IN PERSON PROTECT WHAT’S SPECIAL.
MODERNISE THE REST. Travis Perkins’ managing director Richard Lavin talks to Fiona Russell Horne about rebuilding confidence in the UK’s largest builders’ merchant.
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t’s hard to take over a leadership role in a business where the trials and tribulations have been widely shared and publicly documented. But that’s exactly what Richard Lavin faced when he took over the Travis Perkins General Merchant business - known internally as Green & Gold - in early 2025.
“There were some difficult realities. Sales had been sliding, our market share had slipped, profits were definitely under pressure; basically, we needed to rebuild confidence,” he says. That confidence building job wasn’t just with the wider market, but also internally Eighteen months in, and Lavin says, much progress has been made, though there’s more to come. It’s a simple approach: keep the customer at the centre, empower colleagues, communicate simply and never lose sight of the core values that have built Travis Perkins over the past 225 years. “It’s a massive privilege, albeit a pressured one, to run our Green & Gold business,” he says. “I have a responsibility not just up the chain to the PLC, but to all the people at the front end of the business to make sure we’re doing the right thing and building a stronger, more sustainable business.”
Lavin joined the Travis Perkins Group in 2014 and has held senior finance, commercial and operational roles across the Group. His track record includes finance director of PTS and five years as Toolstation’s finance, property and distribution director. He returned to the merchant business as finance director in 2022, before becoming managing director on an interim basis in March 2025. “I came into a role when we were losing market share, sales were declining and profit was under pressure. That’s well documented. We were still the number one merchant, but the moat between us and our competitors had narrowed,” he says. Rather than attempting wholesale transformation overnight, the focus was on rebuilding confidence. “The objective was to put the mojo and the energy back into the business. We did that by working on market share and driving sales because that’s what helps the people at the front end feel they’re getting somewhere. If I’m honest, we’d made it all very complicated when what we really needed to do was bring it back to basics.
“What made us successful over the past 200 years won’t necessarily be enough to make us successful over the next 200, but we shouldn’t forget it.
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“The challenge is to protect what’s special while modernising the areas that need to change.”
Despite Travis Perkins’ scale, Lavin believes merchanting remains one of Britain’s most competitive sectors because of the strength of independent businesses.
“There’s no other market I look at where over half is made up of independents. That huge independent sector is what makes this market really interesting. That said, our size comes with a responsibility to the rest of the market. The pressure is real, but that pressure is a privilege.” Central to the turnaround strategy, Lavin says, has been maintaining absolute clarity around priorities. “The same four pillars have been in place since I took over,” he says. “Stay safe, drive margins, keep a sales mindset and stick to your service culture, and judge everything against how it measures up against those pillars.” Communication, he says, is one of the greatest leadership challenges in a business employing around 7,000 people. “The best way of communicating is to keep it really simple, really consistent and really clear. If one of our colleagues goes home and tries to explain what we’re doing to their family, and Grandad can’t understand it, then we’ve got that communication wrong.” Ultimately, Lavin insists, merchanting is still a people business. “We buy stuff from suppliers; we break down bulk and we deliver it to customers. People buy from people they know, like and trust.
“We’ve substantially refreshed the leadership team, bringing together experienced Travis Perkins colleagues and new perspectives. That team includes our regional managing directors and leaders across commercial, marketing, finance, HR and safety, as well as our Hire, Benchmarx and Managed Services businesses. “The question we continue to ask ourselves is: what does the team need to look like to get this business where it needs to be over the next three to five years?”
There are two overriding priorities for Lavin over the next few years. The first is improving financial returns.
“We have a responsibility to deliver sustainable financial returns,” he says “For Green & Gold, stronger returns give us the capacity to invest in our colleagues, our branches, our service and the long-term future of the business.”
The second element is safety. With thousands of deliveries every week, hundreds of thousands
of miles travelled and busy branch environments shared by colleagues and customers alike, the safety risks are significant. “If we get safety wrong, the consequences can be serious. We can harm people, lose customers’ trust and damage the performance of the business.”
He believes good safety and good commercial performance go hand in hand. “The statistics show there’s a high correlation between a well- run, safe branch and a profitable branch. That’s not rocket science. People are more engaged and happier to work harder.”
Leadership isn’t just for the top levels either, he says. At branch level it plays a crucial role. “Every branch manager and every salesperson sets the weather. They decide whether it’s going to be a positive day or a negative day. How we develop that positive culture depends on how we develop and encourage capable leaders throughout the organisation.
That means spending time in the branches as well as with the corporate head office issues. “I draw my energy from the branches,” he says. “It’s important that I spend time there, asking: ‘What’s slowing you down? What’s making today a bad day? How can I help you run your business?’”
He is equally aware that there is a balance between local autonomy and national consistency. “If I let branches do anything they wanted, we’d never modernise the rest,” he says. “There’s a fine line between autonomy and anarchy.”
His role, he believes, is to balance the needs of individual branches with the requirements of the wider organisation.“Big corporate strategy is all very well, but you’ve got to fix the fundamentals before you start layering on major strategic aspirations and goals.
“Get the foundations solid, then you can build on them. It’s not dissimilar to what our customers do. You have to get the bottom level right before you build up.”
“My job isn’t to do what’s easiest; it’s to do what’s right for the long-term health of the business. That means strengthening the fundamentals, backing our colleagues and improving where it matters, while never losing sight of the qualities that made Travis Perkins successful in the first place.
“We have an extraordinary heritage, but our focus has to be on building an equally strong future: protect what’s special and modernise the rest.” BMJ
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net September 2026
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