BMJ
BUILDERS MERCHANTS JOURNAL
Partner Focus: latest recruit
Partnering up: a good decision for Condells
How is NBG membership working out for one of the group’s latest Partners? S
urrey-based Condells, a timber and builders merchant with two branches in Sutton joined NBG earlier this year.
Managing director Jim McMeckan is delighted that the company has joined NBG, seeing more benefits than he imagined, more or less from the get-go. “We had been trading very successfully for ten years, but we realised that the best way forward for the business was to join a buying group. This would improve the prices we could achieve and would also enable us to streamline and develop our own buying processes,” he says. “After looking around for a while we
realised that NBG was the best fit by far with the Condells business. Not only because we felt that they might offer the best deals on the products that we sell the most, but also because we could bring something to the party and get involved on improving this further. It’s a mutually beneficial partnership. “To be honest, I wasn’t at all sure about the whole thing in the beginning,” he says. “I had resisted the idea for ages because, quite frankly I believed that I was the best buyer for my business. A typical owner-director attitude really. However, more and more people said to me that I really should consider it. Plus, a good friend went to work for a merchants in the West Country and he said that I really should join one because otherwise I would be missing a real trick.” McMeckan did his research and says that he picked NBG because he believed they would be the most suitable fit for the sort of business that Condells is and hopes to become. “I liked the dynamism of the group, I felt they would be of most use to me in my business, now and in the future,” he says.
Business benefits
The benefits so far have been a big increase in profits because, despite his misgivings, the deals are, for the most part, an improvement on what had been struck before. “There’s a lot more as well though,” he explains. “When I stated the business in 2006, it was just me running it. I set up every single buying deal that we had. I would strike the deal and then have to get the account up and
BMJ January 2017 Building our Brands
We can compete on a more level playing field with national merchants as a result of buying better.”
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running. Obviously, doing that with lots of different suppliers takes up a huge amount of time, time that you also have to spend trying to run the business as well, trading and manning the phones. “So, yes, the deals are good for our business, but so much more beneficial is the fact that there are 200-300 buying deals already set up and ready to go. Just the pure fact that we haven’t had to set them up has been a real benefit.” Another bonus to Condells is the availability of technology to help run the business more efficiently, McMeckan says. “We use the NBG Hub a lot, which is great because there is so much valuable information there, but also password-protected restricted access, so you can allow people to see some bits of information but not, say, the rebates. For example, someone in the office might ask ‘where do I get this particular piece of information’. So you would have to get off the phone or stop what you are doing and go and help them find whatever it is they are looking for. Now, I can just tell them that it’s there on the NBG Hub and they can go and get it for themselves.” Personal benefits have also included
a freeing up of McMeckan’s time, he says. “Membership of NBG has allowed me the time to be more useful to my business. As I’m no longer having to do everything, I can focus on sales rather than spending time with reps setting
up individual deals. It also gives us access to manufacturers and suppliers who probably wouldn’t have dealt with us as a stand-alone independent - for understandable business reasons - but who will be prepared to set up an account as we are part of the bigger group. So it gives us a bit more visibility. “We’ve also been able to go back to customers and say come and revisit us because we are part pf NBG. I think that’s a good selling point – a bit like the Euronics in the domestic white goods market. So it’s a great way of getting our customers to buy more products off us than they used to because can say that we are part of a bigger group,” he says.
Broader stock profile “We’d like to think that once they give us a try and find that, because we are buying better, they can buy better, they will use us for a broader slice of their business. Another benefit that membership has brought us”.
Condells started off as more of an agent with a phone line and an office. It then gradually expanded to one premises – in the middle of the recession, on the grounds, McMeckan says, that if he could make it work then, then he could make it work full stop. It then expanded into a second unit. “We started out selling timber then branched into heavy building materials, insulation and dry lining, plus a lot of windows and lintels.”
Although based in Sutton, the company will distribute some materials across the UK, although on more of a day-to-day basis, the London branch will deliver to London and the Home Counties. “We are in Guildford one day and East London the next. Brighton, maybe, and towards the coast. If there’s enough money in the order we’ll get there. And the NBG membership has been one of the things that’s enabled us to do that.”
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