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MERCHANT FOCUS: HOWARTH TIMBER AND BUILDING SUPPLIES


THE CONSTANT MERCHANT


Knowing what your offer is and sticking to it: consistency is key to Howarth Timber and Building Supplies, as Fiona Russell Horne found out.


W dealing with.


That’s the view at Leeds-based Howarth Timber and Building Supplies and is why the group has been working at how it presents itself to customers.


“There’s an age-old problem with builders merchants – particularly with a mixed merchant like us with a strong history in timber – where customers who may come in every single day, will still say ‘oh I didn’t know you did that. I’ve been going to X Company for it. I could have got it here’. Every time, there’s a different sector that a customer somewhere wasn’t aware that we deal with,“says marketing manager Gavin Knowles.


“So last year we spent a lot of time with customers finding out what they thought we are about and telling them that we are in fact a real one stop shop.”


26


hether a company is big or small, it’s important that the message to customers is the same, which ever area they are


Alongside this has been a focus on core company values. Knowles says part of this involved an exercise working out what customers understood Howarth’s promises to them to be. “It was quite nice actually because we looked at old clips and videos from the business and interviewed people,” he says. “The feedback was very similar: that it’s a family owned business with family values that flow throughout.”


Those values include the need to understand customers, employees, products and the local area, Knowles continues. “We want to help our customers to do their job and make more money and that’s very much our mantra, the values that we want to live by.


“It was our research with customers and staff that informed how we would develop the branches, which has been an ongoing process for the last couple of years,” he says.“ The core of the Howarth branches is the M62 corridor with branches in Yorkshire and across the Pennines to Manchester, Knowles


says there are quite a few in the Manchester area. Then there are a few dots down the country – even as far as Kent - and three in London and one in Bury St Edmunds. All added as the company has gradually expanded. One of the main areas for focus has been a major refurbishment of the Wakefield branch. Knowles believes that one of the things that merchants sometimes forget is that their builder customers are also normal, retail customers in one aspect or another. “That might be when they are shopping for clothing or food or music or whatever. Yet that understanding hasn’t necessarily flowed through to builders merchanting yet. We think that the way we have redesigned the Wakefield branch will help improve the journey for both trade and retail customers. We started at the very front of the branch: when they walk through Wakefield, right from the fence line to the trade counter what the customer wants is being considered every step of the way. I’m not just talking about security or selling to customers, but looking at how they want to interact with us.” The front of the showroom at Wakefield is all glass, with the kitchens and bathrooms and bedrooms on show. “This acts as a real pull for the retail customer and is an eye-catching


www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net July 2019


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