Bristol-based Spandex is one of the leading suppliers to professionals in the signmaking and digital printing industries.  Employing over 700 people, the company specialises in the sales, distribution and support of practically all things sign and display-related.

Back in August this year, Gilde Buy Out partners announced the acquisition of the Spandex Group from Gerber Scientific by funds managed by Gilde and Spandex management.  Large Format Review attended the recently-held Open Day to discover more.

According to Leon Watson, Director of Sales and Marketing (Hardware) at Spandex, “It was becoming increasingly apparent that we didn’t really fit into Gerber Scientific’s plans going forward being a sales and distribution business.  Since the buy-out, Gilde has been incredibly helpful and is fully supportive of our growth strategy in terms of acquisitions and product portfolio additions.”

Customer-focused

Leon has been at the company for over 20 years and states that the customer-focused strategy that Spandex was founded on still remains intact.  “It’s very much a relationship-based industry and we need to be a business partner that our customers can truly rely on during these tough times.   We like to think that we are taking the uncertainty out of uncertain times for our customers, across all aspects of our business.”

Phil McMullin, Spandex’s UK country manager interjects, “In fact we have more than 200 customers that have remained loyal to Spandex for over 20 years.  We really listen to our customers and deliver what they need.  We believe our success is built on the classic ‘power of three’: knowledgeable staff, readily available product - delivered in a timely manner - and technical support as and when needed.”

Products readily available

At its UK headquarters, Spandex has a 3000m2 warehouse facility.  This houses over 25,000 products from industry-leading brands and at present serves more than 31,000 customers in 17 different countries.  It makes over 1 million next-day deliveries a year with a 99.4% successful delivery rate.  Leon says, “In effect, our warehouse has become our customers’ shelves.  They do not have the space or resources to store vast quantities of stock so we do it for them.”

Phil McMullin adds, “We’ve really focused on service levels.  We view our distribution business as being like a finely tuned F1 car.  It’s an impressive model, but there is always a way to fine-tune it to better serve our customers. In the back of our minds are the questions: what else can we do better?  What else can we offer?”

Over the years Spandex has invested a significant amount of money in an automated shuffle storage system that enables the company to offer a vast array of short metreage media across a huge range of products.

Knowledgeable staff

Since the buy-out, Spandex has renewed vigour and is focusing its energies on developing an even stronger product portfolio.  It also devotes incredible resources into training its staff.  Every employee taken on in the business has to have a thorough understanding of the products Spandex supplies and the applications they support.  No one is placed in a customer facing role until they’ve completed 3-6 months of in-depth training, depending on their role in the business.

Leon comments, “We aim to be a teaching and learning organisation.  Education is key to our success.  Our sales teams must be knowledgeable, reliable, consistent and able to advise our customers of the best solutions for specific applications.”

Interestingly, the company employs double the number of field service engineers than equipment sales personnel.

The future

The company appears to have the right backing and the business model in place.  To cope with the downturn in business that the global recession has inevitably brought, the company has had to make changes.  However, rather than decrease stock levels to help cash-flow, the company has actually increased them and whilst there have been cost-cutting measures, none of these have been at customer-touch points.

Spandex’ expansion plans for the future include the provision of more products and more services to more geographical regions.  Leon Watson summarises, “As a privately owned business, we now have more capital to invest in new products and we have the financial backing in place to expand geographically.  With regards to the future, do not rule anything out!”