MERCHANT FOCUS: COWAL BUILDING & PLUMBING SUPPLIES
was a real steadying force. At the start we were all going into the unknown, just having that older, wiser head at the top of NBG someone with the experience who could step back and take a wider perspective rather than the Partners who were so close to their own businesses that they couldn’t necessarily take that wider view.”
Cowal Building Supplies has four branches, Dunoon, Rothesay, Balloch and Dalry, which trades under the Reddance Building Supplies banner. All closed on March 24th, the day lockdown began, with all employees furloughed.
On May 4th branches opened on a click- and-collect basis for a few weeks. “Once we knew that we could pass all the health and safety Covid-ready checks, we reopened the branches,” Shaw says. “We followed all the guidance that came out via the BMF, and advice from people in other industries so we have the full complement of hand sanitisers, Perspex screens, every external door has a wall-mounted sanitiser dispenser and there are bottles of hands sanitiser on every trade counter and there are signs up everywhere asking people to respect social distancing and to use the hand sanitiser. As much as anything it’s a way of letting our employees and our customers know that we are taking it seriously so that they can feel confident in coming back in.”
Shaw believes that the BMF has, as a trade association, really risen to the challenge during the Covid crisis. “I do think John Newcomb and his team have been absolutely
exceptional in their response to this,” he says. “I was getting emails at all hours with details on what the guidance was, because there was no legislation on this. And being able to talk to someone who had a direct line into Westminster was incredibly beneficial. I do think they all did an incredible job and demonstrated exactly where their value as a trade association lies. For us as a family business, for NBG as a strategic buying group and for the industry in general`; the BMF’s actions demonstrated just what a trade association should be.”
The first day the yards reopened saw a rush of customers but Shaw says it has now settled down with customers all adhering to the safety measures put in place – sanitising hands, staying 2m distance away from others. “Customers generally, are very amenable to that because they know we are just trying to keep everybody safe. Even if they have already used hand-sanitiser themselves, we usually ask them to do so again so that our people on the trade counter or in the warehouse know that it has been done. And customers are fine with that. They understand.”
All the extra measures do have an impact on the business, Shaw admits. “Transactions on, for example click and collect, were taking about four times as long for each one as a normal transaction. So, although we were all busy and working hard, the numbers weren’t matching up to that. Once we got the gates opened, and people were able to start coming in, things did speed up a bit. The telephone was ringing off the hook but most of the calls
were ‘ are you open? ‘,. yes, that question needed to be answered sometimes, but all the time we were doing that., we were not dealing with another customer’s order.” Shaw says he will be delighted when he can take the Perspex screens down as they are a bit intrusive and they get in the way of our normal customer and supplier interaction. The hand sanitisers, though, are here to stay. “We’ll constantly have the bottles around the business and we will constantly ask visitors to use them, if they wouldn’t mind. I don’t care if it makes me sound like the hygiene-police, the most important lesson from this for all of us, in all walks of life, whether merchants, suppliers or customers, is the wash your hands lessons. It’s an overhead cost that the business will continue to keep in place to protect our businesses, our staff and our customers. Covid is really just another health and safety issue that we need to handle and we should approach that in the same way we approach working at height, slips, trips and falls or manual handling.”
Moving forward, interaction is likely to stay with a mixture of face-to-face meetings and virtual meetings from an NBG point of view, Shaw believes. “Each type of meeting has its own benefits. There are definite business benefits from being able to have a quick Teams meeting and then get on with the rest of your day rather than travelling. However, face-to-face networking and building team spirit within NBG are a massive part of the organisation and always have been. As we get back to normality, that will return.” BMJ
October 2020
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
19
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
