Further growth for shower enclosure specialist Lakes Bathrooms has seen the company nearly double its storage facility space, just two years after moving to significantly larger premises. With a whole new mezzanine floor added to their warehouse, space at the company’s UK headquarters expands to a mighty 120,000 square feet.
This expansion is due to continued market success for Lakes Bathrooms, plus, it says, to accommodate several new product lines due for launch later this year.
Sales and marketing director, Clive Organ said:
“We could be accused of being under ambitious when we moved to much larger, 60,000 square foot premises in 2012,”
“But we never dreamt then that in such a short space of time we would have demand for the colossal volume of stock we now need to hold in order to satisfy market demand and maintain our 24/48 hour delivery service across the UK to retailers and wholesalers. It’s a nice problem to have, but means that we have to develop the site to cope with our own success.”
The company’s three acre site near the M5, in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, doubled its previous space and consolidated four factory units into one two-storey building with mixed office and warehouse space. Capital investment there continues as work starts to replace the entire 60,000 square foot roof. Whilst this work is underway some stock will be moved off site to one of the company’s legacy warehouses to ensure continuity of availability.
Clive Organ went on to say:
“In the last twelve months we have introduced a new semi-frameless range to our popular 8mm Coastline Collection, added new bath screens to the Classic Collection and expanded other ranges within the portfolio. This means we already have 40 different product lines in stock, with the range of sizes making for over 160 variants,”
“We must now prepare to house stock not only to service this, but to support major product launches due to be unveiled in the coming months, in order to be ready for the demand that they create,”
According to Lakes Bathrooms, the company now holds around 20,000 pieces of stock to provide a minimum of eight weeks-worth of product to fulfil demand, with the fastest moving lines stocked to even higher levels. From its headquarters, the company operates its own fleet of 15 delivery vehicles, despatching daily to over 150 different locations, nationwide.