WORKSURFACES & SPLASHBACKS Shawn Buckle
WEX Trade
BKU’s Matt Broughton spoke with National Account Manager at WEX Trade, Shawn Buckle.
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024 has all been about newness and innovation for WEX Trade,” says WEX Trade National Account Manager, Shawn Buckle. “We featured at KBB in March, which is always a huge focus for us. The show gave us the opportunity to showcase and talk directly with our customers about all the new things planned for the year ahead. Our diverse product proposition is about offering a wide choice of worktop styles and designs at different price points and homeowners’ budgets. This in turn helps our kitchen studios, as they working creatively to make their customers budgets stretch.” WEX Trade has focused on some specific key product introductions in 2024: Formica Aria®, A collection of timeless marble veining to serene stones, available in 12mm thickness and 20mm which is the only solid laminate product on the market available in this thickness.
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Formica Aria provides a true alternative to both natural and engineered stone, without the associated expense. Manufactured as a single slab, it has a solid colour core throughout making it suitable for kitchen designs featuring undermount sinks, whilst offering outstanding durability and performance.
Coreluxe is the newest introduction to WEX Trade’s solid surface ranges. The collection comes in five sophisticated, 19mm, neutral decors which are ideally suited to the current kitchen trends. The materials innovation makes it cool to the touch, so it both looks and feels like a stone, making it another strong contender as an alternative to natural or engineered stones. It also comes with a 10-year warranty. FENIX® is a truly innovative material, Italian in design, it has self-healing thermal properties, meaning that superficial surface scratches can be removed with the use of heat. The 10 decors in the collection are all beautiful saturated super-matt hues, offering low light reflectivity, with a wonderfully sumptuous soft touch. It also is easy clean, offering anti-fingerprint technology which helps maintain its sleek appearance. As well as being a popular choice as a striking kitchen surface, it is an ideal material for creating contemporary home office spaces.
Building on our service proposition WEX Trade knew that the best way it could support its customers was not only to bring in new products, but to also continually improve WEX Trade’s service proposition, as Shawn explains: “The WEX Trade loyalty scheme also
launched this year. Designed as a ‘thank you’ to our customers for their business, it has been well received.
“We know how busy our customers are, so the really great thing about the scheme is that it requires no input from our customers. They simply place their orders with us as usual, and we manage the rewards for them.
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Our diverse product proposition is about offering a wide choice of worktop styles and designs at different price points and homeowners’ budgets
“And finally, our warehousing and logistics team have worked extremely hard optimising our stock levels, so by mid-year our UK warehouse held over 25,000 worktops in stock, meaning WEX Trade can service its customers with next day delivery across the UK.”
Continuing to partner with customers in 2025 2025 looks to be as exciting for WEX Trade as 2024 has been. Like all business, 2024 has been a tough year. The ongoing economic conditions have touched everyone. In recent weeks, the worksurfaces market has also experienced a shake-up, creating additional uncertainty and nervousness, which all companies have felt. Shawn explains: “WEX Trade is part of Broadview Group. This brings us the benefits of being part of a global business, including access to products manufactured within the group, plus shared knowledge, expertise, and services we can leverage.
“As I’ve mentioned, we have exciting product and service developments planned for 2025. We will continue to expand our worktops collections to ensure we offer a range of surfaces to suit all budgets, styles, and material preferences.
“And, as our customers’ trusted worktop partner, we will continue to focus on building on our current service proposition, designed to support our customers and their businesses. This includes our showroom sales and marketing support, in-house fabrication service and industry leading UK delivery service. I can’t elaborate further at this stage - but watch this space!”
26 BKU NOVEMBER 2024
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