COMPANY FOCUS: AXUS DÉCOR E
stablished in 1974 at a decorator’s merchants in North West London, Axus Décor is continually developing its products with the end-user in mind. Three brothers (Jay, Arun and Surya) began their venture with two shops. From there, they gained insight into the decorating sundries market and decided to launch a range of their own accessories, based on the feedback they were getting from their decorator customers. As a result, Axus Décor was born. They were already setup for national distribution with a brand of coving called Artline Décor, which they were supplying to independent merchants and OLFA, a Japanese range of high-end knives, scrapers and other cutting tools.
This year has seen an expansion for the company, in the form of a new distribution centre opened in early June. “The last ten years have seen the company expand from a small operation to one that is quickly gaining momentum. The original site in Mill Hill has now moved to a 36,000²ft distribution centre in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire. It’s very exciting being part of a company that is looking to future proof the anticipated growth that is expected,” Tom Pinchbeck, national sales manager says.
“Our brands are really gaining momentum and seeing a lot of growth that we are expecting to continue. The owners of the business have taken steps to ensure that we are in the right position to handle the demand, and streamline supply chain movements. “We sell to small independent trade counters right through to large national businesses. We traditionally have sold into decorators’ merchants and in the last five years we have branched out to builders’ merchants, working with some of the larger buying groups and have seen great success in these partnerships.”
Axus Decor also has a market in Ireland with two sales managers focusing primarily on this branch of the business. “Ireland has been a
DECORATING DEVELOPMENTS
Tom Pinchbeck, national sales manager at Axus Décor, talks to Catrin Jones about continually using end-user feedback to stay one step ahead in the market.
massive growth area and we are looking to further expand our personnel. The growth we have gone through internally over the last couple of years has seen investments in our team and a robust structure in Ireland has seen internal growth for the company. Looking to the future we would love to push this further,” Pinchbeck says.
A key focus is using the feedback they gain from customers in the industry and use it to create innovative products with the consumer in mind. “Our brushes are rollers sell well as they bridge affordability and premium quality. We have several unique products in the marketplace, the ‘Flex-e-Bowl’ being one of them. This is an excellent product as once unused filler has hardened, you can crush the bowl which breaks the filler, tip it out and this then enables you to reuse it.”
“Our main competitors have been in the market a lot longer than us, and are well established but we’re a smaller, family-run business that can react quicker with bespoke products that can add value to a merchant’s core offering. We tend to go to our customers for feedback and can then go back and change things if we need to do so. It also provides a bit of healthy competition.” Whilst the company has expanded physically with their new distribution centre, Pinchbeck says there’s been a simultaneous investment in marketing tools and tactics that have helped the business develop their presence offline
and online. “We have recently invested in a CRM system called HubSpot that allows us to use a multitude of marketing campaigns and customer promotions, to name a few. In turn, we see what trends are in the market and identify key areas that are doing well but also the ones that aren’t doing so well. We can then ask ‘why?’ and continually develop our sales team’s strategy,” he says.
A lot of marketing has now made its way to social media and continues to adapt to modern trends. Axus Décor has heavily utilised this, but the company also sees great value in print publications in traditional industries. “Social media has momentum and allows the average tradesmen to have their say, quite vocally. If you are vigilant with social media and address any issues that are flagged up, then it can prove to be a very useful marketing tool, and can help to improve our product offering”
The pandemic has posed issues for many companies and this will continue to affect the industry in numerous ways. Pinchbeck highlights that a key problem at the height of the pandemic were issues in the supply chain and changes in shipping rates. Despite the trials and tribulations of the last year, the company’s management of them has ensured a more stable supply of goods to its customer thank competitors have been able to deliver, and this will only improve further with the opening of the new distribution centre. BMJ
August 2021
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
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