Stores are at the heart of European DIY giant Kingfisher’s harmonised retail strategy and CEO Thierry Garnier explains how improved choice, speed and resilient supply chains are key to the future, and why he won’t be betting on sexy AI any time soon.
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Thierry Garnier - Kingfisher CEO

European DIY giant Kingfisher is best known for its mix of large and small stores, spread across multiple brands and countries. It is these stores which are at the centre of a strategy that brings together increased choice, faster execution and a greater focus on experience.

Speaking exclusively to NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show Europe, Kingfisher CEO Thierry Garnier recalls that his inspiration for this comes from China. In 2015, Alibaba created a store concept called Freshippo. He explains, all the major retailers in China at the time, including Walmart, Carrefour, and Kingfisher, were amazed by the power of the concept.

“I still believe it's the most innovative concept in the world today, because it's a relatively small store where experience is maximized, removing all the boring elements,” he said. “The other shock we had at that time was that they were handling up to 10,000 online orders per store per day, all delivered in 30 minutes, back in 2015 when the concept was created. Nobody believed it was possible.”

Garnier says this established the idea that the store experience should revolve around pleasure, because delivery or collection could be executed very quickly. As a result, Kingfisher has shifted its ecommerce operation so that 93% of orders are now prepared in-store.

“It's a very agile model. At the peak of the pandemic, we were preparing 1.5 million orders per week, compared to large UK grocers’ approximately 1.3 million, entirely thanks to our store network. This allows us to compete with Amazon, without additional fixed costs, leveraging our existing infrastructure,” he said.

“We have announced that customers can now collect from B&Q in 15 minutes, and from Screwfix in one minute. A big part of our ecommerce proposition is that we use stores as picking points, with an emphasis on speed. About 85% of our orders use click and collect, and that makes our ecommerce very profitable,” he said.

B&Q has also created a marketplace generating over £300 million in revenues last year and replicated the same marketplace model in Poland, France, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. All these markets now using the same technology, further boosts customer choice.

“We really believe this incremental choice generates significant sales, but we want to maintain a link with the store, whereby products from the marketplace can be delivered to one store by a vendor for click & collect, and be also returned to any B&Q store for instance,” he said.

“Our vision for future stores are them being places for experience and advice. This means working hard on back offices - transitioning from checkout, to more scan-and-go through mobile, allowing store colleagues to focus more on customer service.”

Kingfisher also focused on ‘trade’, selling to more small, single-person trade businesses where convenience often matters more than price alone.

“Tradespeople are really looking for speed. In London, you don't want to have to move your car from a parking space and lose one hour in traffic. So, they prioritise rapid solutions. And then you have different kind of expectations. Sometimes you have time to order a new kitchen, new windows, but sometimes you have a leak somewhere, and you need to be able to click and collect in 15 minutes,” he said.

“Speed in DIY is super critical for some of our customers, but not for everyone.”

Kingfisher is also building its higher margin private label range and increasing the number of suppliers it is working with, moving away from relying on one single supplier for key product lines to avoid supply chain disruptions, allowing diversification while keeping a main partner.

“The main objective isn't necessarily fewer suppliers from China or more from Europe, but to ensure alternatives if our main supplier encounters production or delivery issues due to shipping problems or events like flooding in Spain, for instance. So that's something we are consistently working on,” he added.

The group is also using real time inventory data to improve visibility of its inventory throughout the logistics process. And while Kingfisher is also looking at AI, Garnier says his focus is on implementing ideas that provide a tangible return on investment and scalability.

“It's relatively easy to have hundreds of “exciting” AI ideas that are, actually, low return,” he said.

“High-return projects must be prioritized. And that's not easy for the teams, because they’re eager to propose ideas and move quickly to the next great idea. However, managing seven countries and thousands of stores requires selecting impactful projects, rolling them out swiftly and globally, and securing returns quickly.”

One such example is markdown optimisation, where AI can provide daily price recommendations to individual stores based on location, with a different price for every store, thereby boosting margins.

“It's at first not super “exciting” but we asked the team to remain focused in rolling this out, due to its substantial return,” he said. “With AI what you need is to keep a good balance between letting the team provide innovative ideas, and in parallel a disciplined implementation of major use cases, and to be ruthless in their execution.”