William Wilson is one of Scotland’s best known and longest established bathroom retail specialists. Founded in 1900, it started as a plumbers’ merchant - a service to the trade it still provides.

The business employs around 200 people and has 16 showrooms across Scotland from Orkney to Ayr, with plans to shortly open a 17th in Thurso. Like many other companies, it was impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak, but it has now reopened its showrooms. It has maintained a personal service to customers throughout the pandemic, as its Marketing Manager Dave Reid explains.

Q: When Covid-19 arrived, it hit a lot of companies very hard and very quickly. How did you adapt?

DR: We immediately followed the Scottish Government guidelines and adopted all the protocols. Initially we effectively closed all our branches, leaving them open for trade call and collect services only.We were able to do that because plumbing and heating engineers were considered to be essential workers.

During the first outbreak we were servicing organisations such as old people’s homes, the NHS - we were involved in the NHS Louisa Jordan hospital, where we were supplying one of the plumbing contractors - and those carrying out essential tasks such as emergency boiler replacements in private homes. So we were able to keep our customers properly supplied.

At the highest level of lockdown our retail bathroom showrooms did have to be closed completely, though we now have them open again on an Covid-safe appointments basis, with one customer in and one out about every 40 minutes.

Q. What safety steps did you take to make sure everyone was protected?

DR: We were very careful with our protocols and made some major changes. We brought in two metres’ distancing in all our promises along with sanitiser stations - in the larger branches there are three or four of these. And we are all wearing masks inside.

Another change for our employees is that a number of us are working from home. Our Managing Director is comfortable with the fact that we have adapted flexible working practices and moved to blended working, with staff spending some days in our premises and other days homeworking. It has worked well for us and our people are finding benefits in it.

Q. How did the customers react to the changes you had to make?

DR: Actually, they were very positive. We’ve had very few issues with people not wanting to comply with rules on mask wearing, for instance. Most of our customers have been quite happy to accept any general Covid-19 regulations we’ve introduced and to work with us.

We were delighted to be able to provide a continuing service on our trade counter in particular. That’s been essential for a lot of our trade customers as some of them are in fairly remote parts of the country such as rural Perthshire or the Highlands and they have made a lot of journeys with our kit in order to do emergency repairs.

Q. The pandemic caused a shock for nearly every business. Now Scotland appears to be slowly returning to normal, have you learned any lessons from it, and how do you think it will shape the company’s future?

DR: We’re very positive. We have found that the appointments-only policy within the bathroom showroom side of the company has been quite successful. From a business point of view, we believe that we are getting a better quality of appointment.

Our staff have discovered that they are able to spend much more one-on-one time with the customer.  So it’s possible that we may think about retaining this going forward, possibly alongside traditional drop-in visits. If people make an appointment, then they are generally pretty serious about buying a bathroom, and they like the fact that they are getting a personal service.

Q. Bathroom retail is a busy marketplace. What is it that makes William Wilson different from and better than its competitors?

DR: It’s the depth of experience and the knowledge of our staff. They are very well trained - we have our own programme in the company and a dedicated training manager. That’s not terribly common in our industry, particularly in an operation of our size. Training is something that we do invest heavily in, both in the bathroom showrooms part of the company and in the other parts of the business.

We are a solid mid-market proposition - though we can also do budget bathrooms and very expensive ones if people want them - with good quality and well sourced products from the UK and Europe. And we are very much a one-stop shop - customers can get everything they need for their bathroom from one of our showrooms. We try to offer people good value for money, with quality products at a reasonable price.

Q. You mentioned that you source some of your products from Europe. Has Brexit caused you any difficulties?

DR: To some degree it has, yes. Along with a lot of other companies in our industry, we have faced some supply issues. Plastics and aluminium in particular have been challenging to get hold of. That kind of thing has a knock on effect. Some of the factories have also had issues with their production levels because of Covid protocols - requirements for safe social distancing mean they simply haven’t been able to produce as much by way of output.

So with their production affected, we have been experiencing some extended lead times. But we have been working very hard to source alternative products and to increase our stock levels, so it would be wrong to suggest that it is a huge crisis. It’s only in certain product categories and it’s a problem we are taking action to manage.

Q. Do you feel that you have learned anything from the Covid pandemic?

DR: We’ve learned that both our staff and our customers are very flexible. We have also had a lot of goodwill from our people. It has demonstrated to us that there is something very refreshing about human nature. That has been very encouraging and we are looking forward to the future.

www.williamwilson.co.uk