CASE STUDY: NMBS
embroidery and print, merchants can offer personalised garments or tweak products for specific customer requirements. That could mean adding a logo to a jacket or adapting trouser designs to suit a major customer’s specific needs. NMBS’s category manager for workwear, Harry Wood, agrees: “This isn’t just a supply relationship Portwest has with independent merchants, it’s a commercial partnership. It is helping our members bring in new customers, stock new lines and become experts in a wider range of workwear products.”
Material help
EasyLawn has been a member of NMBS for over three years and credits the partnership with helping them source and supply new materials much faster for their customers. When you’re working under open skies, timing is everything. For landscapers, a missed delivery isn’t just a delay; it can mean a cancelled job, a lost client or a full week of earnings washed down the drain thanks to the UK’s weather. The company reengineered its entire delivery operation with one clear aim: to keep its customers moving, no matter what the forecast brings.
Beginning life as a team of landscaping specialists and installers, EasyLawn saw demand increasing for better quality turf and hard landscaping products, and gradually it evolved into a landscaping merchant business. This real-world experience now defines how it serves its customers, ensuring they receive the
quality and quick customer service that is so essential to their trade.
If a customer calls from site needing porcelain paving or bulk aggregates in the next hour, the team responds. Three spare vehicles, an in- house workshop and instant order processing mean most urgent drops can be on their way within the hour.
Every aspect of the EasyLawn logistics process has been engineered to remove friction. On-site diesel storage allows drivers to refuel without leaving the premises, saving valuable time and keeping the fleet moving. Vehicle maintenance is carried out in-house by a dedicated workshop team, reducing the risk of breakdowns and avoiding delays that come with external servicing. The majority of the team are trained HGV drivers, enabling them to assist with deliveries when needed.
Driving innovation
To ensure its customers have the delivery service that they require, EasyLawn developed a bespoke logistics platform, called Lupa, which was built in-house by Levi Arden, the firm’s software developer. The goal was simple: to connect every part of the customer delivery experience, from order placement to final drop-off, in one intuitive system. Lupa will fully automate the creation of delivery routes, a process that can be time-consuming and difficult to optimise manually. By factoring in vehicle type, load weight, location, traffic and delivery window
constraints, Lupa generates more efficient routes than traditional planning methods. The result is a software tool tailored to independent merchant logistics. It maps efficient routes, allocates product space based on size and weight, tracks deliveries live for customers and includes proof-of- delivery records with photos and signatures. The system even alerts the team to special handling needs or timing constraints that could impact each delivery. The team estimates that Lupa’s optimisation is delivering efficiency improvements of up to 30 per cent, helping them maximise fleet performance and respond to customer needs quicker than ever. “We didn’t want generic warehouse logistics software,” Arden explains. “We needed something that understood landscaping materials, that could adjust for different vehicle types, drop times, delivery locations and even the need to crane materials over garden walls. That is why I created Lupa to meet our industry’s specific requirements.” “Lupa has meant that our team don’t need to chase up what’s happening with each order by going in-person to the office anymore,” EasyLawn director, Jamie Arden, explains. “Everyone sees the same real-time delivery information. Drivers know where to be and what’s on board. The yard team know what products they need to prepare, and customers get accurate updates and delivery times.” The business is now preparing to trial Lupa with other merchants, aiming to make it available via subscription in the near future. “It’s built around how real merchant teams actually work. We recruited six people to be our guineapigs and purposefully gave them access to Lupa cold,” he says. “They picked it up straight away, which gave us confidence that it was truly intuitive and could be rolled out to the wider merchanting industry.” With no need for large IT teams or complex training, Lupa has been designed to slot into typical merchant operations, making it a real opportunity for others looking to modernise their own delivery service.
Above: Levi Arden, EasyLawn Care
Dean Hayward, head of sales and marketing at NMBS, sees EasyLawn as a blueprint for where the industry is headed.
“Independent merchants have the agility and insight to do things differently,” Hayward says. “EasyLawn shows what’s possible when you focus on the customer experience, use the tools at your disposal or even create ones if the right solutions aren’t available.” As Jamie Arden says: “People want things now. Our job is to make sure that happens. Between our delivery system and the supplier support from NMBS, we’re making that expectation a reality.” BMJ
April 2026
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