MKM Building Supplies is the largest independent builders’ merchant in the UK and among the country’ s top private companies. Providing building, plumbing and timber supplies to customers in the trade and the general public, it is growing fast and now has 47 branches and 1,100 employees, with a target of 76 branches by 2020.

The company’ s revenues last year were in excess of £ 280m- not bad for a business that never planned to have more than one branch. MKM’ s success has been put down to two factors: a focus on customer service and its unique business model, which sees every branch director taking an equity stake in the business. It is this business model, so MKM believes, which inspires a better performance.

The branch directors are usually locals – most have lived in their local area for at least five years. They know and look after their customers, and make a point of trying to accommodate the sometimes tricky demands as builders’ shuttle relentlessly between one job and another.

Listen to customers

As a founding member of MKM, Linda Clarke has 26 years in the builders’ merchant industry and is well placed to chart the company’ s growth. She said:“ I was there at the beginning. I initially worked as a consultant to help start the business and had previously worked at Harcros( which became Jewson) where MKM’ s current chairman and co-founder, David Kilburn, also worked.”

Linda came from a background in retail and was able to transfer some of its customer-savvy principles to MKM.“ In those days, businesses like ours didn’ t treat the customers as individuals- they treated them as a single group called‘ builders’. We’ ve found that listening to our customers’ unique needs is critical. We do a lot of customer surveys and find out what they want, what other products they are buying, and where they are buying from.

“ Now, our customer relationships are better than anyone else in our sector. We outperform our competitors by always going the extra mile. Our whole team has a great relationship with the customer base – we run various events

at branches like curry nights, new product launch nights and we run loyalty schemes to deepen these relationships.

“ We also run lots of breakfast mornings. Some builders even start their day’ s work at our branches- almost like a club- with bacon butties, free coffee, the newspapers, and the TV news.” Those customers include everyone from professional tradespeople to regional contractors and developers, with most of the business around repair, maintenance and improvement( RMI) rather than new build.“ We see ourselves as a one stop shop with a difference – the difference being we have a product expert in all main product areas,” said Linda.

“ We stock 3,000 products in store with a further 10,000 products displayed online and we can source any products we don’ t have in stock. Essentially, we supply everything that goes into a building project.”

Freedom to trade

The idea behind calling senior colleagues branch‘ directors’ is to give them the status they deserve. Linda said:“ These guys are really motivated. In some cases, they can be running £ 10 million- £ 12 million businesses. We give them freedom to trade within a very clear framework. They are managing directors of their own businesses. We only get involved with the branch if they need support. It works because

we never have to advertise for branch directors – they come knocking on our door.

“ We try to take away the headaches for them. Credit control, IT, marketing, procurement and accounts is all done centrally so the branch directors can focus on the customer. The national chains also centralise these functions but the difference is that they also take away the local decision-making.“ Our branch directors have control over most local decisions, including recruiting. They even get to choose their own cars rather than having to choose from a fleet. We try to be responsive too. If someone wants a new truck and they can justify the expense against sales, our fleet structure