MERCHANT FOCUS
masses of plumbing or kitchen and bathroom items, but they are all things that we can offer, not out of stock but through our contacts with suppliers.” Not part of any independent buying group, MST is, however, a member of NMBS and Waters says that its huge catalogue is invaluable in ensuring that the company can offer the widest product offering to customers.
“We can’t offer every
style of brick, for example, nor would we want to. Our bricks are local Sussex bricks from Freshfield Lane that come from just down the road. We would rather go for a local brick because we want to be helping builders and people building houses and extensions locally, with local products and materials.” Tim Waters adds: “We aren’t part of a big buying group because we want to maintain our individuality to make our own decisions. We may not be winning on the massive rebates that you get by being part of the big buying groups but equally, we aren’t beholden to the compliance deals. We want to be different and be able to do our own deals as they suit us. If a customer comes to us and asks whether we can get him X product, ideally our answer will always be yes, we can. We never say no.” Customers for MST are made up pretty much of anyone who needs building materials, whether they be small builders, local developers, jobbing builders or householders. In some cases it’s other merchants who can’t offer their customers the same variety of Timber ranges or choice of milling and sawing options. “Take Firrings, for example,” Alex Waters says. “They are a big product for us; sometimes another merchant’s customer might need a firring to go from 3in down to almost nothing or 5in down to 0.5in. We will stock a fair number of these at set lengths, but when a customer needs something that goes from, for example, 67mm down to 5mm or a 5.5m length, we can cut it, treat it and deliver it to their site on behalf of the other merchant, whether that’s one of the larger nationals or a local independent competitor, who doesn’t have the specialist service that we do. We probably can’t compete with them on standard products on price, but we can offer a faster turnaround on the non-standard options.” Part of the company’s continual development has been investment in new machinery to make this even easier, Alex Waters continues. “Instead of a-high speed, long run processing 100m a minute with semi- automatic handling that takes hours to change profiling, we have a machine that has multiple tooling stacked up within it so the downtime of `switching from one tool to another is five
minutes instead of a couple of hours.” As well as making the offer more flexible for shorter runs, this means the company can now provide all the branches with their core stock ranges more frequently.
“We’re always very keen to ensure that we talk to our customers about why they want the products they are asking us for,” he continues. “Timber is such a versatile material and you can use it in so many different ways for so many uses, but occasionally customers ask for a product just because that’s what they think they need. We spend a lot of time with the staff getting them to talk to the customer so that we really understand what they want out of the transaction. We’d rather do that than have them come in and load up with 20 lengths of 4x2 and head off, if there’s a product that we could offer them that would suit their purpose better.”
Waters points out that this attitude is also about getting the staff to realise that there are added sales to be had and although the company is Mid-Sussex Timber there’s a lot more to it than that. “If a customer comes to us for Timber to buy a shed, we can actually sell them everything from the foundations of that shed all the way up to the roofing, but they may not have known that because they only came in for the Timber.
The right question makes a big difference to the customer in terms of selling them the right things, but they also make the difference to us in terms of maximising the sales opportunities there are.”
That’s why everyone who works at the company takes time to work in every department so that they get a real feel for the business, the products and the customers. Alex Waters says that he started in the mill as a labourer when he joined MST, because that is how best to learn. “We make sure that everyone who works here has that basic grounding and understanding. We try and ensure that everyone in the business looks at the products from the customer’s point of view. We get them to imagine what they would want if they were the customer because that way they can best understand how to service that customer’s needs. “They have to ask, would I accept that? Would I be able to
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net December 2019
sell that? Would that be fit for purpose for me? Everyone when they start, whether it is driving the forklift, serving behind the trade counter, working in the mill, the yard or at another branch, has to do time in each of the areas before they can progress. They need to see how the business operates but they also need to follow the journey of the product so that they know what is reasonable for the customer to ask and what they should expect from us.” For the last five or so years, the company has been driving through investment to ensure that it is ready for change, he continues. “Whatever the customer or the industry demands, we want to be ready to supply it.” That includes new machinery in the mill as well as at least four new forklifts across the company, a new lorry and a new website. It’s always been a transactional website, but now it offers customers real time stock updates, click and collect options from any branch, and any new products put into the business are available to buy on the website from the next day. “We have also been changing the way that we operate as a company, updating the staffing structure and development within the business from appraisals through to leave and pensions.”
Waters says that MST wants to be ready for the changes that the industry is going to require of it. “For example, we would like to get to the stage where we can text our customers to tell them when their delivery will arrive. That’s how the delivery model is moving across all sectors, not just this one. We also want to reduce the use of paper across the business as far as possible. As soon as you print something out these days the customer wants to change it.” He adds that, 90 years old it may be, but the company is definitely a modern timber merchant. “Working off technology based, user friendly interfaces on computer is definitely the future and we have to get the right foundations to be able to offer that because it is what customers will be demanding.” BMJ
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