MERCHANT FOCUS: BEERS ONE MORE BEER O
ne of the first things that Paul Conboy did when he took over as managing director of independent Liverpool-based merchant Beers was open a new branch. Having said that, it was more a question of good timing. Formerly Beers commercial director, Conboy took over from Michael Beer, who becomes chairman, at the end of 2022; the branch in the Wavertree area of the city opened on January 30th 2023. “Michael had been managing director for over 30 years, and it got to a point where he wanted to take a bit more time for himself, however he is still quite hands on,” Conboy explains. “He’s going to be chairman and he asked me to step up to be managing director in December. I was proud to accept the role, especially considering we’re approaching our
106th anniversary, and I’m the first non-Beer to take on the role. There is now myself, Dave Keogh and Simon Beer who are both directors. Between the three of us, we deal with the overall running of the business.” He says that Beers had been looking for a new branch to cover the north of the city for some time. “Finding the right site, that works for our business, was difficult.” The company had been quite strong in covering the southern side of Liverpool, but felt that their presence towards the north of the city need strength. When the site on Rathbone Road came up, it was exactly what the company wanted, so they moved quickly to secure it. “Over the last couple of years, we’ve opened a painting and decorating business in Heswall and a plumbing and heating supplies site in
PLEASE
Independent builders and timber merchant Beers has opened a new branch on its home turf of Liverpool. Fiona Russell Horne went for a poke around.
Warrington. When we found out we could get this site, we moved quite quickly to get it open,” he says.
Ona main road, the new site has plenty of visibility and is surrounded by builders’ merchants, so it’s going to get a lot of traffic. It was an area of Liverpool that Beers had always delivered to but never had a base to expand from. He says: “What we’ve noticed now, and based on feedback from customers, is we’ve got new people coming in to this branch who haven’t used Beers before, and we’ve also got existing Beers customers who would’ve used another merchant in the area. Now they don’t have to.”
Although the new site has more or less the same stock profile as the others, some new ranges have been brought in, such as
20
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net May 2023
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
