology retail will move over to online in the next five years? I believe it will become more and more prevalent. We've certainly seen growth in online purchasing at a faster rate to that of other means, and that's across all segments of the marketplace. There's no doubt that serving a customer electronically is a very efficient way of running a business.

Having said that, I don't believe it will end up becoming the be-all-and-end-all. There will be a rightful position for sales people to add value at the time of pre-sale and at the time of sale in the future. I do believe that as e-commerce and e-tail becomes more feature-rich and offers a better user experience, then it will continue its increased level of penetration in terms of overall spend.

I do believe the IT industry historically has not been at the forefront of offering best practice for customer service. But we believe that in investing the right level of culture and customer handling experience that could provide a competitive advantage in the future.