BUSINESS HELPDESK A FRAMEWORK, NOT A PRESCRIPTION
Fiona Russell Horne sat down with Tom Diplock, partner at LEK Consulting, to unpack the thinking behind the BMF’s Branch of the Future Report.
Fiona Russell Horne: How did LEK become involved with the ‘Branch of the Future’? TD: I’ve known John Newcomb at the BMF for a long time, and a few years ago I spoke at one of their conferences. The genesis of the project came through one of the BMF forums. There was a widespread recognition that the sector is facing substantial shift, in customer expectations, in available technology, in operational requirements.
The BMF wanted to anchor a conversation around what the builder’s merchant branch of the future should become. Not a theoretical exercise, but a practical one: What will be required of merchants in the next few years? What opportunities exist to do things differently? That was the context in which we began: identifying the challenges, mapping the opportunities, and creating a framework for thinking about where the sector is heading.
FRH: So, it was designed more as a tool to stimulate thinking? TD: Exactly. It’s not intended to be a comprehensive survey of the entire sector. Its purpose is to identify opportunities, showcase examples, and give the industry a structure through which to think about change. We wanted it to be practical, and grounded in real examples of things merchants are already doing differently today.
theoretical document would have been easier to produce, but it wouldn’t have been as useful. The examples give it weight, and make it real. You can read the first few pages for the big picture and then dip into the sections that matter most to you.
Above: Tom Diplock, partner at LEK Consulting
The BMF was instrumental in helping us find these cases. We also drew on our own work in the UK and internationally, and on parallels from adjacent sectors, cautiously, because builders merchants are not retailers, and many bridle at the comparison. But certain lessons around personalisation, digital tools, range extension or customer experience are applicable with adaptation.
FRH: When you conducted visits and interviews, how did you choose who to speak with? TD: We approached the research with a deliberately open mind. Many businesses are doing interesting work; some shout about it more than others. We fully expect there are pockets of innovation we didn’t capture. It’s not meant to catalogue every initiative nationwide. We hope the report becomes the starting point for conversations, not the final word.
FRH: Do you see the report as more flexible than prescrptive? TD: Absolutely. Striking the balance was difficult, because all the examples we use are real, and all are happening somewhere in the sector today. But that doesn’t mean every branch should or could adopt all of them. It’s a framework, more of a set of ideas, principles and practical examples. Some elements will eventually become universal. Others will apply only in certain businesses or locations. Some may never be right for a particular merchant. It’s more like a cookbook than a single recipe. Each merchant has different priorities, customer bases, operational constraints and starting points. The report gives them the ingredients, not the instructions to make a single dish. We debated breadth vs. depth endlessly. A shorter, more
Month 2018
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net December 2025
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FRH: Seeing an example in action makes all the difference. Did that influence your approach? TD: Completely. This is a relationship-driven industry. People like talking about what they’ve implemented, and they like seeing things firsthand. If we highlight something Bradfords does, for instance, it’s likely someone will call them up and say, “Can I come and see this?” That’s a positive outcome. The report is meant to spark those interactions and offer inspiration rather than instructions.
FRH: How did you identify what customers want from merchants in the future? TD: We relied heavily on empirical data. LEK runs an annual tradesperson and contractor survey across major European markets, including the UK, with 1,000 respondents each year. That includes data pre- and post-Covid. There are also valuable sources within the industry, for instance, the Jewson Trade Trends reports and other merchant publications. It’s true that segmenting customers into “older” and “younger” tradespeople is reductive, because there’s variation in every group. But the directional shifts are clear. If they can research, buy and receive products in frictionless ways as consumers, they expect the same in their day-to-day trade lives.
FRH: How do you reconcile the push to digital with the importance of physical branches? TD: For merchants, branches serve crucial functions: product fulfilment, speed, advice, and customer relationships. Nothing in the report suggests an imminent shift to an all-e-commerce model. Instead, it’s about using technology to enhance the branch experience,
for example, giving staff tools that make customer service better, faster and more informed.
FRH: Were there any surprises? TD: Yes. One was the degree to which technology has already been adopted across the sector. Many UK merchants are further along than we expected, particularly around tools such as dropship models via Virtualstock, or e-commerce functionality more generally. The digital and customer-facing innovations were both more numerous, and more advanced than we had assumed.
FRH: How different do you think the report might have looked without Covid? TD: It’s a fascinating question, and impossible to answer definitively. Covid was an accelerant rather than a creator of trends. Our long- running survey tracks preferences for collection vs. delivery and online vs. offline ordering.
Covid changed behaviours, but it also changed expectations. And companies like Screwfix and Toolstation have set a benchmark. When a customer can switch queues at Screwfix by ordering on their phone, it influences what they expect elsewhere.
FRH: Some things in the report are not new ideas. Might this prompt a renewed look at abandoned ideas? TD: I hope so. There is, as they say, nothing new under the sun. Steve, who wrote the report, pulled out examples of “branch of the future” thinking from the 1980s. The shapes aren’t dramatically different; the technology is. The core mission remains unchanged: meet customer needs in the most efficient, effective and safe way possible.
Many ideas that didn’t take hold 10 or 20 years ago may now be viable because the technology, cost base or customer expectations have caught up. If the report nudges merchants to revisit ideas that weren’t right then but might be right now, that’s a real win. It’s a set of opportunities. And every merchant will build their version of it differently. BMJ
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