MERCHANT FOCUS: FORT
FORT T
FOR AN INDEPENDENT FUTURE FLIES THE FLAG
Fiona Russell Horne meets a forward-thinking merchant with an interesting sense of history.
ake two people with a long history in independent merchanting, add one with a background in data analysis, and parachute them into premises in a former WW2 American Airforce base in the heart of the Berkshire downs, and you have FORT, a one-branch independent builders’ merchant.
It’s not every merchant board room you enter that greets you with a huge Stars and Stripes flag as a wall-hanging, nor the original light-fittings from 1940, but director of systems and marketing Tim Gelardi says that the company was determined to keep a sense of its historic surroundings, despite being determinedly fixed on the modern ways of doing business.
FORT was set up in January 2020 when Keith Fryer and Matt Kiely, both of whom had worked for businesses that had sold on, persuaded Kiely’s football training pal Gelardi, to come in with them on the builders’ merchant they wanted to set up. Fryer had a timber background, having come from a timber business in London, T Brewer & Co, sold in 2016. Kiely, whose family ran Marlborough Building Supplies, also sold in 2016, was more traditional merchant-orientated. The FORT premises on the old airfield, between Hungerford and Lambourn appealed because there weren’t really any comparable merchants in the area. Taken on in a derelict condition, it was a bold move to convert them
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into a fully operational merchanting site. Gerlardi says that his non-merchanting background gives him a completely fresh approach to the business, something that the other directors see as a plus. His skill set is in running spreadsheets, analysing data and, up until he joined FORT, trying to spot opportunities in the communications industry. “I knew Matt from years back and we stayed in touch,” he says. “Then one night after football training we started chatting about the idea for the builder’s merchant. He and Keith had already identified the Lambourne area as underserviced by builders’ merchants. The idea was that Matt and Keith would run the merchant side of things: dealing with suppliers and customers, while I would look at it from a systems and marketing point of view. I came from an IT background, where we all had laptops welded to our hands, and I travelled to Silicon Valley once a month. I didn’t believe that customers would come in with orders scribbled on scrappy bits of paper or lengths of timber. I was wrong.”
Business evolution The way that customers do business is changing, however, and Gelardi believes that FORT is well-set to take advantage of the evolution. For many, Covid made them take up new ways of doing things and new technology, from which they probably won’t revert. “There is a huge change coming, we’ve seen it in
other industries. We don’t want to alienate anyone; we want to take them with us. There are customers who run their whole business out of a mobile phone, including paying bills, checking stock, checking delivery status of orders etc, and we know we have to be able to deal with them in the way they want us to.” The FORT site is split into two sections. There’s a yard, trade counter and warehousing in the old airbase buildings, while on the opposite side of the road is a showroom and the main offices. The showroom isn’t huge, but Gelardi says the plan is to be clever with it,
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net March 2023
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