Bunnings No.3 opens for business

Last Friday, Wesfarmers officially opened their third Bunnings Warehouse format store in the UK and Ireland, a conversion of the former Homebase located at Apsley Mills Retail Park, London Road, Hemel Hempstead.

At  64,000sq ft, Hemel is slightly smaller than the 67,000sq ft store on Griffiths Way St.Albans that opened at the beginning of February and much larger than the 40,000 sq ft Hatfield Road store that opened in April.

As well as the usual home improvement and garden products, the store also boasts a café, indoor children’s play area, timber cutting, colour wall and engraving and key cutting services. 

In total, the store stocks over 27,000 products, all of which the team were encouraged to get to grips with during a 10 day supplier expo', where 93 of the largest brands delivered 'in the aisle' interactive product knowledge training.

The new store has created 53 new full and part-time roles and will employ a total of 111 team members, who have already completed a combined total of 1,076 hours of training. 

At a recent strategy update day for investors, Wesfarmers confirmed that there will be ten Bunnings stores operating by the end of 2017.

Read - Wesfarmers Strategy Briefing key points

The ten stores will include St.Albans 1 & 2, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes (opens first week of July), Folkestone (an ex.B&Q Warehouse), Sittingbourne, Broadstairs and Basildon Vange. The remaining two stores we speculate will be in the Bristol area.

Read - Sittingbourne named as sixth Bunnings

Darren Reid, store manager said “Our team members have worked really hard to get the store ready for opening and are looking forward to sharing their expertise and enthusiasm with customers in Hemel. We’re ready to welcome people to the new store!”

The store will be holding two grand-opening weekend events, with a raft of free family activities on June 17-18 and June 24-25 June.

Download - Bunnings Warehouse Hemel Hempstead factsheet

Later this week, our MD Steve Collinge will be writing his usual 'First Impressions' article on the Hemel Hempstead store and we'll be publishing a library of over 50 images from the new store, so check back regularly.

Source: Insight DIY Team

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