PARTNER FOCUS
RISEN FROM THE ASHES
A fire is a merchants’ worst nightmare. BMJ spoke to Mick Nicholls, Managing Director at WHABS Ltd and Ware Bathroom Centre, about rebuilding a business after a fire and the unexpected effects it had.
“O 26
n 31st August 2017, the premises next door caught fire and we are still trying to get to the bottom of why. Sadly, the fire was so intense that it jumped across into our roof causing severe damage.“
WHABS and Ware Bathroom Centre Managing Director Mick NIcholls explains that, while the fire destroyed the roof of his Hertfordshire plumbers merchant premises, the majority of the damage was actually caused by water. “By which I mean both the water used to put out the fire as well as the rain that soaked into the building through the area where the roof used to be. We had four inches of water in the front showroom as a result of the water used to extinguish the fire,” he says. The building where the fire started was a trading business, but Nicholls believes that it was poorly maintained and held furniture and other very flammable goods. He says that once the fire took hold there was no way the fire fighters could hold it back.
However, Nicholls says the most frustrating part of the ordeal for him was the months of negotiation with insurance companies. “I’d lie in bed listening to the rain hammering down and think: ‘that’s going straight into the showroom’ and there was nothing I could do about it. “For nine months we wrangled with the insurers and in the end, we
had to cut our losses so we could move on. We were paid out, but I don’t believe we got what we were entitled to, we just had to make a decision and try to salvage what we could.”
Nicholls says that one of the first priorities was to rearrange the space in the trade warehouse so that the showroom staff could be accomodated and they could keep the business running. “We moved people, computers and desks around so that we could still deal with retail customers. It was imperative we chased quotes and potential orders that we had been working on before the fire. We were still able to do drawings and quotes, the only thing we couldn’t show customers was a nice showroom.”
In the first couple of months, Nicholls says, things weren’t too bad, mainly because of the previous groundwork they had put in, but clearly that wouldn’t last. He says: “We therefore had to concentrate on things we may not have looked at very much before.”
During this difficult time and relooking at the business position there became an opportunity to look at different avenues of the business, he explains. “You could say it focussed the mind. We started to concentrate on talking to local builders and developers, working with them on large and small projects. The positive thing is, we’ve kept and maintained those
January 2020
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