The new head of marketing for Schlüter-Systems is David Naylor (pictured), who brings years of experience in the building industry to the manufacturer of system solutions for the function, protection and decoration of tile and natural stone. David’s most recent position was as Head of Product Management for George Fischer, a plastic pipe systems specialist. 

During his career, David has been involved in developing new innovative products, such as Durapipe PLX+, a fuel station pipe system now distributed worldwide, and George Fischer’s Fuseal, a chemical waste drainage system. Also, during his time at Tremco Illbruck, David launched popular adhesive products such as Shark Bond and PU700.

Heading a team of 5, David explains, “I look forward to making a positive impact here by helping the business grow and expanding the coverage across the industry. I am also enjoying working with my new team, who have been very supportive.  It’s an exciting time to join Schlüter-Systems”.

For further information, call 01530 813396 or visit https://www.schluter.co.uk/

Cyncly, a leading global provider of software and content solutions, today shared its perspective on the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for the home improvement industry.   

To meet consumer needs, every business in the industry – from designers to retailers and manufacturers – is navigating increasing complexity. Customers expect new digital services, including self-service and high levels of customization, as well as a personalized and frictionless buying experience.   

Cyncly has a proven history of building and deploying market-leading intelligent technologies. To support customers with innovative product features, more immersive experiences and augmented data, Cyncly will add the power of artificial intelligence across its solution portfolio, which covers every stage of the consumer value cycle. AI-based solutions will provide consumers access to new services, such as enhanced design inspiration while delivering capabilities for Cyncly customers to gain greater efficiency and higher margins through improved operations.   

“We believe that Cyncly is in a unique position to unlock the power of AI and lead in delivering new sources of value for the Spaces for Living industry,” said David Tombre, CEO.

“AI can open up new ways of interacting with large amounts of data and information to support designers, retailers, dealers and manufacturers. We will harness the power of AI by leveraging our strengths: our unparalleled content and data repository, our deep vertical expertise built over decades, and the innovative capability of our global engineering team. These assets uniquely position Cyncly at the forefront of our industry, enabling our customers to provide consumers with highly personalized, extraordinary experiences.”   

Three principles provide the foundation for Cyncly’s strategy to lead the industry with real market innovation:

The power of AI is unlocked with data 
Training and optimizing AI models is all about the quantity and quality of data available.  Cyncly’s deep repository of content and data, drawn from years of industry-leading service, provides a unique advantage as a foundation for AI-enabled capabilities. 

The power of AI is in specific applications 
The most valuable AI models leverage recent technological advances to create vertical solutions specific to an industry and use case. Cyncly’s engineering capability, its deep industry focus and the digitization of core business processes provide opportunities to train AI models that deliver unique insights and superior outcomes.

The power of AI should be harnessed responsibly 
Bringing AI to life requires the technical ability to deliver and also the values to act responsibly. Cyncly follows the highest standards on safety and security to guide the largest engineering team in the market.  Cyncly’s AI initiatives, in combination with its cloud platform and content lifecycle strategy, will accelerate the digitization of the home improvement market.

Cyncly provides solutions for businesses at each stage of the consumer value cycle – from inspiration, to design and sales, to manufacturing, and ultimately installation. AI will enable new product capabilities, guided customer journeys and augmented manufacturer data to keep consumers at the heart of every home improvement project. 

“Cyncly already leverages intelligent technologies to support room planning through auto design. But we see the power of AI going far beyond efficiency gains within a single tool,” said Hetal Shah, CTO at Cyncly. “Our years-long investment in cloud-based content and our platform approach give us a head-start in bringing use cases to market that deliver unmatched value for our customers.” 

The UK housebuilding sector has experienced a significant setback due to higher mortgage rates, with activity falling at its steepest rate in more than a decade. Development companies expect a market downturn due to the increase in interest rates.

Total housing completions in the financial year just ended were down 3.9% on the previous 12 months. The last six months of 2022 saw Barratt Development complete 6.9% more homes than 2021, but the first six months of 2023, completions were off 12.8% on the same period earlier, now proposing they may build 20% fewer homes. This change is suggesting the rise in interest rates is starting to have an impact on homebuyers, especially first time buyers. 

Clive Holland, presenter at Fix Radio – the UK’s only national radio station dedicated to tradespeople – provides his insight on the current state of the construction industry:

“The government target of 300,000 houses to be built per year, even before COVID was extremely unrealistic for a couple of reasons. After Brexit, a lot of our support teams went back to their own countries; we didn’t have enough people in our industry, and we’re already short of tradespeople as it is. Everybody except for emergency services, and the building industry, believe it or not, and trade-associated trades virtually stopped working during COVID, you know, 80% of the population were furloughed, and so on. So it was always going to be a tricky one to try and get anywhere near that demand of 300,000 houses built. 
 
“Now you’re in a situation where many house builders have mothballed a lot of their sites because they can’t sell them due to rising interest rates. Lots of sites around the country would have been flooded with people buying off-plan without even looking at the house.” 

Whether it be battling against record material and labour prices, a historically small workforce, regulations that stifle the ability for builders to work, as well as being in the grips of a mental health crisis, the construction industry is facing significant obstacles.

The latest PMI Survey revealed that builders attributed this decline to higher borrowing costs and a “subdued” outlook for the housing market. Despite the UK avoiding a recession, as confirmed in the most recent Budget, the construction industry is still significantly hampered by a crippling skills deficit and record material prices. The latest Construction Skills Network report cites that the UK needs an extra 225,000 workers by 2027 to meet construction demand, the equivalent of 45,000 per year. Overwhelming work schedules, material shortages and new directives such as ULEZ have left hundreds of thousands of small businesses – equalling 27% of SMEs in the trade – on the verge of breaking point and collapse, a study from Fix Radio found.

Deposco, the omnichannel fulfilment supply chain solutions platform for brand owners, retailers, ecommerce, and 3PL companies, has signed Easy Bathrooms as a new customer.

Easy Bathrooms is on a steep growth path in the UK. With 135 stores in action today and a further 65 set to open soon, the company needed a fulfilment solution to keep up with its plans for rapid expansion. Deposco’s end-to-end omnichannel planning and fulfilment solution was the perfect fit.

The Deposco solution will help Easy Bathrooms manage its 350,000-square-foot warehouse more efficiently, provide an accurate, real-time view of inventory to quickly satisfy customer orders, and remove a raft of manual processes across the business.

“We chose to work with Deposco because they understand our business and demonstrated the knowledge to support our growth objectives,” said Craig Waddington, founder and CEO of Easy Bathrooms. ”The Deposco solution will give us the control, visibility and accuracy we need to continue to deliver a great customer experience through enabling our warehouse to operate more efficiently. This will free us to focus on growing the Easy Bathrooms retail footprint.”

The roll-out of the Deposco solution at Easy Bathrooms is set to be completed within a 90-day timeframe. Once fully implemented, the Deposco solution is expected to prove to be a vehicle to grow the business and make products available to customers at optimum price and availability levels.

Easy Bathrooms will initially deploy one element of the overall Deposco solution, its Warehouse Management System (WMS), ready for peak season trading later this year. Over the medium term, Easy Bathrooms and Deposco plan to work together to achieve complete inventory visibility and generate management information across the operation before going on to drive further operational benefits.

Longer term, Easy Bathrooms is looking for the Depsoco solution to help them assimilate new stores into their portfolio, expand their product range, and launch new channels to market to better serve new business opportunities.

Will Lovatt, vice president and general manager Europe at Deposco, said: “We are proud to be supporting Easy Bathrooms on their journey to becoming the UK’s premier bathroom retailer. Their energy and drive to deliver fabulous results are well matched to the culture at Deposco. We’re loving the opportunity to innovate together to fulfil orders for a greater number of new Easy Bathrooms customers as effectively as possible..”

More information on Deposco’s end-to-end omnichannel planning and fulfilment solution can be found at www.deposco.com.