A different market
Kingfisher said B&Q’s fast expansion put a strain on management and quality control.
Ian Cheshire, the chief executive of Kingfisher, said the business had become too reliant on apartment design and installations and was not developing other services or product lines.
Cheshire, who led B&Q through one of its greatest periods of growth in the 1990s, said that the dramatic slowdown in the housing market hit sales hard as well.
According to the China Building Decoration Association’s (CBDA) latest statistics, sales in the home improvement and decoration market dropped 30 percent from 2007 to 2008.
Cheshire also said that the reliance on local suppliers to provide staff led to a drop in the quality of customer service and stocking.