COMMENT
Independents’ day H
ere’s the current $64,000 question for this sector of the industry. What, exactly, is an independent merchant?
Fiona Russell-Horne Editor-in-Chief - BMJ
Every human has self
“
awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.
” INFO PANEL
Builders Merchants Journal Datateam Business Media London Road Maidstone Kent ME15 8LY Tel: 01622 687031
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief: Fiona Russell Horne 01622 699101
frussell-horne@datateam.co.uk
Assistant editor Catrin Jones 01622 699186
cjones@datateam.co.uk
Production Controller: Kirsty Hood
khood@datateam.co.uk ADVERTISING
Publication Manager: Dawn Tucker 01622 699148
mobile 07934 731232
dtucker@datateam.co.uk
Senior Account Manager: Burim Osmani 01622 699174
mobile 07934 865418
bosmani@datateam.co.uk
North & midlands sales: David Harman 01772 462596
david.harman@talktalk.net
Publisher: Paul Ryder
pryder@datateam.co.uk CIRCULATION
ABC audited average circulation July 2018-June 2019: 7,801
SUBSCRIPTIONS
UK one year: £97 UK, two years: £164 Outside UK: one year £113/$204; two years: £196/$353
© Datateam Business Media Ltd 2018. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photo-copying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without the express prior written consent of the publisher. The title Builders Merchants Journal is registered at Stationers’ Hall. Suppliers have contributed towards production costs of some photographs in this issue.
Thirty years ago it wasn’t that hard a question. There were the National Merchants. These were easy to spot because they were publicly quoted, with their shares available to purchase on the stock market. The ultimate owners were whichever pension funds, corporate bodies and individuals held shares. The Independent Merchants were the rest, owned by and, usually, run by the person whose name was above the door. In those days, “independent merchant” was a merchant whose funding and capital came from the owners themselves, rather than the stock market. What made these businesses independents was their entrepreneurial spirit, their ability to change their minds and deal with a different supplier every week if a better deal came along. Not for them the tedious necessity of having to toe a line because the paperwork said so. In those days, the computer didn’t say No; if there was one, it did as it was told.
The national merchants, on the other hand, were more intransigent. They had to be because the bigger you are, the more need you have for rules and the more you have to stick to them. You can’t have a 650-branch business operating as 650 separate businesses – that’s called anarchy and is somewhat frowned upon by investors. Of course one of the ways that merchants of all types grew was by purchasing other, smaller independent businesses. So you would often get a national merchant branch being run by someone who was more used to being in charge of his (and it was mostly his in those days) own destiny. Some of those people stayed and built careers within their new owners. Others didn’t and branched out independently again.
Now, we have a slightly different situation,
COMMENT
although at the same time, a very similar one. An influx of equity investors and venture capitalists is hoovering up independent businesses of a certain size. On the one hand, it’s great news that this sector is still seen as worthy of investment and capable of further growth. On the other hand, it makes it slightly less easy to answer the question: what is an independent?
Is an independent business one that is owned and run by the same people? Or that’s run by one set of people but ultimately owned by another set who are paid in dividends? Is it one where the people at the sharp end – the branch managers, the directors, the buyers – have the ultimate say about with whom they trade and who they chose to buy from and sell to? A business that has the freedom to make choices based on relationships, experience and the entrepreneurial spirit? Is what is happening now with business ownership amongst builders’ merchants so very different to what was happening 20 years ago? Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. In a sector where entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to trade and do deals are highly valued, there will always be someone who wants to go their own way, plough their own furrow and build something better. It’s that spirit and that desire for growth which is attractive to the current flock of investors. However, that drive is also what turns a small business into a larger business and a large business into a huge one. There is, of course, no hard and fast rule about what size an independent business has to be before we can stop calling it that. Which means we have two more questions to add to the original one: is there a point at which an independent merchant grows so big it can no longer operate as an independent and what happens when the person or persons who have driven that growth for, say, 25 years, decide they want to exit the business?
January 2020
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
5
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72
