EXECUTIVE O&A
Flight of the Phoenix
Alan Guthrie poses questions to senior management at Phoenix Hire & Sales.
The company has just opened its fifth location in South Wales and has plans for further growth. Answering the questions were Phoenix Chairman Gary Derraven, MD Paul Lewis and Sales Director Jason Derraven.
Q. Having opened your first depot in 2008 and your fifth very recently, you must be delighted with Phoenix’s growth. A. When Gary left Speedy in 2006, having joined them on selling his original Kingfisher Hire & Sales business to them in 2003, he had no plans to go back into tool hire. But he eventually saw another opportunity and opened the first Phoenix depot in Cwmbran in 2008, followed by Bridgend (2009), Cardiff (2010), Pontypridd (2015) and now Swansea. Cardiff was relocated to larger premises last year. We introduced plant hire in 2011 and have added a successful sales operation with a growing number of dealerships, simply to meet customer demand. Incidentally, Gary celebrates 40 years in hire this year.
Q. What drives the business forward? A. The enthusiasm and passion from everyone in the Phoenix team and their commitment to serve the customer. We want people to give us their problems and we’ll find the solutions, becoming almost an extension of their businesses. We’ll source whatever they need - even things like toilet rolls, coffee and we recently provided a golf buggy to a site for transporting personnel over rough ground. We say: whatever you want, we can get it.
From right: Gary Derraven, Paul Lewis and Jason Derraven.
Q. And you have an in-house initiative, Customer First? A. Customer First is about us doing everything we can to support people. For example, we team up our local salesmen with one another so that when one goes on holiday, the other knows their customers and can step in efficiently with no loss of contact.
Popular sales items include Stihl products…
Q. You also serve a number of specialist hire markets? A. We offer dedicated Survey and Lifting ranges, and Safety products that have synergies with all of our activities, along with our Training activity. The Pontypridd depot has a purpose-built testing and calibration centre for our Survey fleet, which is steadily expanding - only yesterday we bought three more Topcon robotic total stations. Pat O Shea, who is MD of these divisions, brings a wealth of experience in these markets. He is supported by General Manager Steve Farmer, who is also well-known in the lifting industry. We are also developing the supply of specialist grounds management and tree care items, such as climbing equipment and accessories.
…and specialist tree care equipment.
Q. How does the sales operation sit alongside hire? A. We obviously prefer to hire but some customers will always have a requirement to buy equipment as well. We sell what we hire and hire what we sell, with dealerships for suppliers like Stihl, Duro, Ox, Topcon, Ausa, Doosan compressors, Armorgard, Snorkel and Yanmar compact plant. In fact, we believe we are the biggest Yanmar dealer in the UK. We became a Stihl dealer in 2017. Originally this was predominantly for construction products, but now we sell pallet loads of disc cutters a month as well as lawn and garden machinery. We also gain business in repairing and maintaining what we sell, and we use our inspHire computer system to send service reminders to customers.
15
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