Member Article

£1m investment at Doncaster bathroom retailer: 135 jobs

A Doncaster-based online luxury bathroom retailer is planning to expand with nine new websites to cater for international demand.

Designer Bathroom Concepts plans to invest over £1m in the sites, that are estimated to create around 135 jobs across marketing, sales and web development roles.

Managing director, Russell Ward, spotted the opportunity to take a market share as he noticed competitors turning over between £10m-£20m a year. To date, Russell has private funded the idea.

The company say they want to remain in their current location near Robin Hood Airport in order to capitalise on transport links, essential for upholding links with their European manufacturers.

Russell explained: “We’re based on the enterprise zone of Robin Hood Airport, which gives us exceptional rail, road and airport links that we need in order to retain the personal connection with our suppliers and clients – something we pride ourselves on. Equally, it links us with some innovative new brands in Europe as well as those we have exclusivity for within the UK.

“What’s more, being Yorkshire born-and-bred I value the work ethic within this region and feel there is a lot of overlooked talent here. Many specialist roles are sought after in busier cities or the capital itself so a lot of people within this region don’t get the opportunities they deserve.

“Within our current team we have marketing and sales experts, industry professionals, a web development management team and SEO/copywriting specialists. All of whom have worked tirelessly to create the website as you see it today.

“Each team member has a fresh perspective on the company and with the combined UK industry turnover being as large as it is we have a huge amount of scope to unleash these creative ideas and concepts.

“As the business continues to grow we will create more employment opportunities with the aim to triple the amount of staff by early 2014 as we enter the European market. Our current statistics indicate that by September we can be expecting approximately 30,000 UK visitors to the site per month.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .