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Fashion first

Fashion isn't all glamour but when it comes to getting the clothes in the shops, Prima Distribution is the firm to go to. Founder and managing director Ray Halford talks to CM.

ids cave Young The very model of a modem logistics provider, Prima Distribution's HQ near Crewe embraces all the services expected of a fashion clothing specialist — transport, warehousing and processing.

Yet if managing director Ray Halford — whose personality permeates every inch of the enterprise — were to try to start such a business today, he'd never achieve what he has done.

In these risk-averse times, the capital and statutory entry bars are often too high; the emphasis is firmly on management by graduate academics as opposed to a buccaneering, self-reliant spirit.

UK fashion transport — aside from massive multinational players — rather resembles the rock 'n' roll haulage sector. Each has at its core a small group of highly specialised companies set up by dynamic entrepreneurs prepared — in the early days, at least — to simultaneously compete and co-operate. Long-standing personal contacts and short lead—ins characterise this area of business where, as in many other areas of road transport, creeping consolidation is changing the ethos.

CM arrives to interview Halford an hour earlier than its 11am appointment—would he be in the office? The raised eyebrows of his staff show this to he a silly question. We find Ray, as he's known to all, covering the job of a holidaying employee and indistinguishable from the rest of his staff in a red Prima polo shirt. Throughout our entire visit. CM doesn't see anyone in a suit.

Tired but enthusiastic

Halford,52, has been on-site since 3am, when, worrying about his firm, he came into work. was concerned we had good people here who were getting bogged down, and I wanted to make some organisational changes," a clearly tired, but always enthusiastic Halford explains.

Throughout CM's walk around the large site — Halford spends little time in his office — he constantly deviates from discussion to praise the commitment and hard work of his staff. "Hard-working staff take the pressure off you. Most will give you 95%, but I've dragged 110% out of these people, that's why we're still here." Halford began Prima as an owner-driver in the early 1980s using his £15 dole cheque to buy a van. With nothing more than determination and sheer hard work and certainly not, according to him, an MoT, tax, or even windscreen wipers, Halford was delivering goods for a printer when the opportunity arose to carry bolts of cloth.

The rate was a £1 for each pickup in London's West End to be taken to manufacturers in the east and north of the capital. Halford could only get eight heavy rolls on at a time. He did several loads a day. running to drop fabric at factories.

At that time, the rag trade was dominated by Jewish entrepreneurs, so Fulham-born Halford was fortunate in having a sympathetic 'old-school' customer prepared to advance him earnings in order to keep his thirsty Transit in fuel.

At the same time others, including a young Mike Daly the industry eminence grise — whose legendary Daly Transport Services (DTS) was recently sold to the Clipper Group, and Gary Reece of Harvest Trucking, also started similar firms.

Reece was only partially sighted and needed a driver, and it was tenacity and hard graft that got them through the crucial early days.

The next step was the delivery of finished goods and Halford recalls fitting broom handles as makeshift rails in order to hold hanging garment (HG) consignments "We used to meet up each evening on the Caledonian Road and swap loads to make life easier," recalls Halford."Anyone going to Kent? Right, take this for me and I'll do your Essex: We never ever invoiced each other, everything was done on trust. My main competitors have always been my mates.A group of us worked together, picked up in London and delivered all over the UK. It was informal, but we were doing joint logistics before the name was invented."

Decent margin

Perhaps more than any other area of haulage, and certainly far in advance of many, fashion transporters soon realised that to retain customers and make a decent margin, they'd need to offer extra services, particularly as clothing manufacturing shifted overseas. Before the phrase 'adding value was coined, Prima and DTS were offering a range of services (see box, left), while Harvest eventually dispensed with vehicles altogether.

Halford has now been in fashion transport for more than 25 years, operating from an 8.5-acre site and 170,000ft2 warehouse (he calls it a "stockholding shed") centrally located for UK distribution close to a major customer's site near Crewe.

A booking office, finance, administration and customer service centre (run by co-owner Sally Halford, who helped build the business) is located in south London.

"Expansion has been financed largely from revenue," says Halford. The firm has only ever had one bank loan, now repaid. "I've always been concerned about overcommitment; there's only so much room in this marketplace," says Halford, who believes this prudent approach is helping Prima survive the current recession.

Spare capacity

"This year, we've had it hard, very lean. I doubt if we'll make a profit, but we won't make a loss," ventures Halford. That said, there's certainly spare capacity in his warehouse and processing space. "We should be getting busy in the run-up to Christmas," he shrugs, but room for rapid growth is a key element in Prima's demonstrable success in coping with fashion retailing's short turnaround periods.

"You have to be reliable and responsive to customers, that's how we've grown," he continues.

High-street trends can alter on the whim of a star's TV appearance, requiring ultra-fast lead-in times to meet consumer demand for similar clothes. One analyst estimates a three-week window of opportunity for copying the design of a dress, getting it manufactured (abroad) and into shops before the public loses interest, "There are no contracts in this business," says Halford. "[There's a] basis of trust; we've had the same customers over 20 years... You must be reactive to peaks in demand. Things in this business are constantly changing, you have to be re-examining it all the time."

Halford adds: -Customers often don't know what they want, but we're more than just a transport company." Factor in major infrastructural changes and this is a very tough marketplace, including increasing competition from giants such as DHL.

"There are virtually no pure fashion handlers left because of consolidation and diversification," says Ha'ford's former competitor Mike Daly.

-Added value services are becoming slightly less important," he continues,"but customers are increasingly interested in shared networks and reverse logistics."

Prima reflects this view, and Halford has deliberately diversified by joining a pallet network (Fortec) and specifying a unique type of truck bodywork that was built to his design by Finnish manufacturer Ekeri.

"All our customers have different delivery requirements," explains Halford. "Some want pallet, some want carton, some want hanging garments.

"Effectively, you have to run two fleets to handle it all. I thought that by adapting some of the features.., you could combine them in one vehicle with garment rails, but [also] fully folding sides to allow for pallet loading with more security than a traditional curtainsider."

Halford has cut the number of artic trailers from 60 to 35; he also runs 18-tonne (and one 26-tonne for the pallet network) rigids and Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans.

Since clothing cubes out before reaching maximum tare, Prima runs mainly 4x2 artic units, downplated to 32 tonnes in order to save tax. The largely Volvo fleet (there are also a few Renaults) has automated gearshifts, with all sourced on three-year R&M contracts.

'Fine' distribution

Halford is currently developing a concept referred to as 'Fine' distribution, "There are loads of parcel carriers, but only one does HG and boxes," Halford says, -Prima offers an alternative we use four regional partners in Ireland. Scotland, London and south-west England; cross-docking with the Crewe base as a consolidation hub."

His Fortec membership has also turned up trumps. -One fashion retailer spent a lot with a parcel carrier sending boxes to shops," Halford reveals. "By switching them to Prima, we can use Fortec members to collect and consolidate and have now been approached by a shoe retailer to tender."

To assist this process, Halford invested £160,000 in an AIMS warehouse software system; the idea is not so much to be faster as to reduce dependence on the knowledge and experience of any single individual.

The business one of the first to use Navman satellite tracking also boasts a comprehensive website (www. primadist.co.uk). don't know that it specifically gets us work," says Halford, "but it's like an online brochure, a good selling tool, a shop window to show what we do. Most work comes from word of mouth and repeat business."

Of the staff of whom he speaks so highly, many are Polish, and most 'home-grown' within the firm. Halford is prepared to give people a chance. CM encountered a female driver (currently relocated to the traffic office while pregnant), and a redundant factory worker, retrained only a year ago and routinely journeying to Paris. Up until recently, it was hard to get C+E drivers prepared to do the large amount of arduous handball involved in HG work, so Halford trained drivers up from vans via rigids the old-fashioned career path he followed.

There's a core of 100 staff and, claims Halford, a very low turnover to provide experience and continuity with agency workers bought in to cope with peaks in demand.

Halford hires people with industry-specific knowledge rather than logistics graduates to manage key sections. Transport management is undertaken by former drivers and, overall, the managerial hierarchy is almost horizontal.

-1 can easily delegate, I'm a great believer in letting people get on with it," claims Halford.

When CM put this to some of his staff, they simply smiled wryly. saying: "Ray never stops." •