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B&Q readies for spring clean DIY drive

By Neil Craven for The Mail on Sunday
Updated: 13:53 EDT, 9 April 2011

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Britain's biggest home improvement retailer is preparing to launch a massive plan to educate the DIY illiterate and boost sales over the forthcoming two double bank holiday weekends.

On location: TV's Kirstie Allsopp is backing the campaign

Spring bank holidays are traditionally a popular time for DIY and this year the four days of Easter will be followed a week later by the four-day break for the Royal Wedding and May Day.

From next week the chain will offer weekend DIY classes in all of its stores to encourage customers to learn tiling, wallpapering, gardening and other skills it believes are being forgotten.

UK chief executive Euan Sutherland said: 'I'm less able to do DIY than my father or my grandfather and I think other people are too.'

B&Q also hopes to encourage shoppers to continue spending as they feel they are less able to afford to 'get someone in' for odd jobs.

The retailer has mapped out lessons for the next six months, though it plans to continue indefinitely beyond that.

B&Q has also drafted in George Clarke from Channel 4's Restoration Man to help with the advertising push, along with TV's Alan Titchmarsh and Kirstie Allsopp.

Profits warnings jump as retailers suffer

The number of companies predicting lower profits has jumped in the first quarter of this year, taking the number of warnings to a two-year high.

Research by accountant Ernst & Young showed that there were 75 profit warnings from listed companies in the first three months of 2011, up from just 51 in the fourth quarter of 2010.

These are the highest figures since the first quarter of 2009, in the middle of the recession, which saw 117 warnings. Retailers issued as many as 14 warnings, but even that figure fails to include store groups that issued warnings this month.

In the past week alone, Halfords, Carpetright and HMV warned of lower than expected earnings.

Support service firms, heavily reliant on Government spending, were responsible for 12 profit downgrades.

A quarter of companies blamed increasing costs and pricing pressures.

• FEARS of a 'lost generation' of jobless young are set to be stoked by labour market figures due on Wednesday.

The last official data showed 760,000 18 to 24-year-olds without a job, a record unemployment rate in that age group of 18.3%, which is more than double the average of eight% across all age groups.

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