IN PERSON BUYING BETTER BENEFITS
Natasha Rose, managing director of the Rose Group, was recently appointed NBG’s CMT chair for General Build. She tells BMJ why.
I
decided to apply to become CMT chair of General Build because I want to buy better and get the best possible deals for all NBG partners. I have a real passion for the category and I’m keen to share ideas to the benefit of everyone. From a personal perspective, I also want to make the most of the NBG network and learn as much as I can from other people and their ways of working. As the new CMT chair for General Build, I am now responsible for chairing meetings, ensuring we discuss all relevant topics and challenges. As independents, we are under increasing pressure from several internal and external factors including the change in customer buying behaviour to always remaining competitive on pricing. That is why I want to continue supporting the team to negotiate new deals and identify new product opportunities.
My passion for the building merchant industry began in 2003, coincidentally the same year NBG formed. I decided to leave London and my career as an actress to return home to Peterborough. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I wanted more structure and stability in my life. I’d become tired of jumping from one role to the next in between acting jobs. I craved routine. I wanted a regular pay check, holidays and to buy my own home. Before I figured out what I actually wanted to do, I began working on the trade counter at Andrews Building Supplies Ltd. I am a very direct person. I like it when people tell it how it is - something that doesn’t occur too often in the acting world - and that’s what I loved about working at Andrews. I enjoyed building relationships with customers and having a laugh over the counter.
Whilst the personal approach was something I really admired about the builders merchant industry, I was shocked to find the company was reliant on a paper system for its orders, deliveries and stocklists. Still in pursuit of a new career, I decided to commit to a one-year project where I would look to computerise the company’s system. After the project was complete, I was asked to cover a maternity leave position in accounts. By this point, it was clear I wasn’t going anywhere. I then began to work in transport, whilst juggling my accounts role. It was at this time I realised that quality customer service is the only thing that would set us apart from merchants. We all have similar products at similar prices. However, offering a first-rate transport system was the key to retaining customers and staying competitive.
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After recruiting a dedicated transport team, I was made financial director as I had a keen interest in strategy and how that impacted the company’s margins. This was eventually followed by my appointment to managing director, a position I have now held for five years. A typical day for me begins at 6.00am. I get
my son ready for school and head into my office located at the Rose Aggregates site where I check in with the bulk aggregate side of the business, we have 13 eight-wheel tippers operating across the Anglian region. This is followed by a check on the Rose Plant Hire business to ensure all the operators are out and things are running smoothly.
It’s at that point I head to my desk, switch my laptop on and try to clear as many emails as possible. I then usually have some NBG business to do, it could be emailing a supplier or attending a review meeting.
As the day continues, I make a point to visit our new on-site café, Rosey Lee. At the Rose Landscapes site, we have 30 to 35 show gardens with an IKEA-style path leading customers around the space. We typically attract end-users to this space as it’s indoors, away from fork lift trucks and lorries. It’s perfect for families with kids. Taking this into consideration, I wanted to enhance the customer experience. When consulting with customers we often offer cups of tea with a slice of cake. So I thought, why not take this a step further and build a café that not only customers, but also staff and the local community can enjoy? As we are based on an industrial estate there wasn’t anywhere nearby to sit down with barista-style coffee and a panini, and we wanted to create a space where people would want to come and enjoy their lunch breaks.
The staff at Rose Landscapes developed the concept for the café and the menu together, our drivers insisted on having sausage rolls on the menu, but I’ve made sure there are still some healthy options available! Rosey Lee has already been popular and we’ve received some amazing feedback from customers, now instead of having their free cup of tea or coffee, they are staying and spending money on lunch. It’s actually been a hit with suppliers too, whenever they come and visit, they ask to have meetings in the café and have started using it to host their own meeting as well. One of the most crucial things when building the café was making sure that it had amazing Wi-Fi for this very reason, we want Rosey Lee to be somewhere that people can come to get some work done and hold meetings. Our next challenge for Rosey Lee is attracting the local community. We’ve already done a leaflet drop and will be putting out loads of social media content to try and invite our neighbours in to visit. Who knows, they might even come for lunch an end up with an impulse purchase or better yet, see the café as a welcoming environment and keep coming back to make considered purchases.
We made the initial decision to open Rosey Lee to give our staff somewhere to relax on their breaks and mix with people from different departments. So, it made sense to hire from within when we were looking for someone to keep the café running. Maggie was one of our cleaners, she came to me when she heard about the café and said that she’d always wanted to have a go at running somewhere like Rosey Lee. We gave her the opportunity to try it and she’s taken to it like a duck to water, she’s running it on her own at the moment, with a little help from the sales department if it gets really busy. I try to pop in every day to see how she’s getting on but she’s doing a fantastic job. We’re all really excited to see what’s next for Rosey Lee.
My big focus for Rose Group is to keep the business moving forward and Rosey Lee is a perfect example of how we’re doing that. I’m so incensed by someone saying, ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it’. It just makes me want to rip their head off. Recruitment is our biggest challenge right now and modernising means offering staff flexible working hours as part our drive to bring more women into the industry. For example, part-time staff who are juggling child care and other responsibilities, can often achieve more because their minds are focussed when they are at work. BMJ
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net August 2019
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