MERCHANT FOCUS: BUILD DEPOT S
cottish family-run builders’ merchants Build Depot is a new name on the merchanting block, formed by the rebranding of M&J Builders Merchants and its sister company South Lanarkshire Building Supplies.
Founded in 1999 by current managing director Mark Rodger’s late father, Tom Rodger, the company has its roots in Greenock Central Sawmills, a timber merchant started by Mark’s grandfather in the late 1950’s. In 2019, M&J acquired South Lanarkshire Building Supplies, and, at that time, Rodger says there was no desire to change the name or the brand, and it was run as a separate company. However, that changed in April 2023, when the company made a subsequent acquisition, of GTI Direct in Dunoon. “The GTI core business is the supply of products that contribute towards either energy efficiency or carbon reduction, which makes it a very different type of business from a general merchant,” he says. “They supply customers that operate within ECO which is the Energy Company Obligation all over the UK, so their customer base is the Republic of Ireland and the UK. There are some really interesting products that we will be looking to develop over the coming months and years.” Of more immediate interest, however, was the separate division within GTI, selling building materials to local customers. M&J supplied GTI Direct with some of the building materials that it was unable to source direct. An opportunity to acquire the company came up when GTI’s parent company decided to focus more on other parts of their business. “It was a good opportunity for us, and we were able to protect local jobs and have now increased the team by nearly 70% since April,” Rodger says.
Aquisition
At the same time, the company acquired a two-acre site next door to the GTI branch, into which the building materials offer has expanded. This has become the company’s fourth branch. “Now the site is finished, and complete with some new aggregate bays, a redeveloped warehouse, a purpose-built shop, additional warehouse racking and the finished result will house the building materials side more appropriately, to everything else, as well as the core GTI business.”
Initially the thought process was that M&J would rebrand the former GTI building materials division as Build Depot to give it a more appropriate name and status more suited to the fact that it has grown into a full- blown building material offering. However, Rodger says they realised they really liked that
20
ALTOGETHER BETTER
Fiona Russell Horne meets a builder’s merchant that has brought in a new brand across its four branches.
brand and that name, so decided to wash it across the other businesses as well. “It means that we are all operating under the same brand, with the same focus, and both customers and suppliers know that we are all part of the same team,” he says. Now the re-brand is complete across all the branches, Dunoon is effectively the fourth branch of Build Depot. GTI Direct is still a separate entity.
Rodger says: “It’s been a lot of work to get to this point. We have brought all the business units onto the one computer system. That was achieved by the end of April 2023. We basically switched SLB on to the M&J system on the March 1, then we completed the GTI acquisition on the April 1 and switched them to our new system the same day, so that they went live on day one. Once we had made a final decision on the
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net January 2024
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