Reply No. 208
THS – DJ Evans (Bury) Ltd – Serving East Anglia and Beyond
Situated on a quiet lane just on the boundaries of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, and with a branch in Ipswich, D J Evans Ltd is ideally placed to serve the whole of East Anglia, and in fact serves just about anywhere else in the UK. The business has a long history, starting in 1911 as a supplier and distributor of oil and light manufacturing goods to the agricultural industry.
By diversifying into machine spares in the 1920s the business was further extended. After the war and the death of his father in 1948, a young and newly demobbed David Evans diversified still further into industrial fasteners and transmission equipment. Fasteners became a mainstay of the business, with sound trading relationships built with companies such as GKN and Charles Wednesbury. In more recent times, further diversification into hand and power tools and consumables for the engineering and building industries reflects the need to move with the times. DJ Evans has become a one-stop-shop for just about anyone from the DIYer to the high tech engineering companies , including woodworkers
and local & national builders. Add to that a growing amount of internet business and the picture is complete.
The company has deliberately sought out a wider customer base as various other competitor outlets nearby have changed or closed down for various reasons. This has meant expanding the range of lines on sale – and D J Evans prides itself on having odd items in stock – for example a five foot Stilson wrench or two. Unexpectedly, the wider range of fixings that has been available at the shop has led to a bigger market for various kinds of tools as well. The staff at DJ Evans definitely don’t comply with the “old people in brown coats” image of hardware retailing. The atmosphere of the shop and counters is open and friendly, with a mix of male and female staff dressed in personalized DJ Evans livery. Service is quick and efficient, with staff expected to have a good knowledge of the whys and whereabouts of the approximately 42,000 items in stock. It seems that D J Evans can rely on its employees – some of its old hands have been with the company for over 40 years. However, with an eye on the future, new talent has been employed, and new ideas are being instilled too. New colleagues are encouraged to attend day release courses in retail and business at a local college, but generally counter staff have a background in various trades and are therefore practical and knowledgeable when offering advice to customers. Trade reps are also encouraged to train staff in the various new products that are stocked, and a dedicated area is set aside for this.
Helping to manage all the thousands of items of stock is a dedicated IT system that has been built and personalized since 1989. The company has had a mainframe IBM server with an integrated package that manages stock control, orders sales processing and purchasing. Since the system is very well embedded and quite tailored to suit the needs of the company, it has to be kept up to date. But as Roger Ling says, finding and maintaining a good system is very difficult, particularly in the fasteners trade where there are many thousands of small and very similar items to keep track of.
The next big challenge for the management is to adapt the system or adopt another one to help manage the increasing trade that D J Evans now does on the internet. It is expected that this business will be at least 25% of sales soon, and the company is tailoring, adapting and diversifying in its traditional way to maximize this revenue stream. Roger Ling (Manager) and Richard Evans (Managing Director) welcome new products because they are a way to ensure that the future is looked after because customers do seem to pick up on new techniques and tools very quickly. Trade and tool reps are encouraged, many of them having long relationships with the company, to bring in new lines of products. The staff are encouraged to reflect and feed back on these products in an informal way so that they can judge just how worthy of being stocked they are.
Senior staff do attend a variety of toolshows like the THS show, Curtis Hall show and Totally Tools as part of
12 ToolBUSINESS+HIRE
www.toolbusiness.co.uk
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