Plumbing Africa Plumblink's first hundred stores | Page 5

the dominant merchant in South Africa.
McFarlane says some aspects of the
business are centralised – group functions
such as creditors and human resources –
while others remain decentralised.
“As far as the product range is concerned,
it is not necessarily a democracy; but
stores and regions have a fair degree of
flexibility. Each region, for instance, has a
regional buyer to acquire the actual stock.”
One historical challenge was that local
stores would claim a certain product would
not sell due to local idiosyncrasies, but
when forced to stock it, McFarlane says,
“We found that 99.9% of the time it did
sell,” and this factor has instilled greater
trust over time as store staff have come
to realise their area was not as different as
they once believed.
the personal request of Yannick Lakhnati, a
Frenchman who has become a prominent
business turnaround expert, having
previously performed the same function
at Richemont and Rainbow Chickens.
Lakhnati, however, did not remain with
Plumblink for an extended period, leaving
‘farmer’ McFarlane to face down an often-
outraged customer base of plumbers.
One of the surprising successes of
Plumblink is the appointment of McFarlane
himself – with zero experience in plumbing
at the time; he joined the company straight
from the agricultural industry. He did so at “A lot of the old team were set in their
ways, and we wouldn’t have got the new
model right if they’d stayed in the company
being obstructive. The walk-out put us
The result of these changes, he says, has
been extreme longevity since, “Most of
the management level has grown up with
the company.” Unrecognised talent was
given the opportunity to grow, and external
appointments were made over time. Peter
Wilson (since retired) and Gary Chandler
were existing executives who remained
with the company, they were supplemented
on the Exco team by: Luvuyo Mgidlana
(operations director); Douw Wolmarans
(chief financial officer); Nick Cradock
(regional manager, Eastern Cape); Gareth
Vermaak (regional manager, Inland); Nicci
Henderson (regional manager, Western
Cape); Juanita Boshoff (National HR
manager); and Oswald Abrahams (National
IT and Marketing). Ashley Roberts is the
current KwaZulu-Natal regional manager.
The company previously made use of two
A revolution in plumbing supply “Fortunately, the basics of management
are common from industry to industry,” he
says. Existing senior management at the
time had a two-year contract, and with
Lakhnati’s change-management style being
to consciously ruffle feathers and take no
prisoners, they walked out en masse as
soon as their contracts expired. “Yannick
was a hugely dynamic person who was
brought in to bring about change. He had
an objective and he set about achieving
that change.”
in a predicament, but some key people
remained (and indeed remained a long
time) and we moved others around to cope
and adapt to the new plan. One of the
many steps we took was to meaningfully
incentivise management and staff.”
Plumblink’s Midrand distribution centre.
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