Count on trade counters

Can it be 30-plus years ago that the industrial/warehouse development sector was raving about a new sub-sector called ‘trade counters’? Now, in 2025, the trade counter market has matured and it’s targeting retail consumers rather than restricting itself to just the ‘professional trades’ audience.

It’s worth recalling where the commercial property market was in the early 1990s when trade counters first emerged. At that time, the commercial property sector was going through economic recession and vacancy rates were at their peak for the period. Scope for development was limited, seeing investors and developers with the opportunity to acquire second hand, light industrial units, refurbish them - providing improved frontages and cladding - and re-present them. In particular, the introduction of glazed frontages was attractive to trade occupiers. The move led to a revolution in the multi-let industrial market - with various national occupiers leading the charge to acquire the best trade counter locations.

As a genre of business property, over time, trade counter operators fell away from the market but then began to make a resurgence as quasi-retail or straight retail use units. This is a trend now fully established and, in the right location, these units are flourishing.

Down the years, trade counters have shifted from just being the front units on multi-let industrial estates to new locations on retail/roadside schemes. Planning emphasis over recent years to provide employment and local retail within residential development schemes has seen trade counter occupiers take units within the employment areas of these developments too.

As a trend, this sees trade counter occupiers sit alongside, or near enough to, large scale housing developments where the target audience is very much the local, independent tradesperson requiring materials for a new bathroom suite, upgrading kitchens or the addition of a conservatory or garden studio.

Invariably, today’s trade counters are often in prominent locations, usually with roadside visibility. While still referring to them as ‘trade counters’, they are very much in retail use and with retail strategies for creating footfall. Along with this sophistication, has come the need for better, higher quality buildings.

Changes in consumer habits and the trade counter operators’ investment in apps and online ordering ‘Click & Collect’ services have helped re-position trade counters as more ‘customer friendly’. Digital advancements have also been in play as modern trade counter operators no longer require really large units. In following the ‘last mile delivery’ model, they, typically, will have a large regional distribution unit to serve their small local ‘trade counter’ units.

Brands such as Howdens, Toolstation and Screwfix have led the way, often preferring roadside locations in sitting comfortably alongside roadside food & beverage occupiers such as Costa Coffee, McDonald’s and Greggs, among others.

This symbiotic positioning of contrasting occupiers is a draw for consumer and trade customers - and it works for the operators too. Peak ‘trade audience’ hours being early morning, when breakfast and the day’s materials can both be obtained from neighbouring units, while just being a few miles from the tradespeople’s work destination. Equally, there’s a hungry and thirsty DIY consumer audience through the day, peaking at the weekends.

In the 1990s, trade counter use - by the definition of the former Town & Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 - was categorised within the former Use Class B that is now deemed to be a sui generis use. In now being sui generis, it is not always plain sailing for trade counters when it comes to applications by operators or developers.

Applicants to local planning authorities need to provide proof to demonstrate impacts on local highways, any potential impact on existing local retail centres and the loss in demand of traditional employment uses and demand for the proposed use - the latter of which is often not fully understood until a formal marketing strategy has been carried out.

In the Cool Britannia period of the trade counter early heydays of the 1990s, units could command a premium rent - often as high as 30%-40%. Today, as the trade counter market moves away from its traditional competition of multi-let industrial estates and competes with retail locations, the measure of a premium has faded.

But, with construction costs dictating the level of return required for investors, the trade counter occupier market has met and embraced this by providing long term commitments and covenant. Indeed, it was these typical lease lengths and covenants that made trade counters such an attractive prospect way back in the 1990s.

Trade counters are well and truly back - albeit in way that has renewed its offer to a new generation of tradespeople and DIY-ers.

This article is reproduced by kind permission of Business Weekly in which a version recently appeared as part of the publication’s monthly ‘’ ‘Scaling up in association with Eddisons’ feature.