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MERCHANT FOCUS: GRANT & STONE GROUP


managers, IT people and the Health & Safety managers to meet up to discuss how they do things. That’s not because we at Grant & Stone know better, but because we want to make sure that we are all using the best practice, regardless of where in the group it originated. “It’s important that we use that pool of knowledge from around the group because, of course, sometimes, what works well for a local customer in Barnstaple isn’t going to work necessarily the same way for a local customer in High Wycombe or Hemel Hempstead.” The key thing that all the businesses have in common, Bayliss says, is local knowledge and local commitment. “We want to ensure we retain what’s good about the companies we have bought, and there are a great many very good things about them, to see how we can learn and improve in both directions. There are some outstanding features of all the business we have brought into the group and there are certainly things that we can all learn from each other. Although we do know that what works for a builders merchant branch in High Wycombe won’t necessarily work in quite the same way for a customer in Somerset. That’s where the local knowledge and experience makes such a positive contribution.”


Pandemic interruption He admits that the first year of Cairngorm’s partnership with Grant & Stone didn’t pan out quite as planned - within four months the Prime Minister had announced a lockdown and all the branches closed, but adds that it also brought some unforeseen opportunities, too. “In some ways this last year meant that we have been able to expand the group even more quickly than we had initially hoped for when we first invested in Grant & Stone. Certainly, this isn’t the end point for us in any way shape or form. Who knows what the future looks like? It’s difficult to predict anything with too much accuracy these days, but certainly there is ambition from Peter and Nick and Kevin and the team to continue growing and, from our perspective, to support them in doing that.” Customers across the enlarged group have welcomed the expansion because, Cudd says, they have recognised the strength of the group as a whole. “They know we are still independent and for every one of these businesses, the central point has been that the customer is king, that’s the tenet that all the businesses have been built on, and will continue to be built on. It’s how Nick & I have run the business so far, and it’s how we will all continue to run the business. We will continue to look after the customers as we have always done. Products, service and knowledge is our strapline. And that’s what we live by. As long


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as you have got the products, you give the customers the service and they can trust that you know what you are talking about. ”In November 2019, when Cairngorm came on board, they knew we had a really good management team; now we have an even better one with Kevin and Richard and Chris joining us. The structure was always there to allow us to grow and do more and more. There are gaps in our geographic coverage and it makes sense to grow by filling-in those gaps where appropriate.”


This future expansion and growth is likely to be via a mixture of organic branch development and further acquisitions, though, as Bayliss points out, it is hard to tell with any certainty just what will and what won’t work out. ”The ambition certainly would be that in the coming years that we fill in the geographical gap,” he says.


Cudd adds: “There will be more, we have the structure for it, the ambition and the backing, thanks to Cairngorm.” BMJ


www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net June 2021


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