We like to think that since we started out in 1979 we have moved with the times and moved with our customers’ needs.
However, I can definitely say that it is the investment in the right sort of online marketing in the past couple of years that has pulled us into hundreds of new products, various new market sectors and offering great new services. We have changed more in the past three years than we did -or possibly needed to -in the previous 30 or so years. We were once simply Forestrall Ltd (a company name we acquired on the cheap because someone had registered it but never used it) and we are now Forestrall Timber and Fencing Merchants but we are also TimberClick London and South East.
This in itself shows how our industry is changing, especially at our level. We are an online business as much as we are a timber merchant with a yard full of timber products. We use social media to talk to our customers and people really do listen and interact with us.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that your average timber consumer tends to use their PC/laptop or, more commonly as every day passes, their smartphone, to research the best places to find the exact product they are looking for near to where they are based or working, whether it be a special mortice type galvanised bracket to repair a timber arris rail going into a morticed concrete post or a certain dimension, colour and length softwood railway sleeper.
For those of us that are harnessing the power of search engines like Google and taking the time to list all the products we hold on our websites, a customer for these products will suddenly appear at the trade counter out of the blue with credit card in hand. This customer may have printed off a section of your online brochure and knows exactly what he/she is going to pay you with no time wasted in price haggling! You may be the only place they’ve found locally stocking a product for which they’ve searched high and low. Isn’t that a great feeling?
Even better still is playing eavesdropper near your trade counter and hearing what your customers are expecting you to stock but that you don’t. My rule is if I hear a product mentioned by four or more different customers and it could easily fit with our stock profile then I’ll introduce it to the range. Simple…
There are some wonderful innovators working in the timber and fencing industry, expanding timber’s presence as a building/landscaping solution provider but there is room for so many more! I’ve tasted a bit of this innovation and it tastes great. I will be doing more of it. Everyone should, whatever their circumstances.
Now, if we could only find a clever group of scientists to guarantee us a lovely British spring and summer each year we’ll have really cracked it.
