MERCHANT FOCUS
WHEN (PAY) LESS IS MORE
With customer service a firm first in the merchant’s mind, Payless Builders Merchants have seen steady growth across the last decade as Catrin Jones finds out.
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ith their premises located just off the M2, Payless Builders Merchants directors Kul Mattu and Ram Johal, have seen more
and more wholesalers join them on the stretch of road facing Rochester Airport. Despite their convenient placement for passing tradesmen, the duo did not begin their journey at this location. “Believe it or not but we started in a little hardware shop in Lordswood, Simply DIY, about three or four miles away from here. It was an old run-down hardware store that Ram and I took over in 2005. It was very old school, so we revamped it, added new shelving and brought in some new lines.”
Their position in Lordswood meant they started to see builders popping in for supplies which they didn’t have at the time. “We saw a gap in the market and had a double garage in the back so we started to stock timber, ply, few bags of sand and cement, and
then a truck when people started to ask for deliveries”, says Mattu.
As they began to expand their business, a site became available on the Lordswood Industrial Estate in 2009. Within a few months, they felt that they had outgrown their new space, therefore bringing them to their current site. It was on the site of a former builders merchant called Vincents, which had closed down.
Expanding site.
Initially, when they took over in 2011, they owned just over half of the current site. “For eight years we ran on the current size. In the far corner, there was an insulation company, who had always been there, but was bought out by a larger company and moved out. We were rapidly growing, and we needed more space so now we have taken over the whole site and are currently sitting on 1.2 acres.” Johal adds, “In
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net January 2020
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