Brighthouse Are up for a Change
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009Radio Rentals evokes memories of terrible hair cuts, Golf GTIs and series of The Sweeney on ailing television sets. However, one of its direct descendants BrightHouse is beginning to claw back the place it lost on the high street with the emergence of shops like Currys, Dixons and Comet and the reduction in the price of TVs.
BrightHouse was created out of Thorn-EMI, the owner of Radio Rentals, by Terra Firma, Guy Hands’s private equity group. It gained infamy for very high APRs and costly mandatory extra cover. Todaythe retailer is on the front foot, attempting to clean up both its stores and its reputation as it embarks on a very ambitious growth programme. It plans to inaugurate 21 outlets next year and calculates that there is room for at least 600.
Only a dozen of BrightHouse 178 brances are in Greater London, but, as Leo McKee, the straight-talking chief executive of the chain, states the high street turns into a very different place beyond the M25.
Its clients, almost solely from the lower socioeconomic classes are having problems to get credit – if they ever could – as lenders cut their risk profiles.
“We are targeting areas that [Lloyds] TSB are moving away from,” Mr McKee stated. The prospect of BrightHouse stepping in to deliver credit to our less wealthy communities will not satisfy everyone. Nevertheless Mr. McKee believes that this is an old perception.
“When I “took over [in 2004], we “requested a “external “study to examine “the offering asking: ‘Is it sufficient?’ and: ‘Does it have longevity?’ he explained.
“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 thing I did 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 installment, they would not care about the final price. And this thinking had knock-on effects right through the business.
That is what Brighthouse are now trying to solve so their image gets better amongst the general public.

