Page 20 - HW August 2020

hard talking
The changing shape of
PlaceMakers
Next month will be a really big one for the big blue sheds. From 1 September, customers in the Garden City will be dealing with a unified “PlaceMakers Christchurch” and, soon after, PlaceMakers.co.nz will deliver an integrated and much enhanced e-commerce offering. What’s involved? Steve Bohling reports.
THIS TIME LAST year, post-conference 2019, Fletcher Building’s Distribution CE Bruce McEwen and I were talking in broad brushstroke terms about PlaceMakers’ plans for a hub & spoke style network and ful lment 24-7.
Back then, Bruce made no bones about the need for change: “People need to start realising that their world will change. e old everything-happens-in-our-local-branch mentality is going to change in our industry... It certainly is for us.
“If we don’t start thinking this way as opportunities present themselves ... we’ll just continue to perpetuate the past.”
Fast forward now to early August 2020.
With changes to the shape of both PlaceMakers’ branch network and its presence in the digital domain, we talk again about some of the fundamental shifts, this time in real, rather than abstract, terms.
A MORE EFFICIENT NETWORK
First, let’s look at the network changes that are afoot, starting with the Garden City.
With Antigua Street now closed and recognising the longstanding high degree of inter-branch cooperation already entrenched in the area, on 1 September 2020, PlaceMakers Cranford St, Hornby, Kaiapoi and Riccarton will formally become “PlaceMakers Christchurch” and will operate as a single unit.
at’s quite a change but, as Bruce McEwen explains: “We’ve been down this path a wee while but perhaps called it something else. We’ve always had parent branches and depots – for example Invercargill with Te Anau and Gore. Now we call that
a hub.”
Be that as it may, the new uni ed approach does require just a single leadership team.
In terms of Christchurch, says Bruce: “We’ve taken the best
from the existing teams to create one big team. Creating a hub is not about taking out heads,” he emphasises.
Instead, “It’s about creating e ciency for the customer through greater customer intimacy and the combined strength of the hub.”
So, from 1 September, PlaceMakers Christchurch is to be
led by a team of well-known, highly experienced and high performing individuals led by Hub Manager Grant Close, with Hub Sales Manager Charlie Longley and Hub Ops Manager Malcolm Ross.
PlaceMakers Christchurch is a mixed ownership model, with leadership having skin in the game rather than a JV set-up,
but Bruce McEwen is quick to reinforce that it’s not a “100% Fletcher-owned” operation, as has been rumoured.
“I think that the key enablers for us are still the same – it’s about having good people who are well versed in what they do,” he says.
“It’s about building capability for our customers and making sure that what we’re doing is for our customers’ bene t as much as for ours’. It’s got to be mutual and it’s got to be about convenience.”
at means enhancing rather than just retaining call-in locations, improved delivery service and more digital capability (of which more below).
Where to next for hub & spoke? Although, given the level of change involved, Bruce McEwen is understandably reluctant to look too much further out, he will let on that North Auckland is next for this hub approach, involving the Silverdale, Mangawhai, Whangarei and soon to be opened Warkworth stores.
is hub is to be headed up by Silverdale’s John Gair, and will mean a single salesforce but, unlike Christchurch, the physical separation involved in this area requires distribution capability at both ends of the hub area.
18 NZHJ | AUGUST 2020
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