When local businessmen Lee Appleby, Chris Barnes and Russel Millar acquired Colchester-based G&M Plumbing & Heating in June 2023 they immediately set about transforming it into a showroom-focused operation – Appleby tells Tim Wallace the full story.
Q: How did the takeover come about?
A: The business came up for sale. The previous owner had fallen out of love with it for personal reasons. I’m a partner in another local business called Cube Installations and I was a customer of my fellow director Chris Barnes, a former salesman at Graham Plumbing. We’d been talking about business opportunities. He’s been in the industry for 25 years and I have plenty of installation experience. I know how to run a business but I’m not a retail expert. Chris brought some of his customer base with him and it was an instant sales win.
We’ve also taken over another local business – Sinks & Taps Superstore – so it’s become bigger than we planned, but you have to take the opportunity when it comes along. It wasn’t a broken business – it just needed investment.
Q: How much money have you put in?
A: About £120,000 into the showroom, but £300,000 overall. The former business was doing £970,000 a year. Our first year we did about £1.5m. This financial year we’re 16% up. It’s all going in the right direction although there’s been a dip since March.
Q: You’ve also partnered with The IPG, which supports independent businesses. How much of a benefit has that been?
A: I was sceptical but it’s proved to be a good move. In their eyes we were doing OK but now we’re in their highest band. They make sure we’ve got good purchasing power and have about 250 members so it’s a big group. We get financial benefits, rebates etc. We dual brand with them now as ‘G&M supported by IPG’.
Q: What brands do you supply?
A: Roman, Matki, Coalbrook, Merlyn, Roper Rhodes, Geberit, Roca, Hansgrohe…. so most of the mid- to top-end brands. We try to offer products exclusive to showrooms.
Q: How would you sum up your business model?
A: Some will remember G&M as a great trade counter with a pretty much non-existent showroom. But now people tell us it’s like walking into a new business. We’ve changed the original brand mix by about 50-60%. We have about 3,000sq ft over 2 floors. The trade counter is downstairs and the showroom is on the first floor.
What we agreed from the beginning was to look at what we’re selling and whether it holds its place in the business. We tell suppliers to challenge us and tell us what sells and what we should be displaying. We also do small developments of 5 or 6 houses, but that’s just a few percent of the overall business.
Q: Is there an e-commerce side to the business?
A: No but we do SEO, advertise in a couple of trade magazines and have quite a bit of social media presence.
Q: But you don’t intend selling products online?
A: I’ve talked to other retailers and they have mixed views. I’d consider it but it’s a fairly chunky investment and the logistics are difficult. We do offer zero percent finance though, really to try to focus on the younger demographic. I would never say never to e-commerce, but I’d have to be convinced that there’s a return on investment and we could handle it. We looked at it and decided it doesn’t do a lot in the bathroom showroom sector.
Q: Is online discounting a frustration? Even Hansgrohe is on Amazon now…
A: Yes and it devalues the product. It’s worse on the trade counter side. People will sometimes have been burnt because of quality or delivery issues. On Saturday we had 3 people who bought from a trade counter and had bits of their bathroom missing. They would never buy online again. They buy it because it’s £30 cheaper and when it turns up it hasn’t got the waste so they end up spending more. By selling mid- to top-end products we don’t get hit by the online prices. A fair few say they come to us for the knowledge.
Q: And you also offer installation?
A: We use our sister company, Cube, so it feels like it’s all under one roof. We do 20-25 installs a year. We don’t push it on our advertising because we have a big trade base of customers. Some are heating engineers and bathroom fitters and we don’t want to be seen to be taking their work – it’s a fine line
Q: How much growth do you expect from the showroom side?
A: It’s taken us a year to get onto page 1 of Google. The business was 80-90% trade driven – it’s more retail now but tradesmen have started sending their customers in. We have lifestyle settings, we even have scented diffusers, music, plants, soaps and accessories. Most of our customers say the showroom knocks spots off other stores in the area. Having a car park is another big benefit.
Q: What are the popular trends right now?
A: Mostly the colours – brass is absolutely flying. This time last year it wasn’t and we were almost at the stage of taking it off. This year we can’t get enough brass shower surrounds and Atlanta furniture.
Q: Sum up what you’ve learned from the takeover?
A: We probably underestimated how much we’d have to invest to bring the business up to where it needed to be. We budgeted a lot less than what we ended up spending, but apart from that I have no regrets. I wouldn’t change anything, even the name.
