COMMENT


In praise of a real people industry


Fiona Russell-Horne Editor - BMJ


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We know what we are, but know not what we may be.


“ William Shakespeare ” INFO PANEL


Builders Merchants Journal Datateam Business Media London Road


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ABC audited average circulation


July 2016-June 2017: 7,419


his really is a fabulous industry to work in. Let’s face it, how many of us got a job doing something to do with the merchanting industry, on the grounds that we’d do it for a few years and then find something else, only to discover, years later, that we were still here? I’m not the only one, I know. There’s something about this industry that gets under your skin.


It’s the people, certainly, that make this industry so great, though, for me, it’s also about the products and what they do. I don’t know that I could get quite so excited by, say, paperclips, useful though they undoubtedly are. I’ve seen a stapler factory production line, for example, and, interesting though it was, it didn’t grab my imagination the way that a brick factory always does. Bricks: you dig stuff out of the ground, mix it up a bit, shape it, cook it and then build something with it that lasts for hundreds of years. The products we make and sell and write about in this industry are mostly used to build houses, to build homes, to enable other people to build lives.


I’ve always said that one of the reasons this industry is so great is that the very nature of its economics - the way merchants and manufacturers are bought and sold and change hands - means one can never really be sure who is going to end up working for or with whom and that that is why everyone is so nice to each other. Most of the time anyway.


I suppose it was fitting that this thought occurred to me - not for the first time, I hasten to add, at the dinner to celebrate the Builders Merchants Federation’s 110th birthday as a trade association and 40 as the BMF itself.


The BMF has been through its own ups and downs


in that time, mirroring the industry it represents and with 600 plus members, it’s probably as strong now as it has ever been. It’s also probably more vocal and high profile than it has ever been, even though much of the lobbying work goes on behind the scene. Jolly good thing too, as it has also probably never been more needed. An industry that can’t produce a strong trade association to represent its interests to government is not going to get very far in the future. This industry is changing. Fast. Far faster and far more irrevocably than any of us realise I suspect. We have been spending so much time lately worrying about Brexit and what might happen post deal or post no-deal and being busy just getting on with thngs as we have always done that we may have taken our eye of the more worrying, more far- reaching changes that are happening. I don’t think we’re the only industry to do this either. This industry prides itself on being all about people and it is, but we can’t afford to be complacent and think that a focus on customer service, quality products and being lovely and friendly will be enough to stand up to future challenges.


The speed with which Screwfix and Toolstation are galloping ahead with click-and-collect is scary. I reckon most customers who go into a traditional builders merchant trade counter also have a Screwfix or Toolstation catalogue in the van as well and the younger, more savvy ones will have the app on their phones. A builder getting fed up with waiting at a Screwfix trade counter can order via his phone app and jump the queue and get his products loaded up and be back on site before the queue has moved. Customers are changing, their expectations are changing, the industry is changing. We have to react to that now or get left on the shelf.


December 2018 www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net


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