5 minute read
Big Interview
OUTDOOR LEISURE COMPANY DESIGNED TO WEATHER THE WORST OF STORMS
OLPRO 2020 was the handle Outdoor Leisure Products had given the three-year development plan designed to expand both the company on the ground and its market share.
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BY HELEN COMPSON
While even the most prescient of entrepreneurs couldn’t have forecast the actual events of 2020, Daniel Walton, for one, had reason to be thankful he’d put his award-winning company on the best footing possible to cope with the rollercoaster ride that was about to ensue. “It’s been insane!” he said. “As it turned out, we had an incredible year last year – we were around 60% up on 2019. “We had worked on our business development plan for about three years and put in place a lot of measures to make sure we’d have a decent year, but then, well …” Daniel spent the first fortnight of the first lockdown watching the sales of OLPRO’s tents, awnings, outdoor furniture, clothing and accessories “drop off a cliff”. However, he soon realised that even though people weren’t buying, they were there, online, and visiting the website in unprecedented numbers. Those measures he’d put in place – the appointment of a Marketing Manager, the expansion of the sales force and the improvement of the online customer service platform - suddenly came into their own. The team swung into action. “Yes, more people were online, but they were buying less, much less,” he said, “so we put stuff up to capture their interest. “We started talking about garden camping, for example, and how to use the space they did have access to. It was very much in keeping with ‘be safe, don’t go out’, while making the most of what they had. “Luckily March and April were unusually warm and very quickly we started selling huge volumes of products – in one week, we sold 3000 windbreaks alone.” OLPRO did a roaring trade over the summer, thanks to the renaissance of staycations, and by August had sold out of the stock it had ordered in for the whole year. Daniel said: “We understood we were in the middle of Armageddon, we realised people wanted to get outdoors, and we had the products they needed. That was our sweet spot!” Because the company sells products that people use mostly in the summer, the team devotes the winter months to pre-sales, encouraging customers to get ready for the following spring by ordering from OLPRO’S select new line while they can. In the winter of 2019/20, the team took 100 pre-orders for the new season of tents. This winter, they took 2000. “I am looking at the targets I’d set for the months ahead and we’ve already met them, before we’ve even received this year’s stock,” he said. Daniel started the business in 2011 after having spent 15 years working for the likes of lastminute.com and Towsure. With the
one, he focused on selling holidays abroad and the other, persuading people to stay in the UK in a caravan, he says wryly. “I’ve worked for a number of outdoor leisure companies, selling camping gear or caravans, and in my last job I was Sales Director for a company in Birmingham, but I wanted to go off and create something different – something that stood out. “A lot of the stuff I’d sold previously was really dull and boring. I thought, people can’t be happy with this; they are just buying it because that’s all there is. “Stand-out, that’s what we try to do at OLPRO. I want people to feel proud of the kit they own, and I want to feel proud to have sold it to them.” In the past decade, Daniel has gone from being a one-man band to having a 14-strong team. By the end of the current five-year business plan, in 2025, he aims to have 35 members of staff. He is always watching and anticipating - analysing trends and looking to the future. But if there is one thing 2020 has taught him, despite the bonanza OLPRO enjoyed, that is no entrepreneur can afford to be blasé. “I am very aware that we are currently reaping the benefits of people being unable to go abroad,” he said. “Come next year, when they can go back to Spain and Greece again, will these times have built a fresh appreciation and love of camping here in our own countryside? “And will we have done enough to retain customer loyalty and to encourage them to keep going away for a week’s camping in the UK each year?” Daniel and his team are working hard to make sure, hand on heart, they can answer yes to at least the latter. The comprehensive customer service platform and its chat facility, introduced in 2019, is capable of answering enquiries out of hours as well as during the working day. It helps customers choose the right kit to begin with. And then the quality of the OLPRO products does the rest, said Daniel. “There’s lots of cheap gear out there and people will go away with it and have a bad experience. I think it’s our responsibility to give people a good experience. “It’s easy to make hay while the sun shines, but that won’t sustain a business through the down times and it’s not our approach.” One new trend Daniel thinks is here to stay is the rise of the campervan. OLPRO now retails a line of awnings tailored to fit. Meanwhile, its Loan and Go scheme has been launched with the infrequent/ sporadic – or perhaps just uncertain - camper in mind. The gear the customer has chosen to rent is delivered a couple of days in advance of their trip and off they go. If they subsequently decide they would indeed like to buy it, they simply pay the difference between the rental and purchase prices. Otherwise, they just post the kit back to OLPRO. Daniel said: “We sell a lot of tents to people in places such as London, where they maybe live in a small apartment with little storage space, but want the kit to go to a festival. “This way, we aren’t selling tents that are just going to sit on shelves for years when they could be used and used.” The idea for Loan and Go had come from talking to customers and understanding that a lot of people looking for a tent might only go camping once or twice a year. Daniel applies the same common sense approach – acknowledging reality – while writing a business plan. It is future-proofing at its best.
