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Profile: Toga Hire Centres Toga gets on its bike EHN visits Toga Hire Centres, whose London City depot recently won the Hire Network Award, and discovers the reasons for the company’s success. As you walk down the A10 Kingsland Road towards the London City depot of Toga Hire Centres, the first thing that strikes you is the sheer number of building projects and roadworks currently under way in just this small area alone. You can’t escape the orange and white barriers guarding gaping holes, traffic cones, polythene sheets and scaffolding. Before you even get through the front door of the depot, you start to get a picture of what the company has to deal with every single day working in the City. That’s without mentioning the nightmare of the £8 Congestion Charge for any company that has to deliver regularly across the capital. So when you see a pushbike in the window of the depot, decorated in the Toga red and yellow livery, you get an immediate impression of the stoical dedication that recently won this outlet the 2006 Hire Network Award. “You have to keep your sense of humour and perspective,” states Managing Director Russell Gould, “and the bike sums up our approach. If the customer needs a piece of equipment, we will do literally everything that is in our power to make sure it gets there.” Good service record Toga Hire Centres was formed in 1971 by Russell’s father, Barrie, and his business partner Jim Tobin. They had worked together on various construction projects and shared a poor opinion of the lack of service they had received from local hirers. The company’s distinctive name – a combination of the surnames of its two owners – and good service record soon became recognised in the east London area and Toga began to grow steadily throughout the 1970s and 80s, reaching an annual turnover of approximately £800,000. For much of that time, the hire depot was run by a succession of managers, Barrie Gould having become increasingly pre-occupied with his mainstream construction businesses and Jim Tobin having left the company in the mid-70s. However, whilst Toga was ticking over nicely by 1990, Russell Gould saw plenty of opportunity for further growth in the hire market. He became involved with the company full-time during that year. Hire Manager Marc Breen – still central to the day-to-day running of the London City depot – also joined soon afterwards, and is cited by Russell as being an essential ingredient in the company’s growth. “Outstanding service” Except for a brief dip in the company’s fortunes following the recession of the early 1990s, Toga Hire has been steadily growing ever since. The Hire Network Award judges referred to its “outstanding service, efficiency and willingness to go the extra mile”, but there is no sense of complacency within the business. Instead of blowing their own trumpet, they soberly recall how, around Christmas time in 2005, they took a good, hard look at the operation, fearing they were in danger of losing their way. “We are an easygoing but conscientious company at heart. It’s one of the reasons why we are popular with our customers,” explains Russell Gould. “But, as more new business started to come in, we began to struggle. We found ourselves doing an increasing amount of crosshiring and became reliant on suppliers that simply could not deliver the kind of service we always prided ourselves on. Both Marc and I felt that the team had lost some of its enthusiasm. We needed to change our style and boost our standards from the bottom up.” With this is mind, the Toga management set about implementing changes at the beginning of this year. Administration was moved to separate offices in Billericay and the order process was streamlined so that customers dealt with just one depot staff member, from order placement right through to collection. Toga also made the decision to virtually stop crosshiring on demand and, instead, invested in its own fleet. “The process is so much simpler now,” states Marc Breen. “If a valued customer needs a piece of equipment, we buy it. This empowers our staff to say ‘yes’ far more than they have to say ‘no’. The result is that we all feel more confident and passionate again about what we are doing, and our customers have commented on this.” The business now employs 26 staff and enjoys great loyalty from its employees, with even some of the drivers having worked there for more than eight years. On the back of the recent changes, its success is still rising, with the company’s annual turnover on course to exceed the £2m mark this year. Rather surprisingly, Toga’s Central London business accounts for less than 25% of the company’s income; it is the wider area inside the M25 that has proved a richer source of new business for the company, and Russell and Marc have spent the last three years building good partnering agreements with major construction companies working within that area. These relationships have been boosted by the presence of a second Toga Hire depot in Wandsworth, which opened in 2002. It helps to service the important southern area of London and the Home Counties. On-going projects involving equipment hired from Toga include the restorations of the Houses of Parliament and the Royal Academy of Arts, and the £35m refurbishment of the Young Vic theatre in Waterloo. Good business from the Hire Network One of the first independent hirers to join the Hire Network when it was founded, Toga continues to derive good business via the organisation and the two clearly have a sound working relationship. Barry Dean, Hire Network’s Managing Director, states that “London is a notoriously difficult area to work in, but Toga always tries its very best and gives us very little hassle. It is the simple things that count the most, such as knowing the correct mobile numbers for people on site, and employing knowledgeable drivers who are familiar with all the London pitfalls. All these things speed up the process and make our customers happier. We have noticed how Toga has pulled out all the stops recently and we believed that it richly deserved our Award.” Toga now plans to consolidate its success by continuing to invest in new tools and small equipment. Two of its most recent acquisitions are the Hilti DD130 specialist wet and dry drilling rig and a pressure washer made by the Wesley Group of Leeds, both of which are proving highly popular with customers. Toga also recently invested over £150,000 in Euro Tower access equipment and podium steps, which Marc Breen reports have been “flying out of the door”. The company also wants to expand its operations during the next few years and is currently considering a west London location to support a large potential customer base along the M4 corridor. Plans are also in place to extend the Wandsworth depot and Marc Breen states that Toga is exploring the possibility of opening a north east London site at some point. “We want to succeed, but we still want to enjoy what we do. We are as hungry as we have ever been, but have learned not to lose sight of what our customers need the most. We treat them in the way we would want to be treated, and we tell them ‘yes’ or ‘no’ within just a few minutes of their call. All our staff understand only too well the frustrations of dealing with poorly equipped companies and so we are always looking at things from the other side of the fence. That is how we work.” • T 0207 729 1471 Executive Hire News › Archives › October 2006 › Profile: Toga Hire Centres › Toga gets on its bike
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