COVID-19 has affected different retail sectors in different ways and DIY is perhaps one of the more resilient non-food sectors, given that people spending more time at home will have wanted to make their home and garden as pleasant as possible and as suited to their needs as possible, eg remote working. Eight in ten French and Spanish as well as almost nine in ten Italians think that doing DIY projects is a good way to fill time. What’s more between 76% and 81% of consumers across Europe say that they value their home more. On top of this, restricted budgets as a result of the impact of COVID-19 on the economy and employment have made doing it yourself rather than paying someone else more of a necessity.

DIY retailers were identified as essential retail in a number of countries and although many closed temporarily during lockdown they were able to reopen well before other non-essential retailers and they also found ways to operate online before reopening their stores. The pandemic brought new opportunities for those players with a strong online proposition and they may benefit from a rise in demand for light DIY and gardening products. In-store advice has a high perceived value for customers but the current situation requires new thinking about how to tailor that to the new normal.

This report series covers the DIY market in four large Western European countries – the UK, France, Italy and Spain.

• The impact of COVID-19 on consumer behaviour and the DIY retailing market

• How the market will fare post-COVID-19

• The performance of the major retailers in 2020

• DIY shopping behaviours and attitudes to home improvement innovations.

This report covers the DIY market with a focus on DIY specialists, including high street and out-of-town operators. The report does not cover non-specialists, such as hypermarkets, in detail although these are looked at briefly in the consumer research sections.

The report combines analysis of the market, including market sizes, specialists’ sales and forecasts, along with our in-depth consumer data, which analyses shoppers’ behaviour.

Our exclusive consumer research spans all five countries. In each of these markets, we asked consumers:

• Which retailers or type of retailer had been used to buy DIY and home maintenance/improvement goods in the past 12 months, both in-store and online

• COVID-19-related attitudes and behaviours in DIY

• Levels of interest in DIY innovations.

These questions were asked in all countries but the research for the UK looked at these issues in greater depth.

The main focus of this report is the DIY superstores. The format is dominant across the sector, from the large warehouse stores in Germany to the smaller DIY superstores common in Southern Europe.

There are two ways of looking at the size of the DIY sector – sales by specialist retailers or spending on DIY products.

• Sales by specialist DIY retailers – data on the DIY sector is available for most countries. In others it is included within the household goods sector.

• Spending on DIY products: For this Mintel puts together a market size based on the main products sold in DIY superstores. These fall into a number of categories in the figures from the national statistics offices. We broadly take a percentage of each of the categories according to the proportion of spending in that category that we estimate will be of DIY/gardening-related products, as shown in the table below. However, where we feel this is too mechanistic an approach we may tweak some figures according to the market we are looking at.

The main categories are:

• Coicop 4.3 - “Maintenance and repair of the dwelling” - this includes services. We take 50% as an approximation of the materials element

• Coicop 5.1 – “Furniture and furnishings, carpets and other floor coverings” - we include smooth floorcoverings, flat pack furniture and lighting

• Coicop 5.3 – “Household appliances” - we include small electricals. DIY store sales of large domestic appliances are fairly small

• Coicop 5.5 – “Tools and equipment for house and garden” – we include all products in this category

• Coicop 9.3. – “Other recreational items and equipment, gardens and pets” – we include products relating to gardening, plants and flowers, but exclude cut flowers.

The proportions of each category used to estimate the total market size for DIY retailing are:

Financial definitions used are:

• Sales: turnover as reported by the company, excluding VAT

• Operating profits: the return made on trading. This is the profit after depreciation, but before finance charges, tax, amortisation and any exceptional items, such as property profits or impairment charges

• Pre-tax profits: profit after all charges, including exceptional charges but before tax

• Operating margin: operating profits as a percentage of sales

• Pre-tax margin: pre-tax profits as a percentage of sales.