Radio Rentals evokes memories of terrible hair cuts, Ford Escorts and episodes of The Sweeney on ailing television sets. However, one of its direct descendants BrightHouse is beginning to recapture the place it lost on the high street through the rise of the likes of Currys, Dixons and Comet and the reduction in the price of TVs.

BrightHouse was spun off from Thorn-EMI, the owner of Radio Rentals, by Terra Firma, Guy Hands’s private equity group. It earned infamy for exorbitant APRs and costly mandatory extra cover. Todaythe chain is on the front foot, working to clean up both its shops and its name as it embarks on a very important growth programme. It plans to open 21 shops next year and estimates that there is enough demand for at least 600.

Only twelve of BrightHouse one hundred and seventy eight shops are in Greater London, but, as Leo McKee, the straight-talking chief executive of the outlet, enjoys saying the high street turns into a very different place when you leave the borders of London behind.

Its prospects, almost exclusively from the lower socioeconomic segments are having problems to get credit – if they ever could – as lenders cut their risk profiles.

“We are targeting areas that [Lloyds] TSB are pulling out of,” Mr McKee explained. The prospect of BrightHouse stepping in to deliver credit to our most deprived communities will not fill everyone with joy. However Brighthouse’s CEO believes that this is an invalid perception.

“When I “began my time at Brighthouse [in 2004], we “requested a “third party “study to examine “the proposition asking: ‘Is it sufficient?’ and: ‘Does it have longevity?’ he stated.

“The results came back: your name on the high street is garbage; you’re seen as a rip-off merchant; the prices were high, the stores shabby.

“The first move I made was to change all the prices to match the high street, on the day I found out [the results].”

The old approach was that as long as customers could afford the payments, they would not pay attention about the total price. And this thinking had knock-on effects right through the business.

That is what Brighthouse are now trying to sort out so their image gets better amongst the general public.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 11:56 am and is filed under Doing Commerce, Marketing, Shopping Center. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.