CEO of award-winning RFK Trevor Scott says 2024 was a year of unforeseen circumstances and unrewarded promises but is bullishly confident for 2025

I think I can honestly say I’ll be glad to see the back of 2024. The trouble is I’ve been saying that about this time of the year since 2020!

But is 2025 going to be the recovery year we all so desperately need? I certainly hope so!

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Apart, perhaps, from the London & Home Counties bubble. I would hazard a guess that most provincial mid-market KBB specialists have been having a tough time of it over the last few years.

I’m not so proud that I don’t mind admitting it has been for us.

For sure we mitigated Covid, put everything in place to survive and did so, but at the end of the day effectively only trading for 18 months out of that 24 has had an impact which we’re still recovering from.

We had, as did most, a boom year following – which was just as well as boy did we need the reserves this built up for us.

Unforeseen circumstances

Did we foresee Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine? No.  Did we foresee the subsequent energy crisis and mega inflation it led to? No.

Did we expect Israel to react to the massacre and hostage taking? Probably not.

Did we expect Labour to win the recent General Election? Well yes but…Did we expect them to drag their collective heels over delivering their first budget in 14 years and for it to be the disaster most pundits agree it has been? Er no.

Thank goodness the Bank of England reduced base rates by a 1/4 point as without that consumer confidence pre-Christmas would’ve been even lower than it already is.

Unrewarded promises

This year has been full of promise. Mostly unrewarded.

Promises of orders and deposits that will be paid that have been very slow to come through.

Promises that projects are on time, when actually many have dragged on or been postponed.

The promise of a good news budget led to consumers sitting on their hands not wanting to part with their cash until they knew what was around the corner.

They know now and have, fortunately, decided it’s not going to get any worse. This is the new norm, so time to get on with it and deposits have started to flow again.

Too late to save this year from being anything better than a tread water year but hey – look on the bright side, we’re still here, unlike the many failures we have seen across the board this year.

Looking ahead

So what does this mean for 2025?

I think bullishly confident about sums it up for us.

We know there’s a lot of pent-up demand for new kitchens (and bathrooms) out there and these projects simply can’t all be put on hold for much longer.

Certainly most of those projects we have already quoted, but are yet to confirm as orders, are still happening and have not been lost to competitors and conversations with these clients suggesting soon, very soon, they’ll be ready to commit.

New enquires have seen a slight increase post budget and interest rate drop, which is a good sign for sure, so our fingers are crossed for a good start to the New Year.

But of course with these fiscal events happening so late in the year they come too late for us to really benefit in the short term, as consumers minds switch off from home improvements to Christmas shopping and planning.

This, of course, makes it all the more important we get our marketing mix right.

Work harder on our digital footprint and focus on targeting our client demographic.

More events in our showrooms to increase consumer engagement and demonstrate our positive outlook for the future to enhance client confidence in us as a supplier for their projects.

We need to all work harder but work smart.

Roll on January 2025 and let’s hope this time next year I’m not starting this conversation with the same opening line as here but with just a year change!