Blinds2go Brand Guidelines: Nottingham’s Online Made-to-Measure Blind Retailer

A Nottingham company that sells blinds made to size online.

Blinds2go is an online retailer of made-to-measure blinds and curtains based in Colwick, Nottingham. On its own website the name is set as “Blinds 2go.” Companies House records the company, Blinds 2 Go Limited, as incorporated in England and Wales on 22 March 2000, with its business classed as retail sale by mail order or over the internet, and the company itself says it has been selling online since 2000.

The model is the opposite of a showroom. In its 2020 report on the online blinds market, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) explained that customers on these websites customise a blind to their own measurements and design choices, which separates them from ready-made blinds sold in standard sizes. The leading online retailers, the CMA said, give limited sales advice before purchase and usually expect customers to fit the blind themselves once it arrives. Competition between them happens mainly online, so the traffic a retailer wins from search, chiefly Google, its place in search rankings and its online advertising matter a great deal.

Blinds2go’s answer to buying without a visit is the sample. The company says it runs a free sample service that lets a customer pick up to ten designs to try at home before ordering, and it offers a measuring guarantee and fitting guides on its help pages. A sister site, Curtains 2go, sells curtains; the CMA’s 2017 decision mentions both the blinds2go and curtains2go websites, citing visitor data that showed shoppers moving between the two.

The range on the website is organised by blind type, by feature, by room and by colour. Roller, Roman, wooden and Venetian blinds sit beside pleated, vertical and panel blinds, and the menus also group no-drill blinds and blinds for tilt-and-turn windows. Curtains are offered by heading type and by named brand, including William Morris, Disney Home and Ideal Home, so the site works as a catalogue as much as a shop.

Hunter Douglas buys in.

The ownership changed in 2016. The CMA’s final report summary of September 2020 records that Hunter Douglas, the Dutch-headquartered window-coverings group, acquired a 60 per cent stake in Blinds2go on 21 June 2016, and a further 5 per cent interest in 2019. The CMA’s 2017 decision on Hunter Douglas’s purchase of Hillarys described the arrangement from the inside: Hunter Douglas sold blinds and shutters at home through its Thomas Sanderson brand and online through its blinds2go website, and blinds2go, then 60 per cent owned by the group, bought from several wholesalers, including suppliers overseas and Arena, the trade arm of Hillarys.

That 2017 decision also named blinds2go as the market leader in the online retail of made-to-measure blinds. Citing an industry report, the CMA listed the largest online specialists as blinds2go, 247 Blinds, Web-Blinds, Blinds UK and Interior Goods Direct, which trades as Blinds Direct. Web-Blinds was the online brand of Hillarys, and when Hunter Douglas completed its purchase of Hillarys in July 2017 the CMA judged that, although blinds2go and Web-Blinds were close competitors, enough other online sellers remained, and it cleared the deal. The CMA’s 2020 report adds that Web-Blinds was later incorporated into Blinds2go.

By 2020 the regulator’s picture of the market was sharper. Its final report described Blinds2go as the largest supplier of made-to-measure blinds online in the UK and several times larger than the second largest. Because competition in this market happens mainly online, the CMA studied search results and found that Blinds2go and 247 were two of only three retailers that consistently ranked highly in Google’s paid search results.

Today the group reaches beyond the UK. The Blinds2go website links to sister sites in Ireland, Australia, Japan and the Netherlands, among others, and to SelectBlinds in the United States and Canada.

How the category presents itself.

Blinds, shutters and awnings are sold on how a room looks once they are up, so the companies that make and sell them lean heavily on room-set photography. A typical product page shows a finished window in a kitchen, bedroom or conservatory, often in several light conditions, before it shows the mechanism. Ranges are usually grouped by blind type, such as roller, Roman, Venetian, pleated or vertical, and then again by room, feature and colour, so the menu itself becomes a kind of style guide.

Fabric is the second language of the category. Retailers publish swatches and sample cards, and many offer free samples by post so that customers can hold a fabric against their own walls and daylight. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority noted in 2017 that most made-to-measure blind and shutter sales involve a visit to the customer’s home, where an adviser brings product books and samples; online sellers instead rely on posted samples and measuring guides.

Shutters and awnings bring their own imagery. Shutter pages tend to dwell on louvres, frames and finishes in painted or natural wood, shown open, half-tilted and closed. Awning makers photograph patio canopies extended over terraces and gardens, with the fabric, frame and arm in view, and often show the same canopy retracted against the wall.

Behind the product pages, most of these companies keep a corporate side: a short history of a founder and a first workshop, a list of the brands a group owns, and notes on where things are made. Ownership in the category often runs through larger groups, so a brand page may sit inside a family of sister names that share factories, suppliers or a parent company.

The regulator and 247 Home Furnishings.

Blinds2go was at the centre of a UK merger inquiry. The CMA found that Hunter Douglas had bought convertible loan notes and certain rights in a rival online seller, 247 Home Furnishings, in 2013, and had acquired all of its shares in a deal completed on 28 February 2019. The CMA opened a merger inquiry in January 2020 and on 1 April 2020 referred both transactions for an in-depth investigation.

Its final report, published in September 2020, concluded that the 2013 transaction had not created a relevant merger situation, but that the 2019 acquisition had resulted, or might be expected to result, in a substantial lessening of competition in the online retail supply of made-to-measure blinds in the UK. The regulator found that Blinds2go and 247 were two of only three online retailers with a market share above 5 per cent and that their combined share was 60 to 70 per cent. As a remedy it required Hunter Douglas to sell 51 per cent of 247, and any buyer had to run the business so that 247 and Blinds2go kept competing. The CMA accepted final undertakings on 7 December 2020; the sale of that stake to Cristobal Consulting completed on 7 July 2021, and the CMA approved the buyer and closed the case on 3 August 2021.

Blinds2go’s owner has itself changed hands. English Wikipedia says Hunter Douglas became 75 per cent owned by the investment firm 3G Capital in February 2022, with the Sonnenberg family keeping the remaining quarter, and that the group bought the US online retailer Select Blinds in October 2023. Companies House lists the company as active, with its registered office still in Colwick.

For a design guide, Blinds2go shows how a blind brand that never visits the house leans on samples, room-by-room menus and search visibility to do the work of a showroom. Compare Hillarys, the home-visit brand in the same group, and 247 Blinds, its rival in the 2020 inquiry. For this guide we use a deep teal, sand and a pale window light with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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