Mackie Monday: An Overseas Update
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I thought this Monday I would take the opportunity to give you an update on our UK business, City Electrical Factors. Our UK branch network spans nearly 400 locations throughout England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland (a land mass approximately the same size as Florida….but with a few more people). CEF has approximately 14 percent marketshare in the UK and we are the third largest electrical wholesaler by turnover, behind #1 Edmunsons (CED) and #2 Rexel. At the beginning of the summer, I was able to spend six weeks in the UK, spending time with every section of the business. There are so many exciting things happening in the world of CEF as we continue to invest in our longest established market.
We are currently finalizing the design of a new state-of-the-art office building in Durham. This building will be the future home to our IT, web, and marketing teams, as well as a training facility for employees throughout the company. As these departments have outgrown their original homes, the teams have ended up in a number of disjointed spaces making collaboration challenging and ultimately reducing efficiency. As we move further into the digital age, the competition to recruit and retain top talent in the fields of IT, web and digital marketing becomes ever greater, as does the importance of these departments for our day-to-day branch life. I am pleased to say we currently have fantastic teams, but we must ensure we can continue to recruit top talent to support our branch and in-house teams and I believe this facility will play an important role in this effort. This is very similar to what we are currently doing in Dallas…read next month’s Mackie Monday for more details!
While in the UK, I visited our new Central Distribution Center, located in Buntingford, for the newly launched CEF B2B e-commerce platform. This platform allows account holding customers to place online orders on either local branch stock or the 28,000 SKUs we have stocked in our CDC for next-day delivery. The B2B team has done a fantastic job dispatching more than 50,000 orders since our launch in January, with the number of orders increasing each week. CEF can now offer a true multichannel experience to our customers throughout the UK. I truly believe this will be a major driver for our future growth in the UK market. Go to CEF.co.uk to check it out.
Another major driver of growth is our growing National Accounts department. This department assists our branch teams in dealing with large, national customers. This is an area we have been investing in heavily over the last few years and it is exciting to see the team continue to open the door to new business throughout the UK.
What better place to showcase these initiatives than at our bi-annual CEF company conference, CEF Live, which was held over two days at the National Exhibition Center in Birmingham in June. The event kicked off on Friday with our customer trade show. More than 1,400 customers visited throughout the day from across the UK. The exhibition hall was filled with booths from leading manufacturers, giving our customers the chance to engage directly with the manufacturers and gain insight into new products they have to offer. The following day we had more than 1,200 members of the CEF team in for a morning keynote, followed by an afternoon at the trade show. We wrapped up the weekend over dinner and drinks while sharing some laughs with our colleagues.
Thank you all for reading and I hope you have a great Labor Day weekend!