Summary
• M&M Timber operates in the agricultural, commercial landscaping, play equipment and garden products markets.
• It has signed up more than 300 independent retail garden centres in the last two years.
• It will now also distribute Hillhout products throughout the UK.
• A new sawmill will be built on site within the next 18 months.

Many people facing their 32nd Glee exhibition might be starting to show signs of jaundice, but Nigel Poyner, managing director of M&M Timber, couldn’t wait. In fact he was positively fizzing with excitement in the run-up to the event.

The Kidderminster-based machined round timber specialist has had success after success in recent years, selling more products and expanding its customer base, particularly in its key garden products area of business.

M&M operates in the agricultural, commercial landscaping, play equipment and garden products markets, but it’s the latter that has shown the strongest growth, now accounting for around 35% of the company’s £6.5m turnover. It has signed up more than 300 independent retail garden centres – its target market – in the last two years alone.

Big-ticket items such as gazebos and cabins are flying off the production line and into gardens, where they are assembled by M&M’s own teams. “We’ve had two teams of fitters out for six months and they’re doing six to eight buildings per week,” said Mr Poyner.

“Some are going to the domestic market, but we’re also seeing a lot going to schools as outdoor classrooms. We’re also working with The Canadian Spa company, which buys our buildings to put its spa pools in.”

The driving force that is the hugely energetic and enthusiastic Nigel Poyner is one reason for this achievement, but it’s also down to canny use of marketing, tactical pricing and constantly evolving product ranges.

Product development at the company is loose and organic rather than structured, tending towards the “back of a fag packet” design rather than the drawing board, and everyone in the 62-strong company is encouraged to share their “light bulb moments” and contribute ideas.

The company has developed a knack of homing in on the Zeitgeist – timing the introduction of new products to perfection. The trendy grow-your-own market is a case in point. “We’ve seen huge growth in garden products this year,” said Mr Poyner.

“For example, we’ve sold 22,000 of the veggie beds we launched at Glee last year – that’s around £300,000 worth of sales.”

Not surprisingly, the veggie bed range is being extended for the 2010 season and M&M has added timber and polycarbonate greenhouses to its offering. Cold frames – deluxe and economy models – herb troughs, potting sheds, and log stores – “we sell them every day, even through the summer” – and chicken coops are just some of the company’s response to the growing “Good Life” market. M&M has even been approached by one of its customers to produce pig arks.

These products, along with fencing, trellising, gazebos, arbours and planters featured on M&M’s 150m² stand at Glee this year – but there was more.

Adjacent to M&M Timber’s stand was a 60m² exhibit showcasing some of Outdoor Life Group’s high-end products. This marked the first public outing of a new alliance between M&M and the Dutch-owned company that will see the former distribute the latter’s Hillhout products throughout the UK and was part of the reason for the almost stratospheric level of anticipation in the run-up to the exhibition.

Company synergies

“There’s no clash between the products we make, but we’re both in the garden centre markets, so we’ll take over their customer base here in the UK,” said Mr Poyner. There are so many synergies that it’s going to be great for us and for the industry. Instead of the garden centres buying from both of us, they’ll have a one-stop-shop for M&M’s traditional range, exclusive Hillhout products, which are the Rolls-Royce of the market, and the Holgard range, which is more down to earth. We’re going to have a brilliant portfolio of products that no-one else has got and we’re really excited about it.”

This seize-the-day attitude is certainly one reason for M&M’s buoyancy in the high seas of recession, but it’s not the only business strategy the company employs to promote sales.

For example, at the beginning of the year, it introduced a “credit crunch trade price list”. “We have two suppliers of components and we asked them to reduce their prices. We could have just cut our buying costs, but instead we reduced our trade prices particularly on our star buys such as trellises, cottage arches, landscaping timbers and veggie beds, and passed them on to the trade.

“We could have increased revenue by putting the prices up, but we’ve gone the other way about it and said, its back to basics, this is what people want to spend on their gardens – and we’ve seen sales rise as a result.” The company has also taken measures to improve business by extending the service life of its products and investing in Osmose’s MicroPro copper preservative technology. In doing so it became one of the first UK companies to offer micronized timber products with a 15-year warranty, treated to BS8417.

The investment included the installation of a £125,000 kiln from Kiln Services with a capacity of 60m³ per charge. The accompanying operating technology has the muscle to cope with twice that, so there is plenty of room for growth.

“When we ordered the kiln it was a gamble,” admitted Mr Poyner. “We’d decided to go the micronized route with Osmose and install the kiln, not knowing if we could get orders for micronized timber. But over the last six months we’ve seen customers take on board the fact that they want a product with a proper warranty. It’s been particularly well accepted in the play industry.”

The company has been active in marketing the increased longevity of micronized timber products and believes this has played its part in securing more garden centre business. In fact, marketing is very much at the core of M&M’s success.

“We’ve had quite a bit of exposure on television this year,” said Mr Poyner. “Midlands Today ran a piece on our veggie beds and we’ve done two 60 minute makeover programmes with garden designer David Domoney, one of which has already been aired.

“We were also involved in the CBBC programme Beat the Boss where a team of three adults and a team of three children each had to design a piece of play equipment, which we then built. It was great fun and it was good exposure too.”

Project Woodpecker

Current output is between 350-400m³ of machine rounded timber per week, but as the marketing reaps its rewards and brings in more business, M&M Timber has plans to increase capacity in order to meet demand.

“We’re working on ‘Project Woodpecker’, which is a new mill to replace the old one on site. It’s a £1m project and will make us more efficient and enable us to increase capacity. It will also include a grading line, which we don’t have at the moment. We currently buy our round timber in to quite tight specifications, but that’s getting harder to do with modern processing in the woods.

“We’re looking at late 2010/early 2011 and all the design work is already complete, with the machinery being sourced from Brodbaek and Oswald. We’re just looking at planning issues and doing transport and ecological surveys at the moment”.

“We’re getting all our ducks in a row ready to push the button.”