CDSL

Our once small family business began in 1969 and now caters to hundreds of thousands of customers every month, with an annual turnover of over £106m in 2020, making a considerable contribution to the electrical retailing industry. We started small as an independent retail store selling appliances and appliance parts – since then we have successfully developed into a key industry distributor, offering brilliant service and exclusive links to manufacturers and product ranges.

Our family values and our Birmingham roots are still very important to us and our business has always been defined by the high quality of what we do, the exceptional service we give to our customers, the wide breadth of our product range and the thought we put into our processes. From as early as 1984, we offered a next day delivery service and even before the internet had caught on, our customers could place their orders electronically via an offline ordering CD.

Ever since CDSL was first established, we have continuously questioned how we can improve as a distributor and how we can work as effectively and innovatively as possible. We are very proud of our achievements over the past year and we will continue striving to enhance our services even more in the years to come.

Effective Processes

Through our highly effective processes, we offer a consistent and reliable service:

• We have a Quality Management System which has been independently accredited by the British Standard Institution since 1997. Our ISO9001:2015 and OHSAS 18001:2007 certifications demonstrate the high quality we always strive to maintain across all aspects of our business.
• We offer our customers a live chat service so they can conveniently chat to customer service agents online in real time rather than having to phone or email. This is also more efficient as our agents can help multiple customers at a time.
• We automate our order process using our online ordering site, Connections, and our sophisticated stock management system to help speed up the fulfilment of the 5,100+ orders we receive every day.
• We have updated our website in accordance with our customer feedback to make it easier than ever to navigate on mobile and tablet devices, making the ordering process as simple as it can be.

Order Fulfilment

Our commitment to fulfilling our customers’ orders means we quickly and accurately despatch over 1.3m parcels every year.

• We don’t just sell products, but we also offer other helpful services to support independent businesses. For example, we support with logistics, providing delivery directly to their end-customers.
• We run customer satisfaction surveys very regularly to improve where we can and to be aware of any areas for further development.
• We work with hundreds of leading appliance brands so our customers can shop from a huge product range that is constantly growing.
• On average, we add over 100 new product lines to our range every single day and in 2020 we added over 28,000 new products in total. This ensures that our extensive catalogue of over 2.7m products stays up to date with the appliances and replacement parts that our customers need.
• Our warehouse is consistently over 99% accurate. We believe that every parcel matters so we don’t stop until all of the day’s orders have been fulfilled.

Mutual Benefit of Retailers and Brands

We work closely with manufacturers to promote their product ranges and give our customers access to more products.

• We maintain longstanding close relationships with key manufacturers in our industry. We have an exclusive partnership with Hoover and we are the preferred supplier for spare parts. We also run websites on behalf of many other leading appliance manufacturers, including Whirlpool Group and De’Longhi Group.
• Our close manufacturer relationships let us offer our customers exclusive products from leading brands like Samsung, Melitta and Hisense.
• We support independent retailers in our region and beyond with a variety of services to help increase their sales. These include the provision of in-store displays and marketing materials, which are printed and produced in our local area.
• In recent years we have also worked to expand our company internationally. We sell spare parts straight to appliance owners via French, German, Italian and Spanish websites. In France, we also cater to fellow businesses following a recent acquisition of an established French B2B appliance spare parts distributor, Electromenager Pieces Services.