The executive has over 14 years experience in white goods online retailing at AO World.
Disclaimer: This interview is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. In Practise is an independent publisher and all opinions expressed by guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of In Practise.
I joined AO in 2010. AO didn't exist when I started, it was DRL Limited. We launched Appliances Online as our own brand instead of working for third-party label sites like Next and Boots. We decided to expand beyond appliances, so we rebranded as AO to start selling TVs and laptops.
We sourced products from manufacturers and set up websites on our platform to take and fulfill orders. Customers thought they were buying from Boots.
Yes, and to this day, Boots Kitchen Appliances still runs. It's a small operation. We then thought, why are we paying these retailers a large commission? Why don't we build our own? That's when Appliances Online was born, and then AO. I went through all that journey and ended up as the Head of Commercial, then Commercial Director, then E-commerce Director for the group. For the last six years, I was the Managing Director for retail. I looked after everything until it needed to be delivered to a customer. The picking, logistics, and shipping were handled by a different division.
The organization has evolved over the years. At the top, we have our founder and CEO. The company is then divided into business units. Retail was one such unit, which is what most customers and people are familiar with. Then there's logistics. The retail business pays an intercompany charge to logistics, which operates with its own profit and loss statement. In reality, though, it functions as a cost center.
It's a legacy arrangement from when we acquired Expert Logistics. We liked the idea of running each unit with its own profit and loss statement, as if it were a separate business.
Yes, that's correct. The logistics unit handles receipt of goods, storage, picking, and delivery to the customer, all at a variable rate.
Yes, although the rate isn't really tied to the market. It's more based on costs. The person in charge of logistics wasn't incentivized based on the unit's P&L performance. We were all incentivized based on the group's performance.
The idea was to do what's best for the group as a whole. We were aware of the potential issues with intercompany transactions and didn't want to create incentives for making one's own unit look better at the expense of others. For instance, I would sometimes take a significant hit in my P&L for a promotion, like offering free recycling, because it was the right thing to do for the group. The recycling unit would benefit greatly from such a promotion because they would receive a lot of free fridges.
Yes, recycling is another division.
Apart from retail and logistics, we have financial services, which mainly deals with warranties.
Yes, it's a separate division. Then there's recycling and central services, which includes HR and finance. That's the basic structure of the organization.
We've tried many. It's not bad. There was a B2B division, but that's been collapsed into retail now. That's how it was run. But I must say, there are pros and cons to any business structure.
In effect, I oversaw all marketing and digital aspects, the websites, product range, supplier management, sourcing, and customer services. Essentially, every component of AO, including pricing, was under my purview.
It's less unique than it was. In the early days, we had a first-mover advantage. For instance, we were the first to offer next day delivery and had the widest range. Compared to Currys, which was Dixons back then, we had 4,000 products while they only had 500. We charged 4% less on average. We were the first to do next day delivery. We were also the first to launch services for home installation. Our success pre-IPO came from our scale. It's the Jeff Bezos model - availability at a good price, delivered really fast, with excellent service. That's what we offered. We were also very strong digitally, being the first to partner with Google for API integration and the first to put videos live on the website. However, everyone copies you eventually.
Amazon, if they decide to focus on this.
This is a complicated category. Amazon is really good for items where you know what you want. They have improved a lot, to be fair. AO is the market leader online, while Currys is the overall market leader, mainly due to their stores. I think AO is more at risk from other competitors now.
Yes, I believe so.
When we launched on Amazon, which was a two-year debate, we were concerned about moving our business over. However, I can categorically state that an Amazon customer is an Amazon customer and there was no overlap. I was honestly taken aback by this.
We could match the email addresses and postcodes, but they were different. You never know entirely, but it's clear that the Amazon customer generally shops only on Amazon. It's not 100%, but we ran those stats because we were so concerned about it. We were the exclusive partner with Amazon at the start and there was hardly any demand. We were worried that we would sell a lot of products and take away from AO.com, and then have to pay Amazon a commission. But the demand was insignificant compared to the scale of AO.
We first partnered with them about four or five years ago.
We significantly reduced our presence. I ended up having a disagreement with them because they were trying to force us to use their distribution, Amazon Logistics and FBA, which we didn't want to do.
We wanted to handle the category for Amazon across Europe. We believed we could do this well. We had the infrastructure for all the installations and everything. They had the traffic, we had the range and the distribution. So we decided to partner with them.
In the UK, we own our own fleet.
They didn't at that time. They couldn't go inside the house. They could only deliver small packages.
Amazon had a policy from Seattle that prohibited entry into the house unless the delivery person had a criminal check. Amazon only ran a one-man fleet, which was a totally different setup. They could only deliver small packages.
Five years later, they've really upped their game. They can now do installations in-house. But to answer your original question, remind me.
Only 1%.
It's consistent because we were deeply paranoid. I was personally checking this because it's unbelievable.
Honestly, I don't know, but I know what the stats were. We had decided that if it was anything more than 15%, we were pulling out.
Yes. They would only give us a Prime badge if it went in their warehouse. And then they would ship it. They doubled the commission rate from a special discounted rate, which we'd negotiated with them. So we were best friends for a while, and then all of a sudden, they just turned.
No, this was later on. They had invested in two-man delivery and wanted us to move our product over. And we were like, no, we're not doing that.
No, we're not doing that. So I think AO has a light business on the marketplace, on standard rates now. But one of the biggest risks is Amazon because I've noticed a lot of the suppliers are going direct with Amazon now. We were calling it disintermediation in-house.
You can't. The power is in the brand. You need to make sure you invest and have. So the biggest moat AO has now is its brand.
Its reputation.
It's not, but I guess it is far bigger than Amazon in white goods in the UK.
The market for white goods in Germany was much larger than we anticipated. Amazon, for instance, had a substantial business in white goods in Germany. They had already established a strong presence there.
For some reason, Amazon was very successful in Germany.
I'm not entirely sure why, but Amazon had a business worth 500 million euros in Germany.
The market was around nine to 10 billion from what I recall. We believed that we were the best in class in e-commerce, so we decided to enter the market. It was a challenging endeavor.
The Germans prefer local brands. For instance, 50% of the product mix was Bosch, whereas in the UK, it was only 10%. Bosch knew this and used it to their advantage in negotiations. We didn't have the same profitable suppliers as we did in the UK. Additionally, we were competing against large German in-store brands like MediaMarkt. We also couldn't sell warranties due to the double opt-in rule, which resulted in a loss of warranty income. The business model we set up in Germany was not as profitable as the one in the UK.
It depends on how you look at it. As you can see in any plc results, the margins are very slim. You could attribute this to the warranties or the service income or the delivery. Either way, it all adds up to very little.
The retail P&L was incredibly profitable, as were the warranties. The central overheads, however, were extremely high. This was one of the reasons I left. The overheads were too large, and we weren't addressing it. We were working very hard but wasting money.
Well, Bosch and Miele are the big brands in Germany, but there's no market for them.
It's terrible. The profit was literally half of what we were getting in the UK.
You end up averaging 25% to 26% in the UK as an average product margin. The product margin for Bosch at the time was 11% to 12% percent.
You can understand how we were losing a lot of money in the early days.
Bosch had about 50% of the market share in Germany, compared to about 10% in the UK.
Beko and Hotpoint are big, but there's no dominating partner like Bosch in the UK. It depends on the year. There are a few big players, each with about 10% market share, but there's no dominating supplier in the UK, which worked to our advantage.
Due to the double opt-in regulation, a customer would have to opt-in twice to be contacted to sell a warranty.
On ao.de, you had to opt-in at the checkout, receive an email, and then opt-in again via the email.
It was very, very small.
I can't remember exactly, but it was minimal.
You offer it on the inbound call and on an outbound call. So, you do a service call saying, just checking in, what room would you like it in? We also have this warranty product if you'd like some coverage with it.
In the UK, it's around 15%.
Yes, it does. The manufacturer's warranty usually lasts for a year. However, we offer a service plan that acts as an insurance. It costs a few pounds a month. If you're spending £1,000 on a couple of appliances, it's a worthwhile investment. Interestingly, it's the less affluent demographic that tends to opt for this, while wealthier customers tend to disregard it, preferring to simply buy a new appliance if the current one breaks.
Yes, that's correct. They are the insurance provider.
I'm afraid I can't provide specifics as that wasn't my division. The balance sheet for that division is quite complex. However, I do know that we allocated about £100 per warranty to the P&L, and the cash was phased over the years. The retail P&L sold the lead to the warranty division. I earned 4% on every sale, regardless of whether a warranty was sold or not. That's how I incorporated warranty income into my P&L.
If the revenue for the day was £100, then I would get £4 of revenue, regardless of whether a warranty was sold or not. The warranty division then had to ensure they sold enough to cover that.
Price is a key factor. If it's cheaper, more people will opt for it. They were very good at it and had the pitch down to an absolute tee. It took a long time to reach 15%. You might be able to increase it by another percent or two, but reaching 25% would require a significantly better value or cheaper price.
Amazon has caught up because they now have a wider range of direct suppliers. They are offering services, prime delivery, and warranties.
Broadly, yes. You can't communicate with anyone at Amazon. It probably won't have the range of AO.
Because it won't have every single supplier, like Bosch for example. These suppliers are run by old school management and generally despise Amazon. Keep in mind that my information is a few years out of date.
They only want to sell their products. They don't generally care that much. They seem to have a problem with Amazon. AO had an advantage because we had very good supply relationships, unlike Currys who were the market leader and took advantage of them. We ended up getting a lot of support and favors. It's not really a customer-facing advantage, it's more a business advantage.
Yes.
Bosch will allow it to sell, but I imagine Bosch wouldn't be doing it directly.
It's interesting. There's the Prime badge now. Who's that Amazon Choice? That can't be AO.
I've never heard of them before.
It's not unique. We were starting to get a few exclusives, but they were loose like a Beko white washing machine. Currys versus ours. There's hardly anything in it. It was just a different model number and the pricing. Pricing is not unique but the model is. Everyone's quite respectful of the price now it all settled down because we were chasing each other down and now obviously we don't discuss it but literally everyone just matches everyone. So no, people don't generally undercut anymore. People might do promotions of codes on top of that but from a price point of view price is not a differentiator. It was in the early days.
Currys.
The store price and the website price will be the same for Currys.
Our approach was to match the cheapest price in the market with a 95% aggression level. We were willing to accept that 5% of our range might not be competitive, but 95% had to be the cheapest in the market.
We aim to match whoever is the cheapest.
Correct, not the cheapest, but matching the lowest price.
They have 500 stores to fund. They can make more margin because they can put the store in the storefront and they have a larger scale. But they also have a lot of store estate they need to fund.
I believe in Currys' model. People will always want to go into a shop and feel the products. By being online-only, you're cutting off half the market. That's why we started going into stores. I really wanted to implement a store model because we're not reaching half of the potential market.
That worked fine. But John didn't like it, so we stopped it. We had an opportunity to partner with hundreds of Tesco stores and it was going quite well. But John wanted to simplify the whole thing, which I understand.
No, he's very focused on online, which I understand. The future is online. Over the next 20 years, online will only get bigger. But the omnichannel piece is important because at least 50% of the market still shops in store. In this category, you want to feel a range cooker and a fridge. An image on a website does not suffice when you're spending £2,000 pounds on something.
Many people do research in the store then go and shop online.
Yes, we used to do advertising. We would map all Currys store IP addresses and then serve different ad creative when people were doing that.
I generally believe in partnerships within existing stores. The goal is to reach the widest audience, and in this category, a physical presence is necessary. That's why I appreciate the Tesco partnership. They are the market leader with unused space. We can build a cost-effective store and share the profits. It's a no-brainer, as it leads to incremental sales. On the other hand, managing an entire estate, like Currys' 500 store estate, is not optimal for today's market.
Yes, I'd have 50.
Why not partner in some pods or something similar? Like local car parks, for instance. It's also great for brand building because it instills customer trust. If a customer hasn't used AO before and they see something physical, it immediately builds trust.
They might. I'm not sure what their plan would be. At one point, I thought Amazon would try to buy AO, but I think they've invested the money themselves now.
In the early days, they would have bought the two-man infrastructure and all the supply relationships.
10 years ago, AO was unique for several reasons. We were the cheapest, quickest, and had the largest range. We've just celebrated the 10-year anniversary of our service launch, which includes installations. It's a fantastic service.
Having your gas cooker installed in your built-in kitchen is a great service.
So, it's the functional aspects, but they're not unique. Anyone can copy them. Most electricals came out of nowhere and now offer the same services.
Nothing. John often praises the service, particularly the reviews and customer interaction, as superior. However, if you delve deeper into companies like John Lewis and Currys, their service isn't as good. They still offer it, but it's not as good. The repeat business was always a significant advantage, but it's not anymore. From a customer perspective, all the products and prices are the same. Therefore, the differentiator becomes the brand. It's about the emotional connection and where I want to make my purchase. It's now a brand game.
We pay great attention to detail in our SLAs. For instance, we aim to answer the phone within 20 seconds, and if a product is broken, we replace it. We have agreements with suppliers for free returns. We were meticulous about measuring our delivery time. We used to call it "deliver to promise". We would ensure that we fulfilled all our promises to the customer. I remember when we first scored it, it was in the low seventies, even though most of the parts were in the nineties.
We then created the DTP plan to achieve best-in-class service. However, you can't really advertise that to a customer. They only care about the service after the fact if they have a bad experience.
None of the functional things. The latest development is membership. That's the latest proposition change, which I never agreed with. So, John and I ended up parting ways on strategy. I wanted to focus on the brand. I believed that was the way to win because our brand is here and Currys is there. Currys can't go any higher. We can just eat into it.
It's flawed, in my opinion. John loves it and he talks about all the stats. I don't know the stats because it was launched after I left. I don't know all the stats. John tells me they are great when I see him. But they can't be because the revenue hasn't grown.
The commission revenue hasn't changed, so it'll be self-fulfilling. The use of videos has doubled the conversion rate compared to those who don't watch videos. This is because they are more engaged shoppers who do more research, hence, they are more likely to make a purchase, not because there is a video.
He essentially eliminated the free delivery proposition and made the delivery quite expensive. Therefore, it's a no-brainer for a customer to opt for the membership because it offers better value to take the membership then and there.
Yes, and those who don't want the membership pay the high delivery fee. So, the short-term profit will be good, but the repeat purchase isn't long enough. If you're buying items every week, the Prime model is great. If you're buying something once a year on average, as a customer, you were buying something, then it's not so good.
As a global statistic for AO, the average repeat rate was once a year. But you could have a tumble dryer, washing machine, or a dishwasher. Obviously, there are people who bought really regularly and some who'd only ever bought once in their lifetime.
Maybe B2B stuff.
I assume it's still email addresses, so you can't really segment it.
Probably a high amount because you don't pay for B2B. But it was free delivery. He just overinflated it and then he's doing member discount pricing on certain things. The theory behind it, it's all nice, but the repeat, a customer doesn't value it because you don't go to AO to shop regularly.
No, the whole market is free delivery. You charge for next day delivery and standard delivery is free.
Indeed, that would have significantly reduced sales. Companies like Appliances Direct and Marks Electrical, although I haven't checked recently, might have started charging standard delivery. I know Currys followed AO, but smaller players have a significant advantage because, in effect, they'll be £20 or so cheaper on delivery.
Yes, it's definitely more expensive now than it used to be.
Indeed, there is. If you search for that washing machine on Google, let's see what the market price is.
It's interesting with that example. They probably got a bulk deal from Hotpoint.
Yes, in that case.
Because John believes that it's going to change the world. I just don't believe it will because people are buying the membership because it's good value at the moment.
Yes, because you've paid £40, you'd come to us rather than going elsewhere because you've already paid for the membership. That's the theory. In reality, I don't have any statistics to back this up. This is all just my theory.
It's simple. Every single piece of customer insight we ever gathered was about price, range, and delivery. That's it. Services weren't even a significant factor, honestly.
Yes, exactly.
In terms of what's important to a customer, price and delivery are the two biggest factors by far. The rest are nice to have. But the initial headline ones, what gets you in there in the first place?
I'm willing to pay you that £60 for that service because I need it, even though it wasn't a factor initially.
Yes, I referred to it as brilliant basics. The idea is to ensure your brilliant basics are always top-notch, even though they're not differentiators, they're hygiene factors. You need to make sure your machine is working really well, then you market it aggressively. If your machine is working well and you have a good product, you can promote it. So, embrace digital marketing and maximize your position on every platform, including Google. The next step is getting your brand known to the UK public.
That would only be the case if Amazon starts running white goods campaigns. The goal was to make AO the first choice for about 9% of the UK population when asked where they would buy their washing machine from. I was interested in being the first destination, not just creating awareness or consideration. I wanted to know where they were going first. Awareness and consideration are just the beginning. I wanted to know where they were buying from, that's what we needed to drive.
Yes, it was high. We were the market leader online, so it's expected to be high. However, Currys had triple that percentage. If you want to become the market leader, you need to become the destination where people go first, instead of driving down to the retail park.
I believe it's possible.
I think they'll gradually gain ground based on price, just like we did. They'll continue to chip away, but it's a very stable market. The market size is roughly the same every year and there's not much movement. It's very consistent. There's never going to be a revolutionary change unless someone comes up with a brilliant proposition, which I can't possibly think of, having spent many years trying to come up with one. So, I believe the key to success is a winning brand.
Increase brand activity?
They're doing a bit of advertising, like the AO Arena, and some sports sponsorships.
No, it can't be anywhere near that high on brand. That figure must include all of their Google advertising.
You need to maintain within your margins within 3% to 4% of turnover, otherwise, you'll start losing money. There's only a certain amount you can spend per year on brand because it doesn't pay back within the year. So, you can probably only spend around £10 to £15 million a year on brand.
Yes.
That was fine. We managed it by channel and got it down to a tee. It was probably around 2.5% to 3%.
3%.
I wanted to invest more because of the potential for repeat business, but cash flow restrictions meant we had to make money in the moment, especially with the public company dynamic.
Yes, because as a public company, you have to report by quarter or half-year. In a way, it would be better if we were a private company. I would have spent five years building the brand, and then in five years, we would have built such a scale that we would have won in the long term. But that's not how it works. You have to report and deliver every quarter or half-year.
Repeat people generally comes directly.
What does the 58% refer to? Customers?
It's almost impossible to tell because some repeat customers will come directly, while others will still shop around. Google doesn't provide very accurate data these days due to all the cookie restrictions. You can't really tell with 100% certainty.
You can't be sure because you don't know how they came to the site with 100% certainty. Did they click on six Google Ads before that, for example, if they were looking for a washing machine?
Yes, in theory, that should be the case. The idea is that customers come directly to us, eliminating the need for digital advertising costs. This should save a significant percentage per order. However, every customer is different.
I still believe customers will extensively research expensive products, especially when they're outfitting an entire kitchen. They won't necessarily come directly to AO, although many do. AO has a high level of direct traffic, which is excellent and has increased over time. This is evident when we run TV ads. However, there are still other channels. It's impossible to accurately determine who is a repeat customer and who clicked on a Google Ad. Some of these people might not even make a purchase, but we still incur advertising costs.
We don't look at it on a customer level, but rather on a campaign level. For example, with a washing machine campaign, we look at how much we've spent and how much revenue we've generated. We can track orders, but not individual customers. We don't have their email addresses.
We know that a customer clicked on an ad 7,000 times this week. We don't know who they are, but we know that it generated £50,000 worth of washing machine sales. From that perspective, it doesn't matter whether they're repeat customers or not. Our goal is to get as many orders as possible.
That's why we focus on building the brand. We want to encourage people to come directly to us. However, we also need to win the Google auctions, as there will always be demand there.
Direct was our most significant channels over time. Ideally, we would want to be 100% direct, but that's not realistic. So, we manage our spending in two different ways. There's no right or wrong way, but I set a brand budget, which I manage on a pound basis. This budget is measured on awareness metrics. For instance, I might decide to spend a hypothetical £10 million a year on brand spread over several months. The performance budget, on the other hand, is a percentage. It's an unlimited pound budget as long as it stays within the percentage of sale. The goal is to spend as much as possible.
We measure it over the week, like with Google. We manage it on a weekly basis.
The beauty of online is that it's so reactive. People often talk about long buying cycles, but that's not the case. If you change something, the effect is immediate.
97% of the people on your site are not buying.
I was always amazed at how a promotion could consistently uplift sales. As soon as you put a promotion on, sales increase instantly. Clearly, people are in the buying cycles. When the sale ends, there's usually a struggle for a couple of days. It seems like we just moved a lot of the business forward. We had to figure out the right frequency of promotions. I remember when we first launched discount codes, it was amazing. But you can't have an offer on every day.
Exactly. I remember when we stopped, we had a couple of bad days. When we averaged it all out, it seemed like we just moved a lot of volume around.
Absolutely. The impact on operations is significant.
I believe the biggest challenge is that people already have brand loyalties. For instance, I shop at Ocado online and it would take a lot to convince me to shop elsewhere because I love it. The same applies to this industry. Some people have a strong brand affinity and others don't care and will shop around. Digital marketing aims to capture as many of these people as possible. We had a lot of success in the early days because we were better at it than everyone else. However, many people are loyal to brands. The biggest challenge is persuading them to switch to another brand when the propositions are essentially the same.
I believe AO can differentiate themselves by improving their services. For instance, they could offer 0% interest on all their goods.
The standard interest rate is 24.9%.
Yes, they do use NewDay.
NewDay is a bespoke partnership. It's a profit-sharing joint P&L.
Yes, warranties are lead generation and finance is profit-sharing.
The warranty side is very specialized. The partnership with D&G was beneficial. However, selling your own warranty business isn't where you're going to win or lose the battle. They had all the infrastructure and engineers.
We considered doing our own repairs, but decided against it.
Yes, you might have to absorb that cost in your brand. We've tried many different strategies. I believe in the concept of marginal gains, like in 100-meter races or Formula One, where the winner only wins by a fraction of a second. The aim is to be slightly better than everyone else in all aspects, including price and service. There isn't one unique differentiator. John has tried to differentiate with membership, but I'm not sure that's the right approach, although time may prove me wrong.
John's approach offers great value for the customer and exclusive benefits like free next-day delivery and discounts on future products. However, as a consumer of white goods, I've noticed that AO's products are more expensive. The products aren't differentiated, so I don't see the added value. I believe that if AO had its own branded range, that would be an interesting proposition.
We considered it, but it would require a significant investment. However, I still believe that if we could offer a high-value range, it would be worthwhile. There are regulatory challenges in producing your own products, but you could label someone else's products. You need to improve in all areas, such as content, web journey, and marketing. I believe our marketing could be significantly improved. We currently don't have a dedicated marketing director.
A lady named Vicky, who is the acting marketing director. However, she comes from an operations background. When I left, the marketing director also left shortly after.
They appreciate Vicky's work. She's highly competent, but she doesn't have a background in marketing. It's unusual, she wouldn't get a marketing director role in any other large-scale business. It's because she's been with the company for 14 years.
They could expand into more categories. They haven't fully explored many potential categories.
The potential for growth is quite vast when you consider it. Currently, our significant market share is only in whiteboards and a bit in TVs. Mobile phones, for instance, are still a small part of our business.
It might not be unique, but it's a potential area for growth.
That's a possibility. I've always considered that we could expand into anything for the home. We could venture into gym equipment and similar items. Our brand doesn't have to be synonymous with just white goods or electronics. We could position ourselves as a marketplace for a variety of items, much like other brands are doing. We could even venture into physical stores. The potential is massive, but if we continue to focus solely on online white goods, our returns will be minimal and require a lot of work. One of the reasons I left was because I felt I had taken the company as far as I could without significant changes. I was excited about the prospect of stores, but then John decided against it. That could have opened up another couple hundred million in business for us.
He has chosen to stay focused. I understand the decision, as we previously tried to do a bit of everything and lost focus. I agree with John's decision, although I'm not a fan of membership.
Not particularly, in my opinion. He turned 50 last year and may want to retire soon.
Not exactly. He claimed to have retired, but he was still attending board meetings. He took a lot of holidays and stepped down, allowing Steve to step in as CEO, but he was still involved.
Yes, he essentially took a few years off after the company went public. Steve, who was a poor CEO but an excellent COO, stepped in. It was the right decision for Steve to leave and for John to return, to be fair.
I believe it would be due to external factors. We haven't yet experienced a full downturn in spending, particularly in mortgages and housing. That's a significant risk and would be quite alarming. Additionally, competitors could erode our profits by undercutting our prices, which is a common market strategy.
The growth was steady, increasing by one or two percentage points per year. However, the Covid-19 pandemic drastically accelerated this trend and it went up to about 90. Before the pandemic, online sales accounted for about 45% of the sector, but this figure increased to 55% post-Covid. I don't foresee it exceeding 60%.
Appliances Direct and Marks Electricals are two significant pure-play competitors. Also, John Lewis, Argos, and Currys have online platforms.
Yes, they do.
I believe Marks Electricals handles it in-house, while Appliances Direct outsources it. I often see Marks Electricals' vans, but not those of Appliance Direct.
It's hard to say as it depends on the company and how well they manage their service levels. Generally, in-house delivery allows for better control over drivers and service levels. If you outsource, you're mainly dealing with an account manager rather than the drivers themselves.
I believe AO will do well, although it may not be exciting. John is a smart leader with many ideas. While not all of them succeed, he usually has one that does exceptionally well. I would back John any day. The major risk is Amazon increasing their market share. Additionally, if the economy and housing market slow down, the market could shrink significantly due to everyone's high overheads. If a major player like Argos or Currys were to exit the market, it would have a significant impact. I recall when Comet went bust, our sales increased by 20% overnight.
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The executive has over 14 years experience in white goods online retailing at AO World.