Executive Hire News › Archives › June 2009 › Profile: SHC Hire Centres : Model of success
Profile: SHC Hire Centres : Model of success
Having just opened its fourth depot, SHC Hire Centres' approach to doing business is proving to be a successful formula in the rural areas it serves. Alan Guthrie reports.
When we profiled Skipton-based SHC Hire Centres in our September 2002 issue, the company was in celebratory mood, having been named as Hire Company of the Year (Regional Multi Outlets) in HAE’s Awards of Excellence. It had also won in the Excellence in Customer Care category, and the business obviously showed a commitment to fulfilling its customers’ needs with the highest professional standards.
Back then, SHC had three depots, namely Ilkley, Ripon and the Skipton head office. Now it has just added a fourth in Northallerton, which was officially opened at the end of April, occupying a prime position on a new industrial estate. “We have a successful business model based on serving customers in rural market towns and the surrounding areas,” says MD Claire Gains, who founded SHC in 1981. “Northallerton is very similar to our other locations, in terms of the nature of the region and the many different types of potential customer there are, and we know it will prove positive for us through offering the same kind of products, service and support.
“We will emerge stronger”
“We had planned this extension to our offering as a strategic growth for the business before the economic downturn. Like others, we are weathering the recession, and our view is we will emerge stronger by sticking to our plans. The nature of the areas we serve means people don’t want to drive long distances to pick up and return hire equipment - they want a robust level of service on the doorstep, and that is what we provide. “People in rural areas tend to be cautious about who they deal with, and staff need to be able to build a strong business relationship with them. It’s quite different from an urban location where customers frequently chop and change between suppliers. We once opened a depot in Bradford but the customer profile was completely different and we soon had to close it - with hindsight it simply did not fit our business model. If you offer high standards of service and have staff who can give advice, answer questions and solve problems, then you will win people’s loyalty. We now employ 30 staff and our people are our most important asset. Some personnel have been with us since we started the business, giving them an unrivalled depth of knowledge and experience.”
SHC’s new Northallerton depot covers 4,000ft2, plus 15,000ft2 of yard space. “We have invested approximately £500,000 on equipment for the new depot,” says Nick Gains, Claire’s husband, who jointly runs the business. “We wanted to ensure we did it right from day one, showing people that we can provide what we say we can. Initially a new customer might just be ringing round for a price for an item like a cut-off saw, but when they see the scale of equipment we offer, they tend to be impressed. No-one else in the area can offer such a broad range from a single source.”
Broad range of equipment
Serving a rural area with a population that is both diverse and spread across a large region requires a commitment to offering a broad range of equipment with quick delivery. Besides items like Alto towers, Makita breakers and drills, Belle mixers and Wacker plate compactors, the fleet includes garden and grounds care products like Camon turf cutters and aerators, and Eliet shredders, as well as compact plant. SHC has also invested significantly in a variety of powered access machinery over the last 12 months, which again is offered at all four locations and includes products from Genie, Niftylift and Teupen. Previously, such equipment was cross-hired but demand from tradesmen, tree surgeons and other customers has made it necessary to add it to the main fleet, and the company says this helps to further differentiate it from the competition.
In addition, SHC offers a dedicated event support hire service providing items like tables, chairs, flooring, generators, catering equipment, lighting, heating and air conditioning. It also hires out marquees, and while these are held at a dedicated facility at the Skipton head office, each depot can provide customers with quotations for particular projects to avoid losing business opportunities.
Northallerton has a team of three staff, headed by Depot Manager Mark Lodge, who originally joined SHC as a driver at the Ripon branch, working there from 1995-2000. He left to take a position with a construction company and then a machinery dealership, which has given him experience of customer requirements across many different markets, and he is relishing the opportunity to get back into the hire industry again.
“The new depot is establishing itself well,” he says. “Small builders and tradesmen in the area who have tried us are returning to order more equipment and are opening accounts. People come back to us because they know we get it right, in terms of the equipment, delivery, price and backup. It is certainly proving to be a busy and varied environment: one minute we will be supplying a floor sander to a customer in the town, and the next we will be delivering a compressor to a contractor working on a site 15 miles away.
“From our location between the A1 and A19 trunk roads, we can serve customers as far north as Darlington, down to the outskirts of Ripon in the south of our region, and throughout the expansive North York Moors. There is always work being done by the National Parks staff, from tree felling and footpath maintenance, to ditching and drainage construction. We are local enough to meet their requirements quickly. Farmers are hiring mini excavators from us to build barns and undertake other tasks, and our range includes Takeuchi, Kubota and Volvo machines up to 5 tonne. In addition, our new premises are next door to a very busy builders merchant, which also incorporates a farmers shop and a garden centre, so we are gaining a lot of passing business. Our building and signage are unmissable from the main road.”
The list of guests attending the official opening of the new depot certainly reflected the company’s diverse customer base, including building contractors, house builders, quarry managers, local council representatives, roofers, carpet layers, waste contractors, farmers, landscapers and tree surgeons, amongst others. Given the breadth of its target market and the company’s commitment to service, SHC has no doubt that Northallerton will continue its success story. •
www.shc.co.uk
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