MERCHANT FOCUS: HARRIS & BAILEY
the company is selling a lot of air source heat pumps into new build residential work. There has been a corresponding increase in sales of air conditioning products being retrofitted into conservatories, the consequence of increasingly hot Summers.
Solar sufficieny
family-owned, the current financial director, Jonathan Southgate is a member of the original family. The one branch, just behind the main Croydon railway line offers plumbing and heating, building materials, a cafe in the car park, and also a new renewables centre, set up with Daikin, the air conditioning and renewable specialists.
He says: “Having spent so much time on the heating and plumbing side, I could see the way the market was moving. I knew that we had to be offering renewables to our customers. So, we investigated the options, spoke to Daikin and opened it up.
Heat pump opportunity “Air source heat pumps are probably the things we get most enquiries for, and the government has helped on that of course. Customers come to us for these things because they know they can get it from us, and they know that we have the understanding and the expertise to be able to help them, and offer them training, via Daikin, that they might require.”
Thanks to government regulation, the push to net zero and the Future Homes Standard,
The four-acre site has 57 members of staff, and, putting its money where its environmental mouth is, the roof is covered with around 500 solar panels, making the building more or less self-sufficient. Horsfield says: “It’s not just about practicing what we preach, but we recognise that we have to move with the times. We’ve seen what happens when other merchants don’t. Hitchcock & King for example. They weren’t far from us here, and we ended up taking on some of their old stock when they went out of business. It’s a shame, but that’s how the economy works sometimes.”
On the delivery side there are three 26 tonne lorries, 1 18 tonne lorry, two 7.5 tonne lorries and seven vans; while the general area for collection and delivery is to local Croydon customers, deliveries will go as far as Bromley, Brighton, Guilford, even down as far as Canterbury in Kent, and into London. “There’s not a huge amount of what I’d call retail business, unless people have a garden project they might need building materials for, most of our customers are out and out tradesmen and developers.”
The company is a Partner of NBG, the National Buying Group, with Tom Hayman heading up the NBG side of things for the company. Horsfield says that joining was a way of improving Harris & Bailey’s heavyside offering, both in terms of product breadth and buying power, and that it has made a huge difference. Timber sales too, have benefited. “Until we joined, we didn’t really sell timber, now we are selling around £1m a year, and we have new racking and are seeing a real
July 2025
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
push on it. It’s also made a real difference to the heavier side of our business,” he says. Merchanting isn’t, of course, without its problems, chief of which, according to Horsfield, revolve around staffing issues, something it has in common with other merchants. “Getting good people into the business, and then keeping them, is increasingly difficult,” he says. “That said, we’ve been quite lucky with many of the people that we have had over the years, a lot of them youngsters who want to move on through the company, rather like I did.” The fact that the company remains resolutely independent is a key factor in why customers continue to use Harris & Bailey, Horsfield believes. “Customers still like to deal with a company where they know the managing director is available to talk to them, or who will pick up the phone if there’s a problem. Because I came up through the business, I don’t hide myself away in an office, I’d much rather be at a desk behind the sales counter. That way I can see what’s going on, greet the customers and really feel a part of it. “We try to be different, we try to give people the best service we can, which, in this market, is so important. If you treat people the way you know they want to be treated then they stay with you as customers. In fact many of them go on to become friends outside of work. We know that customers say things like, oh you need to go to Harris & Bailey if you want good service. That’s a great reputation to have, one we work at, and which we are proud of. “ Horsfield continues: “I’ve always loved doing this. I was never going to be James Bond or a whizz kid banker, this is what I discovered I was good at. I like the fact that no day in merchanting is ever quite the same, giving you a huge amount of variety, whilst there’s enough consistency in the day-to-day that you can build up a confidence and progress if you want to. I definitely found my niche.” BMJ
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