Paul Crow, MD of bathroom retail franchise Ripples, explains why he is optimistic about 2025 and why you should be too

It’s hard not to revert to cliches when reviewing 2024, so I will do my best not to describe it like a fair ground ride (as a youngster I was always too scared or small to go on them anyway).

It’s about this time of year that we all turn into mechanical fortune tellers and start offering our insightful predictions for the future in the hope that we will both convince ourselves, others and hopefully our customers that it is going to be great. Let’s see…

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For what it’s worth, I believe 2025 will be a good year.

I believe the country is so used to having a reason to not spend money that we have in fact decided to cope…by spending money.

The reality is, whoever you are and whatever you do, you work to make your life better and that usually means either more joyful or more material things.

Market share focus

Our objective in 2025 remains what it was in 2024, and that is to focus on making our slice of the premium bathroom cake bigger.

If the year ahead brings good economic news, then we will look at icing it too, but for now we will focus on the ingredients required to improve the core areas of our business knowing that it has served us well in the past.

What 2025 will be is a diary full of training. Whether in factories, around the desk or in classrooms, we want to improve our education on all areas of our role and that will include sales, design, product and IT.

All must improve for the simple reason that we know the customer will always be more demanding of us tomorrow than they were today.

This year we were fortunate to see a significant increase of engagement in all our marketing channels and that didn’t happen by accident.

Most people in this country have no idea who we are or what we do and that’s the good news because we see that only as an opportunity.

The more we share our story, the more we can place the outcome of our sales success firmly in the hands of our franchisees and their teams and we are fortunate to have a good track record in that area.

Whatever it brings, I know it will be stressful because what we do is.

It is for this reason that we will also do our best to make sure that it’s fun. I hope it is for you too.

Paul Crow has been named one of the first inductees into the KBB Retail Hall of Fame.