Posted in Minoli
9th July 2024
As we have now reached the half-year mark for 2024, we’re reflecting on what the team here at Minoli have achieved and looking forward to what the next six months might hold.
Overall, we have had a solid first half, with turnover to date on par with 2023, which was a record year for the company. We have enjoyed a good level of orders from Minoli’s loyal housebuilder and property developer client base and have welcomed some new customers from that sector as well.
Our order book has also been buoyed by steady and increasing demand from professional automotive clients, as established brands and new market entrants continue to focus on improving their retail representation and delivering consistency of corporate identity.
As usual, Minoli’s newly launched products have been received well and specified frequently by interior designers, architects and housebuilders. These include the series launched at our 2024 Preview event in the Contemporary Essentials Collection such as Marvel Onyx, Marvel Meraviglia, Boost Balance and Mineral, Elysian Travertini and Jolie, which all featured in this year’s Minoli Design Trends report.
In addition, the nine ranges added to the Core Essentials Collection in February have also had strong levels of uptake. Including new designs with stone, marble, wood and concrete-effect finishes, in porcelain and ceramic, plus some with coordinating décor pieces, they have all been chosen for design and style aesthetics, but with affordability and durability very much in mind.
What’s more, by holding all of the Core ranges and most popular Contemporary collections in plentiful UK stock, currently at circa £4m in net cost value, Minoli are able to fulfil orders reliably and deliver promptly to site to help our clients keep moving forwards with build and fit-out schedules. This includes a significant stockholding of Outdoor By Minoli, 20 mm products, to which we added new marble effect designs earlier this year.
Alongside this continual investment in stock, we’ve also funded improvements in our delivery capacity. The latest addition to our truck fleet went into service in late April. Registration number M1 NOL is a DAF CF Series 340, 26 tonne Curtain Sided Rigid with Moffett forklift and given how frequently this vehicle will be delivering in central London, a lift and steer tag axle was also fitted. This new truck allows us to carry increased tonnage and to unload safely and efficiently greater volumes of tiles and extra-large slabs, more conveniently at our clients’ sites.
Additionally, in March we completed a significant redesign and refit of the Minoli Finance and Customer Service teams’ offices. With brand new desks and seating, computer equipment and lighting, and break out areas, this has created a wonderfully fresh and modern environment for the teams working within these key customer and business support functions.
The Minoli Factory Outlet has also performed well so far this year with a steady level of turnover and increased metres sold, fuelled in part by the Spring Sale promotion, which was held in April and May. The Outlet is an important channel for the marketing of discontinued products, obsolete lines and occasional cancelled orders, and promoting batches at reduced prices has several benefits. For Minoli, there’s a cost of disposal which we’d rather not incur and a reduction in waste which could possibly go to landfill. For customers, there are real bargains with which to realise someone’s home improvement dreams or to fulfil a commercial fit-out when more prudent value engineering is required.
In other areas of the business, we have launched a new LinkedIn Newsletter to share topical content with our corporate audiences, continued our association as a Technical Partner of the Pata Prometeon Yamaha World Superbike team, and extended our support of the Henley Festival and RISE Charity as a Corporate Member sponsor.
Also, on April 18th, Lucy Minoli hosted our inaugural ‘Women In Property Design & Development’ event. The team were delighted to welcome some 75 attendees including interior designers and architects, representatives from leading property development and housebuilding firms, as well as commercial and Automotive designers. The event was held at the prestigious Home Grown private members’ club, part of the Home House group, on Great Cumberland Place, Marylebone. Guest speaker at the evening reception, Samantha Day, gave an inspiring presentation on ‘How to be heard – How to communicate’, offering insights into navigating the modern workspace, as a woman in business.
Looking ahead, and with the general election now concluded and a new government in place, it’s perhaps a little more difficult to forecast how the rest of the year will pan out. With Minoli’s obvious links to housebuilding and construction, it was reassuring to hear the Chancellor, Rt Hon Rachel Reeves set out the plan for housebuilding targets and planning reforms in her first speech.
It was also encouraging to see the Chancellor and Deputy Prime Minister, Rt Hon Angela Rayner, on site at the first opportunity on Monday 8th July with Berkeley Group, a very long-standing client of Minoli, demonstrating their commitment to driving growth in the sector.
We’re hopeful that future government policies will continue to focus on managing inflation and reducing interest rates as well, which impact so directly people’s confidence and ability to afford moving or investing in property.
So, whilst there’s inevitably some uncertainty after a general election, but you can be certain of Minoli’s commitment to the things that matter most to our customers.
– Remaining dedicated to the best production partners
– Sourcing the right product mix
– Stocking plentiful quantities of porcelain and ceramic tiles in the UK
– Supplying with our own fleet of purpose-built trucks
– Serving our clients to the best of our abilities
– A continued program of investment through the rest of 2024 and into 2025