RISING STARS MEET THE FUTURE
Ryan Lockwood, national sales and marketing manager at Fernco, tells Will McGill about his journey into the building materials sector.
What is your current role?
I’m the national sales and marketing manager for Fernco Ltd.
How did you get into this industry? My journey is no different to most, I totally fell into it. I did a degree in graphic design and landed my first job straight out of university with a kitchen manufacturer that served the social housing and builders merchant sectors. I was just looking for a job in marketing really, I’d always been eager to get started with a ‘proper’ job and I didn’t care which industry. However, after throwing myself into my role there, experiencing as much as I could, I learned the building materials sector was totally for me. Fast forward 10 years and I ended up at Fernco, where we supply 100% via merchants and distributors so the fit was perfect. With Fernco, I’ve always been encouraged to immerse myself into all aspects of the business and our industry and with the investments Fernco has put into upskilling me over the last decade, I’ve now got the opportunity to take on sales leadership responsibilities as well as marketing.
What does a typical day for you at work look like?
I’ve got the privilege of huge variety within my role. From an internal perspective, I collaborate closely with all teams across the business on various improvement projects. My primary focus, however, is working with senior leadership to define and steer our strategic direction, and with our sales and marketing teams to deliver on our strategic objectives, which this year for example, has included the diversification of our product range which has resulted in the launch of our new Flood Protection product category. From an external perspective, I spend my time engaging with the teams within our builders’ merchant customers, from product and category teams, to sales and operations teams in order to set and deliver our joint business development plans and raise and maintain the profile of the Fernco brand.
What are your big challenges in this role? Prioritisation is the short-term challenge that comes to my mind. I believe we’ve got some of the most talented and innovative teams and individuals within our industry, all buzzing with ideas. However, we physically cannot execute every great idea in the short term and so keeping yourself and your
10
facing commercial role, I’ve got a unique ability to prioritise and impact these risk areas and make sure we grow while maintaining the magic ingredients that make us Fernco, the supplier that in many of our customers’ eyes, sets the standard for other supplier manufacturers.
What advice would you give to someone new to this industry?
teams free from distraction is something I’m consciously working on every day. The long- term challenges are similar to most businesses; we can only meet and exceed our plans with amazing people, so how do we attract, maintain and inspire amazing people as we grow, and this is a challenge I’m eager to keep tackling directly as we progress on our journey.
What do you think has been your biggest achievement in your role? I’ve spent most of my tenure at Fernco heading up marketing, and with the buy-in from our MD, Lee Pashley, we’ve built that team into a five-person, commercially driven function which adds an enormous amount of value both from a commercial point of view but also strategically. That’s my most rewarding achievement because I get to see the fruits of it every day. If you are asking me from a project perspective; I headed up our European rebrand two years ago which saw us change our name from ‘Flexseal’ to ‘Fernco’. We reinvented a market leading brand and used the name change as a catalyst to demonstrate our commitment to the market for further and more rapid innovation. We completed that project within an eight month window which demonstrates the agility we’ve built into the business.
What would you like to achieve next? We’ve got some really intense growth plans leading up to 2030 and I’m conscious that when companies go through rapid growth, performance can sometimes decline in other areas like service levels, culture or even lose their original identity. Given my background in marketing combined with my now customer
I think soft skills are underrated; at the end of the day, the industry is relationship driven and those soft skills are key to building relationships. What has always worked well for me is showing passion for the work I do and the company I represent. I think it’s natural for individuals to gravitate to passionate, high energy and positive people, so my advice would be to find a role and a company you can be passionate about and just immerse yourself into it, and don’t shy away from experiencing as much as possible and meeting new people, even if it takes you beyond your comfort zone.
What would you say to someone who might be thinking about a career or getting a job in the merchant industry? The industry is going through a generational change at the moment. That said, huge strides are being made in digital, sustainability, diversity and much more. So, I think anyone joining at this moment in time has a real opportunity to thrive in what is becoming a modern and vibrant industry. I think in the next 10 years, we’ll have met the challenges we currently face as an industry and have maintained that uniqueness of what it is to work in the builders’ merchant sectors.
Why do you think young people and women are hesitant to go into the industry?
It’s no secret that the industry has been late to react to the opportunity diversity brings, and if you don’t manage an industry’s ‘brand’, people make their own judgements. However, we are all on a journey, taking this industry through huge changes in order to attract new talent. The Sector Awareness Program ‘Materially Different’, started and managed by the BMF is a great platform for promoting the positive changes that are happening and for managing perceptions of our industry. I do believe that if we all get behind it, it will be a huge catalyst for change and secure the succession of our great industry. BMJ
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net September 2024
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