MERCHANT FOCUS: JW GRANT
entrance to the gate into the yard. And then they give you this complex calculation how many people can exit through that at one time. I was thinking that this is ridiculous, because it’s a builders merchant gate – we can get trucks and lorries through it, how much bigger do you need it to be? Then the calculation for the gate showed that we could have 4,000 people can be at that event because it’s a big massive gate. I think we ended up on the day with 32 stalls, and thought that there would be loads of space because it really is a huge area.” However, one lesson the team learned was that organising a market requires a rather different skill set from running a builders’ merchant. There’s stall-holder politics to get to grips with for a start.
“We suddenly turned from builders’ merchants to stall experts,” McLellan says. “We had to realise, right, he can’t go anywhere near him and she needs to stay away from her.”
The team also had to take account of the Scottish weather, including which traders would be bringing gazebos or awnings. Fortunately, the event took place on one of the best days of the year, and the team was able to adapt the layout to accommodate the additional space required.
“We very quickly pivoted, figured it out and we made a new stall plan and everyone was happy,” he says.
The football club across the road made its car park available, and the team had car park marshalls and staff in hi-vis directing visitors. According to McLellan, the feedback from
exhibitors was particularly positive, with several telling him it was one of the best- organised markets they had attended. “I think because the council made me jump through so many hoops, we probably went overboard with the organisation,” he says. “It was our first time, so we thought, we’ve got to do all this stuff. You probably could have got away with not doing most of it. But I’m the type to read all the small print and all the contracts so I made sure every I was dotted, every T crossed.”
For the company, the event was not about
“If you just do it for the right reasons, then if there’s good to come from it, it’ll come down the road to you... And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We’ll have had a nice day.”
generating sales. McLellan estimates it cost them around £3,000 to stage, with no direct return on investment.
“There was no direct commercial benefit for us,” he says. “It was really just about getting closer to the community. And highlighting what we do and what we sell.”
That second point was particularly important. “There were a lot of people that live in the town that were like, oh, we never knew this was here,” says McLellan. Or, they associated the site primarily with tradespeople and building materials. Bringing them through the gates allowed the merchant to demonstrate the scale and breadth of its landscaping offer.
He adds: “You do wonder, what more do I need to do? You know, I’m here. You’ve seen our bags and lorries everywhere, but it’s one of those things, I suppose, you don’t notice something until you do notice it and then you see it all the time.
“When they come in and say, wait a minute, I didn’t realise you’ve got this beautiful display with porcelain and barbecues and I’m going to come in here and get ideas from my garden, that’s a real benefit for us,” he says, “whereas maybe driving by, they thought, oh no, that’s just a builder’s yard, that’s not for me.” JW Grant has operated from the Kilmarnock branch since August 2012, but McLellan says the market demonstrated the value of actively engaging with the local community, rather than simply being a business located within it. “If we had 300 people there, that’s 300 people from the community that now know exactly what we do and we’ve just built a little relationship,” he says. And that relationship- building was, ultimately, the main measure of success.
“If you just do it for the right reasons, then if there’s good to come from it, it’ll come down the road to you,” he says. “And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We’ll have had a nice day.” The day also gave McLellan the opportunity to spend time away from the more traditional day-to-day concerns of running a builders’ merchant, talking to stallholders and visitors and getting to know people from the local area.
“I just enjoyed it so much because I spent the day just walking around talking to the stall holders and people visiting,” he says. “They get to know us and we get to know them.” The experience has already got McLellan thinking about running another event, potentially at Christmas, although he admits that will require some degree of re-thinking in terms of weather-proofing. He adds, though, that the company has learned plenty from running that first market, including how to possibly approach catering.
He says: “For a merchant whose primary audience is traditionally the trade, I think what we did shows there is value in showing homeowners and our wider community that there is more to the builders’ merchant than they might expect.” BMJ
October 2026
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