Professional Builders Merchant

Looking back at some of my articles it would be reasonable to assume that much of our work centres on new-builds. Whilst we are, indeed, regularly involved with clean-sheet, new-build, developments this is actually the exception rather than the rule as history, building availability and costs frequently require businesses to make use of a wide variety of existing buildings. In theory, new-build is easier but a blank sheet of paper can be quite daunting — as can be the wide number of options which can present themselves in such situations.

Existing premises, meanwhile, reduce the options and can impose significant restrictions on developments. Conversely, these issues can make the project more interesting to work on — requiring more ingenuity and lateral thinking to achieve the desired effect. What follows is a selection of some of our more ‘unconventional’ conversion projects:

The bakery

One amusing combination was an independent that was trading out of an ex-bakery building which we developed as a drive-through warehouse by removing the original office / trade counter sales area and transferring this element of the business to an adjoining, previously unused building. This enabled a quantum leap in profitable trade collection and PDIY¹ sales, which was very useful but soon put pressure on the limited yard area for the heavyside element of the business.
Fortunately the site to the rear became available and the buildings on the two sites were actually attached to each other as well as providing significant additional yard area. This site was acquired which enabled a serious extension of the drive-through facilities, plus space in the yard for 14 large, loose sand and aggregate bays as well as an area to stock an extensive range of bricks; adding two further CTFs² to the offer.
The punch line is that the additional building had been a bacon factory which seemed particularly relevant to MBMs³ — bacon butties anyone?!

The tannery

Similar to this, we did a job for an independent up in the North West, converting a Tannery for a timber-biased independent merchant. Apart from the smell, the main problem was a series of channels which were intended to catch and direct blood to collection chambers — delightful! The sloping floors and gullies had to be levelled to enable the safe installation of storage racking systems.
Apart from that, it was fairly straightforward and the smell gradually disappeared, being taken over by the much more pleasant smell of freshly machined timber.

Walking Stick Factory

Perhaps the most unusual premises was an old textile mill building in the South West which had eventually become what was reputed to be the largest walking stick factory in the world! Whilst such buildings are very attractive, they are not ideal for a merchant as they usually have a ‘forest’ of cast-iron columns supporting the various floors. This makes the application of modern storage and handling techniques rather difficult, although — with a bit of ingenuity — they can be the basis for an interesting and effective lightside sales area.
So this project set out to do the latter and solve the bulk storage problem with the addition of a modern, crinkly-tin, warehouse and the introduction of some racking systems to the yard area which lead to the creation of an effective and interesting operation.

Farm Barns

More recently, we were involved in making best use of some farm buildings to develop a merchant site. As you can see from the pictures, they are not quite the best shape buildings for warehousing given that the internal eaves height comes down to a little over 2.5m.
Given the dimensions it was necessary to look in detail at the range and stock volumes that needed to be stocked, then be a bit creative in terms of handling and storage systems. The centre building accommodated the office operation, trade counter and self selection lightside area which had previously been fitted out with ILS⁴ shelving to create a macho trade image.

Given we needed to take up as little space as possible with materials handling, the obvious solution was a combination of FWRT⁵ and LBH⁶. The elevation drawing of ‘Warehouse A’ shows this with a combination of narrow aisle fork truck for pallet and cantilever racking, plus pedestrian loading for the timber in A-frames. Also note the upright ‘pins’ on the lower cantilever arms which effectively convert them into a pigeon-hole rack which can be used for ‘long floppy things’ like uPVC fascias, allowing them to be drawn off from the end.

Warehouse C is just based on an FWRT5 narrow-aisle operation with racking varying in height to suit the roof slope — this required detailed ‘merchandising’ calculations to ensure accommodation of stock ranges and volumes.

The net effect was a big increase in sales of all products across the range with sales in timber and sheet materials having “increased massively”. More new customers were attracted because of the ability to stock and display a larger range of goods much better than before, with the feedback from customers and suppliers being very positive.

This response to the improvements in the operating model have led to the desire to work on plans to further develop the site, particularly in relation to the improved sales and credibility in relation to timber products. There is some further space behind the pictured complex which includes an ancient ‘tithe barn’! There is no intention to mess about with this wonderful piece of ancient timber engineering, but there are a couple of rusting old corrugated iron sheds across some further hard area which could be removed to be replaced by something more useful to add a really credible timber department to the trading model.

It is probable that the most cost-effective option will be rack-clad, using a combination of roofed cantilever for carcassing, sheltering integrated A-frames and APR⁷ for timber products. I’ll get back to you with an update on this project in a future article.

So, anybody got a weird and interesting building to work on?!

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