MERCHANT FOCUS: FRANK KEY
A NEW DAY (BROOK) HAS BEGUN
The flagship branch of Nottingham independent merchant Frank Key has had a serious glow-up. Fiona Russell Horne went for a poke around.
R
unning a well-established city-centre merchant branch can be both a blessing and a curse. One the one hand, there are plenty of chimney pots, and chimney pots equals customers. On the other hand, there is generally not much room for expansion.
That’s exactly the situation that Frank Key, the family-owned Nottingham independent builder’s merchant found itself in. The flagship Daybrook branch on Mansfield Road in the north of the city just has too much Nottingham around it for expansion to work. “You would never be able to build something like Daybrook now, a four-acre site, this close to the city centre,” says managing director James Norton.
Occupying the same site since 1951, the company has grown over the years, having begun operating from two terraced houses and a yard, gradually expanding by acquiring
every parcel of land around the central point that it could. The consequence, however, was a site that didn’t always feel as though it fitted together.
Norton points out that there are advantages to that, of course. “The service yard is right at the back so deliveries and customers are separated. That’s a huge advantage, plus we have great exposure along one of the major routes in and out of the city, with multiple entrances. Yet what we ended up with was two trade counters, one of them in an old terraced house, and something of a rabbit warren once you got in. It meant that a dozen customers in the yard made the place feel very busy and cramped.”
Customers noticed, too. Research told Frank Key that many felt they couldn’t get in and out easily, that it didn’t always feel safe with all the vans everywhere, and, the killer blow, they could never find anything easily.
Former boxer Carl Froch MBE is a regular Daybrook customer
Norton says: “We were definitely operating in the era where a customer would walk up to the counter with a piece of paper in their hands, ask for what they wanted and someone would go and get it for them. That’s the level of customer service that Bob Sansom, Frank Key’s chairman, built the business around.”
Covid catalyst
Times change, however, customers change and, with them, their preferences. “Covid, obviously was a real catalyst, and it forced us to rethink how we do business,” he continues. “Not every customer wants to operate the old-school way. For many of the younger ones the thought of being greeted and interacted with is terrifying. Every few years we see more of our customers drop off, who is replacing them? A lot of those replacements are cash-customers. The days of them all being trade account customers coming in four times a week with two deliveries to site are
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www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net August 2025
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