MERCHANT FOCUS: SOUTHERN SHEETING
WINDS THE
I
t’s an ill wind that blows no-body any good, they say, and, for Southern Sheeting, the storm that blew across the south East of England on the night of October 15 1987 definitely brought some good in its wake. Southern Sheeting grew out of a farming business when Tom Hobbs, father of current managing director Tony Hobbs, bought some roofing sheets for his grain store from a company in Wales, and, eventually, started selling them to other farmers. “They were plastic roofing sheets which was quite a new thing at the time. In the mid-1970s it was quite revolutionary to use plastic as an external building material. He realised that there might be a bit of market for this, so he bought some stock stuck it on the front drive, put a lineage advert in the Farmers Weekly and it went from there. The storm of 1987 really was a bit of a turning point for the Southern Sheeting, which had been going since 1979,” says Hobbs. “Up until that point, we had only ever traded with farmers. However, the storm meant that the business grew significantly, because everyone needed to reroof everything, they had with anything they could get their hands on. For days on end there were people queuing all the way down the road, trying to get materials that they could use to re-roof their cattle sheds and their hay barns and whatever. Anything we could get we were able to sell. It really changed the business.”
Changing tack
When his father died unexpectedly, former engineer Tony Hobbs found himself back in the family business rather sooner than he expected to, suddenly in charge of a 350acre farm, and a business with a £1.5m turnover and six employees. “I had to learn very quickly how to run both a business and a farm,” he says. “We still farm, but it is a different sort of farming, and the Southern Sheeting is now the main business.”
22
After the Great Storm of 1987 laid waste to much of the south east, one small specialist merchant saw an opportunity and grabbed it. Fiona Russell Horne meets a company that punches above its weight.
OFCHANGE
Farm, just a mile away, sells goods mainly to the domestic market, including cladding, domestic rainwater products, WPC garden decking, and fencing. All products which
Since then, the company has grown and this year will turn over somewhere in the region of £17m. “Like many others, we have had a very good year so far as things have been so busy. Having said that, the lockdowns mean that 2020 was quite a good year too. We saw something like a 30% swing from commercial business to retail and a change in the product mix.” Despite the name, Southern Sheeting Supplies doesn’t just sell roofing sheets. The main depot, Hill Place Farm, sells mainly industrial and commercial roofing and cladding as well as related product lines. A second depot, Saint Hill
have been selling well throughout 2020. “In lockdown people wanted to spend money on their gardens and their sheds and even build home offices,” he says. “Like most businesses in this sector, we saw a huge swing towards the retail and garden sector. Garden decking was a runaway success, where we saw sales up 140%. Insulated roofing sheets and Cedral cladding, both of which are popular for garden rooms, went up by 140% and 40% respectively, and our Onduline and steel roofing sheet sales went up by 60% and 50% as people began to re-roof their garden sheds or built outdoor bars and outdoor kitchen areas.”
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net November 2021
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 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
