Summary
• Wendy Trott became managing director of Timbmet in 2009.
• She spent 19 years with Hanson, latterly as Building Products commercial director.
• At Timbmet she has stepped up customer communication and marketing.
• Sales representatives have become area sales managers.
• Timbmet has continued to drive take-up of its iPack online trading facility.
• The company is backing Wood for Good, Timber Expo and may consider returning to The Timber Trade Federation.

Redundancy after 19 successful years at a globally renowned corporate might be seen as fair reason for a spot of despondency. But when Wendy Trott left multi-national masonry giant Hanson she and her husband took a trip to the Maldives. Then they spent a year building a house in France before she decided to get back into the jobs market.

You soon grasp that Wendy, 44, is not one to sit back, contemplate her navel and let the grass grow. That’s reinforced by the fact that a hobby is tearing round a racetrack on a 600cc Yamaha R60 superbike. It’s also underlined by developments she’s overseen in her first 18 months as managing director of one of the best-known names in the UK hardwoods, panels and timber products import and distribution business, Timbmet.

Probably one of the most senior management transfers from masonry to timber didn’t make much noise at the time.

“Maybe my appointment was kept low key in case it didn’t work out,” joked Wendy at Timbmet’s modern HQ on its former, now redeveloped Cumnor timber yard near Oxford.

Developments

Following her discreet arrival, however, she has set about making quite an impact. Her time there has seen Timbmet further develop its online trading model, a revamp of its sales structure, a refocus on merchant communication and support, and senior appointments in marketing and at its nearby Shellingford distribution hub.

She has also obviously brought her own management style to the business and, it seems, a reappraisal of its relationship with the wider UK timber industry.

Clearly her experience at Hanson has influenced her approach in her new post.

She joined the masonry giant in 1990 after training in accountancy and working for Next and engineering company TJ Brooks. The work environment, she said, was highly competitive. “You soon learned that, unless you spoke up, you were never going to be heard.” At the same time, she maintained, Hanson had a nurturing ethos.

“For a big company, they were very good at making you feel valued and put a big emphasis on training and developing your potential.”

The company’s commitment to employees learning new skills and exploring new roles led to Wendy herself migrating increasingly into business management, ultimately resulting in her appointment as Hanson Building Products UK trading director then commercial director. The responsibilities of the latter included integration of acquisitions and that led to her first experience of a managing director position.

“When we acquired Thermalite I was put in as MD for 18 months to oversee the integration process,” she said. “It made me think, yes, I would like to run a business.”

Wendy’s departure from Hanson, when it came, was down to the credit crunch and construction crash.

“Maybe I was naïve, given the severity of the downturn, but I felt I should take time to consider my next move.”

Company loyalty

Timbmet looked like the right step for several reasons. “Although Hanson are a publicly-traded conglomerate and Timbmet is a private family business, there is a similarity in culture, with a lot of loyalty and long-serving employees. I was also looking for an MD role and it was in construction products, where I could use my contacts.”

Wendy acknowledged that the early days in the new job were quite a learning curve. It wasn’t just a different product, but an entirely different market structure. “Hanson delivered one load to one customer. Here, given our wide customer base, one truck could make five or six mixed product drops a day.”

She decided her initial task was to review the broad shape, cost base and business approach of her new employer, rather than the products “because timber wasn’t my area of experience and Timbmet had plenty of people with a hell of a lot more expertise in it than me”. Consequently, one of her first changes was to align the sales team to the new strategy, making the sales representatives area managers.

“It’s a way of giving greater responsibility to the guys on the ground and incentivising them to maximise the return from their area,” she said. “Customers also seem to prefer having someone who’s strongly associated with their region.”

Customer visits

Wendy also tried – and still does – to visit customers herself as much as possible.

“I want to know what merchants feel about the business,” she said. “Bar the odd niggle, I’ve had positive feedback. Views of products, service and delivery are generally excellent. But I felt that we could communicate and support customers better, particularly on our evolving product range to meet market and customer requirements. Timbmet does so many good things, including offering exclusivity on products, such as our exclusive plantation-grown timber, Red Grandis, for instance, but not everybody knows about them.”

Among responses to these customer soundings have been more point of sale material and local marketing support, new product and merchant guides and quarterly merchant newsletters. Another was the appointment of Liz Richards, formerly with Sikkens, as marketing director. “I just felt we could do more with advertising and PR,” said Wendy.

Online ordering

Also a key focus has been driving take-up of Timbmet’s iPack online ordering system, trialled with bigger merchants in 2009 and relaunched last year for the wider market.

iPack enables customers to shop online from the company’s full timber and panels range at the www.ipack.co.uk website. Timbmet Engineered Components (TEC) doors and flooring can also be ordered, giving iPack a combined stock of £20m in more than 2,500 product lines.

“What sets it apart is that customers can specify what they want and iPack brings up the best packs and details what’s in them,” Wendy told TTJ at the time of the relaunch. “Merchants can use it to evaluate various product specifications and provide comparative costs for customers. They can also review old orders.”

iPack has been adopted by multiple and independent merchants, plus bigger manufacturers who take packs and, apparently, users “really love the system’s flexibility and efficiency”. “However, there’s a significant customer element which still prefers traditional trading channels and we need to persuade more of them of the benefits,” said Wendy.

The management ethos she brought with her from Hanson she describes as collaborative.

“I’m more inclusive than top down. I prefer people to be challenging and to have a debate, if that’s what gets us to the right conclusion.”

Industry involvement

She also sees potential for involving Timbmet itself more with the rest of the timber industry. The company is a Gold Sponsor of the new Timber Expo show in September and a confirmed supporter of Wood for Good which, she believes, “has great potential”.

“I don’t think it’s fully appreciated what a strong initiative it is and what a great story it has to tell, particularly on sustainability and the environment, which are issues with even greater resonance given the environmental focus of the London Olympics,” she said. “The perception is that other materials sectors are better at marketing, but I can vouch that masonry was seriously rattled by Wood for Good and launched the Modern Masonry Alliance partly in response.”

Wendy has also given due consideration to the fact that such a big name as Timbmet remains outside the Timber Trade Federation (TTF).

“We’re not ready to rejoin yet,” she said. “But I’ve had positive talks with [TTF chief executive] John White and can see us returning to the fold. It’s a question of timing.”

Wendy sums up her first 18 months at Timbmet as a very positive experience – but it’s clearly been hard work and there’s plenty left on the “to do” list. There are still “key appointments” to make and more product and service refining ahead to ensure both match “challenging market conditions”. She’s also wooing more contacts from her Hanson days to get them on to the Timbmet client list, including one particular timber specialist multiple.

Her full-on schedule has allowed the occasional escape to the house in France, but the Yamaha has been parked up for a while. Presumably a sign that the pace at Timbmet is less frenetic will be when she climbs back in the saddle and blasts off down the track.