NMBS Sales & Marketing Manager Dean Hayward explores how choosing the right storage and racking can bring real benefits to merchants.
Running a successful builders’ merchant requires juggling many different issues, from stock and marketing, to cash flow and logistics, to name just a few. With so much to keep watch over, it can be easy for other things — such as storage and display solutions — to slip through the cracks. After all, as long as you have somewhere to store your stock, what does it matter what that storage looks like, or even if it’s truly fit for purpose?
In fact, it matters a lot, and well-thought-through storage and display solutions can bring a myriad of benefits to the modern builders’ merchant.
The first and most important of these benefits is safety. Whether it’s in the yard, the warehouse or the trade counter, using the correct type of racking or shelving is vital to ensure products can be accessed safely, and that they are stored on systems strong enough to bear their weight. Whether that’s pallet racking for storing heavy duty products that will be moved using a forklift or longspan racking for manually handled goods, making sure you choose the most suitable storage units for your products will help protect staff and customers from handling injuries — and will remove any risk of shelving collapsing under the weight of too heavy a load.
For merchants that have turned their warehouses into self-service areas, safety is even more important, with cantilever racking available for the safe storage of large timbers.
Maximise your space
With merchants needing to stock more products than ever, often in incredibly tight spaces, clever display solutions can help maximise every square inch. Finding the right solution means having as much stock on display as possible, in an organised, easy-to-navigate fashion — helping to maximise sales and encourage impulse purchases, as well as making it easier for people to find exactly what they are looking for.
Dump baskets sited near the trade counter can highlight promotional items and fast-moving product lines, while parts bins can easily store the small bagged and loose products that tradespeople always need.
Better branding
Racking and merchandising can also add real value in terms of branding and marketing. Colour-coded shelving and racking can match the merchant’s brand, creating a strong corporate identity and a consistent look that can be replicated across multiple branches.
Combine this with powerful merchandising to highlight time-limited promotions and key product lines, and it can help enhance the merchant’s image, creating a professional identity that gives customers confidence in the business’s knowledge and expertise.
NMBS partners with Filplastic to offer a wide range of storage and display solutions including shelving, racking and warehouse equipment. The company also offers a free design and layout service, with CAD drawings available to help create the ideal shopfit solution.
Paul Taylor, Filplastic’s MD, says: “There is absolutely no doubt that the hundreds of merchants we have worked with over the last 25 years have seen an increase in sales and profits as a result of new or refurbished, trade counters areas, with a very fast payback time. The same rules apply in builders’ merchants as they would in supermarkets — the more attractive and easier to access your products, the more you will sell.
“As 80% of our business comes from builders’ merchants, we fully understand the industry and know the best way to store and display all the products they supply. Apart from the showroom side, we are also happy to advise on yard and warehouse layout, and have seen a huge increase in the demand for mezzanine floors over the last couple of years.”
For more information about Filplastic’s product range, visit www.filplastic.co.uk
To find out how to become an NMBS member, visit www.nmbs.co.uk
