COMMENT AND OPINION | Paul Crow
PAUL CROW OPINION
The Ripples MD reflects on a successful 2023, and how a focus on building relationships with suppliers will pay dividends over the next year and beyond
Why relationships are the key to success
A
round this time, I’m often asked to predict how I think the year will play out. It’s difficult to predict what will happen tomorrow, let
alone the months ahead, so I always provide stock answers and sound like a media trained football player talking about focusing on the next game. Yada yada.
Our simple mantra is to look at how we can help them help us, and how they can help us help them
20
At Ripples, we can only focus on what we can control and work hard at it. We’ve looked at as many ways as we can to work more closely with our supply partners across the industry so that we can improve, as it’s imperative we move forward. Our simple mantra is to look at how we can help them help us, and how they can help us help them. Not a philosophy for the hard- nosed businessperson, but it works for us. Last year, I joined kbbreview managing editor, Andrew Davies, and Tony Robson, director of Day True, on an episode of The kbbreview Podcast to discuss the importance of partnerships. Beyond the theory, I like to believe that we’ve demonstrated Ripples’ - and our industry’s - capabilities to form partnerships well. In 2023, we enjoyed two exclusive factory trips; one to GRAFF in Poland and the other to Keuco in Germany. On both, we laughed, learned and bonded and in both cases, it’s helped sales today and it will tomorrow. Ca’ Pietra joined us for our annual Designer Day and took the time to ask us what products we felt we needed and made sure we knew about the exciting ideas they had coming down the pipeline. It’s nice to be wanted. We’ve attended award ceremonies as guests of our suppliers and, win or lose, celebrated the event for what it was –
a party. We flew to the ISH fair in Frankfurt and enjoyed great hospitality with Hansgrohe, Laufen and others, witnessing their senior management engage with our own enthusiastic senior design team.
Teamwork
It doesn’t end there. Our sales training took place at the Roca Gallery, and we had offers from others like HIB, Geberit and Davroc. I shared my thoughts on service levels at the BMA conference, which were received with a proactive response. Our own annual franchisee conference was attended by Yvonne Orgill, MD of the Unified Water Label, so we could work out how to move forward with the Unified Water Labelling scheme. We cycled from Bath to Edinburgh with Richard Hammerton from Aqata, Mark Dain from Coram and Andy Pullen from Techvision, and raised £25,000 for our charity partner The Cycle in the process. Delia Lakwera, project specification manager, Graff UK and Alan Leach, project sales manager from Hansgrohe UK, brought together architects for well attended CPD events. The icing on the cake was our Christmas party at The Biltmore in London and, as is now tradition, we invited our closest suppliers to join us; on stage with awards, at the table for champagne and on the dance floor for maximum embarrassment.
It’s been 35 years since Ripples opened its doors and each one has been very different. When asked how the year ahead is likely to be, my answer remains “very much the same”.
• February 2024
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