MERCHANT FOCUS
A DIVERSE FAMILY AFFAIR N
A family focused atmosphere and an increasing female workforce continue to define the working culture at Otford Builders Merchants as Catrin Jones finds out.
estled in at the foot of the North Downs, Otford Builders Merchants was founded by a husband and wife duo in 1971 and has since continued to foster the family atmosphere. The independent merchant is now in the hands of son, Blair Sparrow and his sister, who have continued to take the business from strength to strength. The original idea was for a one-stop builders shop in the area just to the north of the affluent town of Sevenoaks. The family business originally being property development, Sparrow says his parents saw an opportunity to use their knowledge and experise in that area and provide somewhere that bricks, blocks and everything else could be accessed at once.
Long-standing managing director Jim Ellis was previously entrusted with the business and pushed it forward for several decades. His expertise was passed down to younger generations and his work in the business has created lasting effects, Sparrow says. “Jim has 30 odd years of specific OBM experience and then we have new, younger members of
22
staff coming in to the merchanting industry and he’s sharing his knowledge with them. Otherwise it gets lost amongst the generations, but Jim is so keen to teach. It’s about putting people back into merchanting and bringing the next generation through”, adds Charlotte Passingham, operations manager. The family atmosphere continues to be adopted through the way OBM chooses to run a collaborative management structure. Omitting a traditional sense of hierarchy in the business opens the structure and removes the linear chain of command. Sparrow and Passingham have, in effect, split the managing director role between them, “I’m chairman and CEO and Charlotte is the operations manager,” Sparrow says. “We have a good structure of senior management who perhaps do more in their individual roles than is expected. We try to empower senior managers to have a greater impact on the business and try to avoid pigeon holing people. We are still in early days though.
“We have branch managers and a financial controller; Charlotte came in to deal with
the processes. Anything that is involved with efficiently managing or generating enquiries and getting them in the pipeline and through the pipeline to the successful delivery to the client. We have a HR manager, it is not simply just HR, it’s much more collaborative. We hold a lot of meetings to discuss and work with one another.”
Passingham adds, “It does seem to work to have different functional responsibility and funnel into shareholders. It is a good structure and there is much less hierarchy. We work in a much more collaborative way because of this.” Interestingly, 44% of OBM employees are female, which compared to the industry average (around 10%) is remarkable. “Of our senior managers, our financial controller, Charlotte and HR manager are all female. We feel we are ahead of the game in terms of gender equality and that stems from being founded by a husband and wife team, my parents”, says Sparrow.
Sparrow says that there is no initiative to concentrate on the demographic instead they ensure that the best person is employed for the job. “There are female members of our workforce who have been with us for a very long time.”
OBM recognises the challenges faced by merchants as newer generations steer towards online purchasing but they appreciate that
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net April 2020
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88
