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The only way is up

16th August 2012, Page 10
16th August 2012
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

It might be coat-wearing weather in Bradford, but Advanced Supply Chain boss Mike Danby won’t let rain stop his ambitions. The West Yorkshire haulier will be a £100m-a-year business by 2017, he tells CM

Words: Christopher Walton / Images: Gabriel Szabo, Guzelain

MIKE DANBY, chief executive at Advanced Supply Chain in Bradford, has some pretty ambitious targets for his company. He believes that in the next ive years he can transform the one-time hanging garment haulier from a £25m annual turnover company to a £100m one. CM doesn’t normally take such boasts at face value, so went up the M1 to Bradford to ind out if Danby is full of – shall we say – it?

Firstly, Danby is an accommodating individual. On learning that CM would be in the area, he comes into the depot despite being on his holidays. He’s happy to get stuck in making tea and coffee and he spends twice the amount of time with us than we’d booked in – including a full tour of the depot.

But we are not easily lulled into a false sense of security. “Our next 12 months will see us do £40m turnover, give or take,” he explains. “That is broken down approximately to £20m in transport, £15m in warehousing and £7m or £8m in garment processing. In the last two years we doubled our turnover, and the two years before that we doubled our turnover. To do £100m we need 25% compound growth and we have been doing more than that in recent years.” These are the kind of numbers your average haulier could only dream about. So how can he achieve such growth in a UK market that’s currently in recession? His answer is “because we are good” . He goes further: “We are competitive because we have our own inhouse IT. And it doesn’t cost a fortune. This means we have a suite of software that can do everything from freightforwarding from China to two-man delivery to Joe Blog’s door and everything in between.

The winning solution

“When we get a new customer we can make this software bespoke to them and they feel like they get a solution for what they need. It has taken many years and many millions to do all the software, but once you have got it, you have got it,” he says. “If you want to know one of the main reasons why we are winning, then this is why we are winning.” Now we are getting to the bottom of his claims. Advanced Supply Chain is thinking on the edge of haulage and logistics. It is introducing processes for its customers, such as retail chain Macro which it handles out of its Bradford DC, that it has the ability to tailor and up-sell. To put it simply, it isn’t really a haulier any more, no matter how many fully loaded trucks you have to drive past waiting to get into the yard.

“Secondly, you have to have good people, and you need good training to get good people to deliver. It’s not rocket science, but it’s hard,” Danby adds. “You have to have a base and something to sell. And you have to have good equipment. The oldest unit we have out in the yard is ive years old and that is because it hasn’t done many kilometres. Usually they are gone after three years. Why do we do this? Because new stuff is reliable and customers like it. And it is cheaper. The policy is all the best kit,” he insists. Advanced’s leet is all contract leased.

Doing all the hard work

Danby’s goal is to transform Advanced into the type of operation that can do everything for its customer. No longer is it a traditional garment haulier, moving hanging items (although it will still do that for customers if that is what they require). He wants to sell Advanced as the complete service to its customers.

“Just talk to us and we will do it all for you. Each element of our service proba bly costs approximately the same as everybody else’s. There can’t be much in it as nobody makes any money. But the savings are to the customer. They don’t

have to have someone managing the ▲ Advanced Supply Chain chief executive Mike Danby

freight forwarding, and someone managing the warehousing and someone managing the trucking.

“We can do it for you. Do the deal with us – and some of your readers are not going to like this – but a lot of that internal cost comes out,” he says.

Danby believes the reason he can be so candid with his growth plans for the company is because it is “really hard” to get to the stage where such claims can be made – and it is the “doing it” that is hard.

He won’t reveal speciics, but he says he has chucked pots of money at expanding and developing the operator to a £25m-a-year business, which now has a platform to grow further.

An uncomfortable position

Achieving Danby’s growth targets will push Advanced outside the bracket of a mid-sized operator into competing with the bigger boys – Maritime Transport, for example, did £108m in its last set of full year accounts: “We are mid-sized now and I just don’t like it,” he says.

“It is a very uncomfortable position. We are different now. If we stand still we will get caught up and overtaken. Where we are now we have got to get bigger, or it will just get harder for us.” Many hauliers are ighting to just stand still as turnover and proit growth is harder and harder to come by.

Danby says they must ask the question: “What are you doing that is any different to anyone else? If you are just a trucking company, I will tell you now you are in trouble.

“I am sure people who run just a trucking company are doing it really well and they are ace, but if customers come to us we are responsible for their stuff end to end. It is quite compelling.”

Many hauliers may not like it, but Danby will have to prove year after year that his plan is compelling. n

Avoiding risks

Earlier this year Advanced signed a deal with bathroom retailer PlumbWorld, which imports products from China and needed an operator to store and ship the product. With the bathroom parts all delivered to the customer’s site in one movement it is vital that every component is in the shipment, because a missing washer means a customer cannot have a bath when the fitter thinks he is finished.

Equally, the kind of products involved in a bathroom – ceramics, mirrors, etc – cannot simply be wrapped on a pallet and thrown around a pallet network from partner to partner. Advanced runs a two-man, white-glove operation for PlumbWorld.

“We manage the factories in China. We collect and consolidate on to containers for them. We ship the containers on whatever route. We do the inbound paperwork for them. We receive it into our warehouse bonded and hold it bonded. When the stock goes out, we automatically clear that stock out of bonded via Customs and Excise.

“We put it on our trucks and vans with white gloves and take it to the house. If anything goes wrong PlumbWorld only has one place to look, and that is us,” explains Danby.


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