MERCHANT FOCUS: LBS
and able to provide them with the tools to follow their ambitions. It’s about keeping the best people and giving the support that they need.”
“This has gone on to impact the training structure of the whole company. We used to have a training manager and now we have a Training Team, same with HR. We’ve created a role for a trainer for every process within the business. The response from people within the business has been fantastic, even new starters are able to move considerably quicker up through the different channels of the business. One of our long-standing member’s of staff said: “There’s a change happening and I want to be a part of it.”
“The financial side of the business is my primary concern as managing director,” says Mark Davies. “How strong the company balance sheet is so that we’re sustainable for the future, etc. We have worked very hard at getting that right. As a by-product of that you have to be very good at multitasking. We’ve been amazingly successful recently at various awards. It may not come across but we are very enthusiastic about what we do and we count even the individual awards and recognition for members of our team as a win for the whole business. While we are very grateful for all this recognition, we can only say that we do our best and wouldn’t be able to understand why others wouldn’t.
Where next?
“This year we will be moving to a new Head Office because we’ve completely run out of space, so we are likely to be in there by the end of Q2. We’ve also acquired a few more merchant sites, including a complete re-build over in Barry, which we are very excited to get underway. That will be another flagship branch, alongside this one. There’s a lot of stuff happening this year that’s operational before it becomes commercial. Ambition being one of
our values, we are always looking for ways to top our local competitors, to be number one in the towns in which we trade. We can’t stand still.”
“An objective for us is to move into Cardiff at some point in the future. We’ve become as big as we have without being in the main population centres of the country and by dealing with a market less than a quarter of the existing population in Wales. Imagine what we could do with access to the other 75%!” “One of the things we are proud of is that we speak the same language as our customers. In some of our branches there’s an awful lot of transacting in Welsh and our head office staff need to be able to speak Welsh. It’s Rachel’s first language. In some towns there’s just an assumption that everyone speaks Welsh, which shows how important it is for us to support and represent the Welsh culture and identity.” There is, of course, gng to be some sort of effect from Brexit. “As merchants, we are reactive. There are very few areas that we need to plan for at all because we will react to whatever actually happens rather than creating contingencies for what might happen” he says. “We do import some product, so we buy currency on-spot, which can be good or bad at
the time but doesn’t have a huge impact on the business. When the going gets tough, it suits us. Because it affects our competitors more than it affects us. Our national competitors will always disinvest in South Wales when the economy is hard and LBS will do the opposite, which takes us that extra step each time. We’re not saying we’re looking forward to a recession but it is a time that independents weather better than most.”
The company has completely remodelled the way it uses training in the last year. With the results from the annual reviews expected soon, we hope to uncover even more great ideas to help our business grow and function more effectively for our staff and in-turn our customers.”
Mark Davies concludes: “Everything needs attention. You can’t neglect a single part of being a merchant. We look at sustainability on a more personal level than is possible as a company, in terms of our attitudes towards recycling and how we impact on the environment. We are certainly looking at fuel consumption and the packaging sent by our suppliers. It’s a balance between what we can do and what we can afford to do. The training on the other hand is a no-brainer.” BMJ
March 2019
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
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