In PBM’s October 2019 edition, editor Paul Davies talked about the magazine’s ongoing series ‘The Pulse’.
Over the past few issues, we’ve been delighted to present the findings of ‘The Pulse’ — a monthly tracking survey which canvases the opinions of a representative sample of 100 merchants to highlight their views on the market and the business challenges they face on a daily basis.
Assessing both ‘Sales Expectations’ and that great intangible of ‘Confidence’ — both in the broader building sector and their own organisations specifically — we very much hope that you will find this to be an informative benchmarking exercise, setting your own experiences against a wider industry backdrop.
The regular monthly surveys that formulate The Pulse are building up a sizeable pool of data, allowing for greater analysis of emerging patterns and changes over the longer term. Already, with regards to the ‘Problems affecting merchants’, we are seeing some common concerns being referenced repeatedly — for example, squeezed margins and availability of supply — whilst ‘online competition’ can be seen as a growing issue, with 50% of merchants making reference to the digital threat in April rising to 67% in the latest findings.
With ongoing Brexit uncertainty clearly an underlying theme, other factors given by merchants include supplier price rises, slow payments and bad debt in addition to a lack of skilled staff.
To be clear, this is not a case of saying that the merchant market is currently a picture of doom and gloom; these are the responses to specific questions about ‘ranking’ the impact of what are typically constant challenges. We must also point out that many merchants cited in the survey are reporting increased confidence and increased sales.
Similarly, as presented in our News pages this month, the findings of the BMF’s latest KPI report indicate a resilient industry with a 9.9% increase in sales, “despite the economic and political uncertainty experience through the prolonged Brexit process”.
However, we feel it is incredibly important to reflect what merchants are telling us about the very real concerns they are facing, both in terms of daily trading and on a longer-term strategic basis. The Pulse, with the surveys and data collated by MRA Research, will be an ongoing series in PBM and our intention is to use its findings to help shape our editorial going forward.
As ever, we will also welcome your own thoughts, comments and feedback. Please get in touch via the usual channels.
“We feel it is incredibly important to reflect what merchants are telling us about the very real concerns they are facing, both in terms of daily trading and on a longer-term strategic basis.”
Over the last couple of issues, PBM has been implementing a replacement for the traditional paper ‘Readerlink’ enquiry card with a brand new service designed to provide readers with a much faster way of finding out additional information on the topics, articles and new products featured in the magazine.
Much of our editorial content now features a bespoke, shortcode URL — www.rdr.link — followed by a unique five-digit code. Entering the URL into your browser will take you directly to relevant, supplementary information on the item or topic you have been reading about — for example, videos, downloadable reports, technical guides, brochures, ‘bonus’ content on the PBM website and much, much more.
We hope you find this new service useful.
