Summary
¦ Whitmore’s Timber and Smee Profiles are aiming for £20m turnover in five years.
¦ Smee Profiles’ and British Wood Floors’ warehousing and factory in Cheshire cover 30,000ft².
¦ The companies’ annual kilning capacity is 4,000m³.
¦ Whitmore’s Leicestershire site covers 20 acres.
¦ Whitmore’s trunks two artics of timber to Smee Profiles weekly.
Stitching together two halves of an elephant would be a procedure too far even for the BBC’s bionic vet. But that’s what the task of bringing together Whitmore’s Timber Co Ltd and Smee Profiles Ltd is compared to by their managing director Richard Stoneman.
Forming a cohesive joint enterprise from two such long-established companies and marrying their distinctive product ranges and brands has not been easy.
“And we’ve inevitably had to make some tough decisions,” acknowledged Mr Stoneman.
However, he said, despite its complexity, the operation is proceeding well and the integrated business that’s emerging will be “in good shape to battle recession and capitalise on recovery”.
Whitmore’s and Smee Profiles have, in fact, been under the same ownership for a decade, but until now retained separate identities.
One of the best-known names in hardwood and veneered decorative mouldings and furniture components, Smee Profiles previously traded through Smee Timber Ltd. The latter was formed by Michael Smee 36 years ago as a hardwood importer, sawmiller and distributor and covered the range of temperate hardwoods, with American species a specialism, but dealt mainly in West African logs.
“It was one of the few UK companies still importing the big tropical logs, shipping dry and cutting and kilning them itself,” said Mr Stoneman.
On the back of the growth of this business, Mr Smee launched Smee Profiles Ltd in 1992, then added solid hardwood flooring producer British Wood Floors to the group in 2001. The latter was another logical extension, with Smee Timber providing its raw material and Smee Profiles undertaking the manufacturing.
Smee’s Winsford site today stretches over 17 acres. Storage and production facilities cover 30,000ft², and the modern kilning plant has annual capacity of 4,000m³.
The mill hardware includes Raimann multi-rips, five Weinig planer/moulders, a CNC machining centre for curved mouldings, a Taylor laminating press and a variety of classical machines, all kept impressively dust-free by £300,000 worth of extraction system put in a few years ago. The latter, in turn, feeds a biomass boiler which, besides providing heat for the kilns, shrinks the site’s costs and carbon footprint.
Spectrum of species
Whitmore’s operation 96 miles away in Claybrooke Magna near Lutterworth, is equally striking. Dating back over a century, the importer/distributor bills itself as an English and Continental hardwood, and particularly an oak, specialist. But it too covers the spectrum of tropical species, from abura to zebrano, and since importer GR Wiltshire became part of the business a decade ago, has also been a leading player in marine timber.
Mr Stoneman joined the company in 2000, the same year it was acquired by Mr Smee.
“I previously managed a small estate sawmill and when I first saw Whitmore’s 20-acre site, the big air-drying oak boules and beams and the warehouses full of hardwood from around the world, I thought ‘this is a proper timber business’,” he said.
Most of Whitmore’s stock is bought in KD, but it also imports logs, which are cut to spec and kilned. In addition, it vacuum kilns ready-seasoned timber and offers air-dried material too, notably pippy oak.
A particular focus at the company is grading.
“Customers include really high-end furniture makers who expect to get precisely what they specify. So grading is key and we’ve built up tremendous expertise,” said Mr Stoneman. “Our chief grader Stephen Clark can smell the grade!”
When Whitmore’s first came under the same umbrella as the various Smee operations, the size and structure of the market meant it made sense to operate independently, even to fight for the same customers. Why it makes more sense in 2010 for them to dovetail activities, said Mr Stoneman, is due to several factors. One is the contraction of UK furniture manufacturing, which has made life intensely competitive for suppliers.
What Whitmore’s marketing manager Robert Weighill describes as the “disintermediation” of the timber supply chain also called for a new approach.
“The previous structure, with agents, importers, distributors and merchants performing clearly delineated functions, has broken up, so you’re serving a different range of customers who want different products and services,” he said.
Product packages
The evolution of the market has also created added incentive to offer product packages, said Mr Stoneman. “It’s clearly advantageous for us to sell more to each customer and the increasingly competitive climate has made sourcing from fewer suppliers more attractive to them as well.”
He acknowledged that the recession provided another spur to reshape the business, while Mr Smee’s decision to restructure his business portfolio and step down as managing director further focused thoughts on future strategy.
“Michael decided the time was right, both for the business to change and to hand over the reins,” he said.
Having been general manager of Whitmore’s from early 2008, since when a strategy of supplier rationalisation and increasing stock turn has significantly increased profitability, Mr Stoneman was clearly the logical choice to succeed as managing director of the overall business and lead the restructure.
The first and “most brutal” change was for Whitmore’s to take over Smee’s hardwood import, distribution and merchanting business – effectively absorbing Smee Timber Ltd.
“That involved 16 redundancies which was painful, but had to happen,” said Mr Stoneman. “While we’re maintaining timber distribution to the north-west at Winsford, Whitmore’s proximity to the M69, M1 and M6 makes it a much better national hub. And that ties in with becoming increasingly just-in-time oriented and our introduction of regular distribution runs to specific regions to increase delivery options.”
Where the Smee name lives on, of course, is in Smee Profiles Ltd. “It’s such a respected brand in the profiles market and the company sells to manufacturers who wouldn’t necessarily know Whitmore’s, so it made sense to retain it,” said Mr Weighill. “The same applies to British Wood Floors in solid timber flooring, so we’ve kept that name too.”
While retaining these different company identities, however, their two sites now operate hand in glove. Whitmore’s has effectively become timber supplier to Smee Profiles and British Wood Floors and now trunks two lorries of sawn wood and logs a week from Claybrooke Magna for them to kiln and process at Winsford, plus stock for Whitmore’s north-west customers.
On the return journey, the artics carry machined products for sale under Whitmore’s forward thrusting revamped ‘W’ brand. Backed by the slogan, “More than simply oak’, this now covers machined MDF components, engineered timber, cladding and decking, as well as oak and other hardwoods, clear softwoods, constructional and marine timbers (with the latter also sub-branded GR Wiltshire).
“We also now have hardwood and veneer-wrapped MDF profiles made by Smee under the Whitmore’s label,” said Mr Stoneman. “We sell these to customers ordering under 250 linear metres. Over this, they’re sold purely as Smee Profiles.”
Whitmore’s offers flooring too, he added, but this is an imported engineered product, so doesn’t clash with British Wood Floors’ range.
As hoped, the integration of the two operations has rapidly led to more product package sales.
“We can now present ourselves as true timber ‘solutions’ providers, rather than suppliers of individual products,” said Mr Stoneman. “For instance, where someone is building a porch, we’ll offer fresh sawn beams, sarking board, western red cedar cladding, even cleft oak pegs and, if it’s enclosed, we can supply the flooring and profiles too.”
Another step in developing this cross-selling synergy has been the creation of a single nine-strong nationwide team of area sales managers to handle the entire Whitmore’s and Smee range. They are a mix of personnel previously either devoted to one business or the other, so needed some retraining for their new roles.
“But the approach is working well,” said Mr Stoneman. “And, as part of the solutions-oriented strategy, the sales force is supported by product experts in the office to advise customers further on specification.”
Future focus
Mr Stoneman and his management team are now reviewing the next steps for developing their business. These include expanding in clear softwoods, capitalising on growing use of marine timbers for decking and other garden products, and extending bar code-driven stock and delivery management to more of Whitmore’s timber range. New customer relationship management (CRM) software for the whole operation is also on the cards, as is an increase in the range and output of veneered MDF profiles at Smee, plus further improvement in Whitmore’s stock turn.
All this forward thinking is not to say the integration process is done and dusted – a busy whiteboard in Mr Stoneman’s office emphasises that – but it demonstrates his conviction that they’ll get there. In fact, he’s forecasting that in five years the combined operation will be a “real force to be reckoned with” turning over £20m.
The main reason for his confidence is that, after going through a “bruising time”, the personnel at Whitmore’s Timber and Smee Profiles have really bought into the concept of working as a co-ordinated unit under the motto “two companies, one team”. The topic prompts a return to Mr Stoneman’s elephant analogy.
“Everyone now appreciates that the tail needs the trunk and the trunk needs the tail,” he said.
