Editor’s interview Repair and reuse
Blake Green, E&S Services CEO, spoke to IER editor Anjali Sooknanan about the business’ end- to-end solutions for retailers and manufacturers.
Please introduce yourself. My name is Blake Green and I am the CEO at E&S Services. There are two directors above me and we’ve got a team of admin staff and 25 engineers on site. Founded in 2000, we started off doing white good repairs. In 2006, we took on the Nespresso contract and began doing coffee machine repairs. Since then, we’ve continued our work with Nespresso while doing white good repairs. In the back end of last year, we started looking for new work, new tenders, etc.
Can you give us an insight into your offering? We’ve got a few different options but our main area of focus is our return solution. We take in a brand’s returns and repair or refurbish them for parts harvesting. We do have a bespoke system which we’re using with one of our partners at the moment. We will go to the customer’s house through DPD logistics with a dedicated tote box, collect the machine, bring it back to site, fix it within a one-to-three-day SLA and return it back to the customer. We handle everything from organising the pickup, liaising with the customer, updating the repairs, ordering the parts and returning the product. We are essentially a one stop shop for after sales.
Tell us how E&S Services started. I reach out to a lot of brands on LinkedIn to highlight what we do. There are not many businesses in the UK who do what we do and to the level we do it because they don’t have the right infrastructure or setup. Our work started with Lavazza because they
saw we had the right internal processes and we were already working with similar brands. It was also the same with Domestic in General who
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we work very closely with. This gives us a multi- brand feature where we can repair appliances from a variety of brands. Although we might not have the spares for it, we can parts harvest and do our best for insurance companies. With our parts inventory and repair knowledge, we’re essentially a one stop shop for the insurance groups and even the brands.
What are the benefits of your solutions to retailers? Our repair solution provides major benefits to retailers as a lot of companies still swap out machines because they cannot find an affordable option. Whilst most of the products are at quite a low price mark, we find ways to fix them. In addition, if a repair is required, we’ve got the authorisation to use harvested parts off returns. In doing so, retailers do not have to order brand new parts from the manufacturer which is a massive cost-saving within the network.
And what about the benefits to the brands you work with? For the brands, our biggest solution and one that I’m trying to really push is our refurbishment offering. For most brands, if a customer’s product breaks, they will send over a new one. With phone companies, for example, if the customer’s phone breaks and they have insurance, the company is entitled to send over a refurbished product which is almost brand-new. I’m seeing more brands offer the replacement as a refurbishment as opposed to brand-new. It benefits the brand because it avoids putting more new products into circulation. To get their appliances repaired, it generally takes around two to five days, however refurbished products,
which are essentially brand-new, can be with the customer the following day. There are a lot of instances where people will buy returned appliances in bulk. This is absolutely fine however they often refurbish the appliances for their own network and sell them through sites like eBay. This is a hindrance to the brand because it dilutes the market with products that are not in their tracker. If someone buys an espresso machine from eBay, for example, the brand doesn’t know who the buyer is, what they’ve purchased and cannot track their coffee consumption. What’s more, if the product is under a 30 day return back guarantee and the buyer re-registers it, there is no way of tracing the transaction history. The brand could be repairing a machine that has been bought for £15 on eBay because it looks like it is still under the warranty. It is more beneficial to the brand to have the appliance refurbished and re-sold through one of their own channels.
How has E&S Services differentiated itself in such a competitive market? When working with the industry’s leading
Spring 2024
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