Blue Rock

PVC Building Supplies have traded successfully in the Southampton area for 29 years. They have enjoyed an enviable reputation as a supplier of bathroom products and plumbing parts to the trade and a growing retail customer base.

The family run business was started in 1976 by Barry and Christine Wright who retired in 2002 following a take over of the company by Spencer Wright.

The business has grown year on year with the inevitable increase in operating costs. “When you are a small business it is quite easy to rely on people and manual routines to control the administration and stock levels within the business, but as we grew and the number of products expanded, we soon found ourselves swamped by paperwork and old stock” – Spencer Wright, Managing Director.

“The company had invested in a sophisticated computer system several years ago but, to be honest, we only used a small proportion of its capabilities. With the increasing burden of stock we felt that a natural solution would be to replace the system for one that would help control the levels of stock and point us in
the right direction in terms of buying. That’s when we met the guys from Blue Rock”.

Blue Rock’s consultants have a wealth of experience in helping small and medium sized distributors and merchants with their business systems. Their primary business activity is in the supply of new business systems to cater for the financial, selling, buying and stocking requirements. They also supply supplementary Business Analysis software that links directly into most standard business systems to provide enhanced sales and stock analysis.

“We contracted Blue Rock for an initial 10 days consultancy” continues Spencer. “In the first day they simply studied the business to ensure that they knew where we were going wrong and presented their findings back to us. It was obvious that our buying patterns didn’t match our customer demands and that
stock levels bore little resemblance to the requirements of the business. I guess we were making classic errors but found it difficult to identify until some one, like Blue Rock, could interpret the analysis of our existing systems”

“We are now 7 days into our original 10 and (after 8 weeks and a lot of hard work by the staff) the results have been outstanding. From our original stock valuation we have saved just under 15% in terms of stock holding without an impact upon the turnover of the business. We feel as though we are back in control and I can, for the first time, understand the processes that we need to deploy to ensure that the stocks are kept at an optimum level. We aimed to increase our stock turn by 2 and we are half way there in little under 2 months.”

“With the stock levels under control we will be looking to Blue Rock to help us in other areas of the business including, pricing and marketing – in fact we’ve already started the process”.

“Blue Rock quickly demonstrated that the resolution to the problem was not to replace the system but to use it correctly.” Spencer Wright, Managing Director, PVC