VIEWPOINT


A YEAR WITHOUT THE EQUIPMENT: WHAT WE KEPT, CHANGED AND


WHAT WE GOT WRONG Dani Hodges, chief commercial officer at HSS ProService Marketplace


TOWARDS THE END of last year, HSS did something few businesses with our history would contemplate. Almost overnight we stopped owning equipment (something we had done since 1957), our biggest competitor became our biggest supplier, and we took on a significant rehire operation and its people. A hire company that had spent decades filling yards with equipment of all shapes and sizes became a marketplace that owns none of it. The first question people ask is what happens to the brand. HSS carries decades of equity, built on having reliable access to equipment, knowing it inside out and getting it to site on time. If the business no longer owns anything, what is that recognition worth and where’s the value?


Brand value


My answer is that what the brand stood for was never just about tools and equipment, it was trust and knowledge.


Last week I visited a colleague, Darren, who had just marked 40 years with HSS after starting as a temporary driver in the run-up to Christmas. Throughout his career, he became a branch manager and has worked through every change of business model since. Whether we own the


equipment or not, our customers have requirements and our job is to deliver against it. We are now a technology company, but we are also a hugely knowledgeable hire company, and the second is what makes the first work.


The hardest lesson from the past year has centred how customers ultimately want to buy. Three and a half years ago we built a self-serve marketplace, refined it with a group of customers, and by the following January we were convinced we had the answer. We


20


emailed every customer to say this was how they would now transact with us, our sales teams went out and demonstrated it and we pushed hard.


Unfortunately for us, the feedback from our customers was clear. While procurement and finance teams recognised the upside from the efficiencies built into the digital platform, some elements represented unwanted friction to the people actually raising orders on site.


They did not want to have to log in, they wanted to ring the person they knew in the branch, or email a purchase order their own system had already generated. We made a mistake, and I think it is fine to say so. We assumed that because we were excited, everyone else would be and that the old adage “if you build it, they will come” applied across the board. Every hard lesson is extremely valuable, and what we do now is different. We are a marketplace in the back-end regardless of how an order arrives. Customers can use the B2B marketplace, our website, email or the phone, and we will not tell them which to choose. Many like managing orders digitally, where they can see everything in one place, even if they still place them another way; digital orders are now a healthy share of daily contracts. Increasingly, AI will let us turn an emailed order into a digital one, with a knowledgeable colleague in the loop to check it, so the customer gets the speed and accuracy of the platform without changing how they work. When the industry is ready, we are already there.


My advice to anyone in a similar position: if your industry is already digital and you simply have a better proposition, you can be prescriptive. If you are pioneering,


“Every hard lesson is extremely valuable, and what we do now is different. We are a


marketplace in the back end regardless of how an order arrives.”


you cannot. You have to build a multi-channel strategy that lives and breathes, be ready for what the customer wants when they want it, and do not force it on them.


As a marketplace, suppliers are also critical to the overall success of the business. Here the shift was smaller than it looked from outside.


We have run a rehire division since 2001 and a supplier portal since 2019, so most suppliers on the platform had worked with us for years; what changed was the size of the opportunity.


Our focus now is defining what a perfect supplier looks like, and making that standard clear, as well as supporting partners to elevate their standards to meet ours. Proof of delivery and collection, for example, can now be emailed to us and attached to the contract by AI rather than uploaded transaction by transaction. The expectation in return is clear: customers must be able to see that equipment arrived and was collected on time, and suppliers who cannot evidence that will eventually find no place with us.


Stable partnerships Looking back, there have been many sleepless nights and long days working with our brilliant teams to make the marketplace a success.


Despite all of the challenges, we retained our colleagues, built new processes, technology and teams, and came through stronger and more focused.


Customers are starting to see the value of a stable partner in a market unsettled by fuel and transport costs. The next 12 to 18 months are clear: a new ERP, AI woven through the operation, and a solid base to push forward from. BMJ


www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net October 2026


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  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80