BAGMA Cover: GGM Groundcare

GGM Groundcare have been supplying garden and grounds maintenance machinery for over 40 years. The company current has two bases in the Northwest of England at Haydock and Colne. GGM Groundcare supplies leading brands of machinery such as Kubota, Baroness and Husqvarna into these areas. Chris Gibson, managing director chatted with us about the business and the exciting progression of their sister company PSD.

1.    Tell me about the business? What is your role and when did you come into the business?

“Let’s take you right back to the beginning where the roots of the business began, which is in the 19th century. My great, great, great grandfather ran his own village blacksmiths in Melling, north of Lancaster

This was the beginning of our involvement in machines and from there it carried on from generation to generation, so our history goes back a very long way. In the 1970’s and 1980’s my father was instrumental in developing the business into a multi depot, Massey Ferguson business. In 1976 we purchased the business which at that point was based in Ramsbottom in Kirkham.

At this time my father became the first person to sign up with Kubota before they had their UK base established. Kubota remains one of our core brands today.

In the year 2000 we began restructuring the business, this saw us move out of agriculture and focus more on the professional groundcare industry at our base in Colne. We felt that we had always been heavily focussed on commercial groundcare and this was the future for GGM. Our two main groundcare franchises at the time were Kubota and Hayter, they supported us well in our restructure. Over the last 22 years, we have built the professional business up and grown as a company with this. In 2016 we had the opportunity to expand our area with Kubota and that is when we opened our Haydock depot. Again, primarily focussed on groundcare but selling tractors up to 100hp.

Early on in our restructure, around 2004-2005 the opportunity came to purchase the site next to our base in Colne. It was something we couldn’t pass up and so we bought the site which enabled us to expand our stores and service areas. Around this time, we began development on a new side of our business, called PSD, a company importing and distributing machines from different suppliers across the globe. We have continued to develop PSD over time and our Sales Director, Stuart Mercer has been instrumental in helping build the brand.

2.    Explain a little more about PSD and where it is today?

PSD was first established around 2004 and accounts for about 30% of our overall business, alongside our sister company GGM. It exists as a specialist distributor of innovative groundcare machinery to customers across the UK, backed up by our network of approximately 80 dealers.

For the last 10 years we have worked with AS Motors, supplying their products which saw the PSD brand grow but following the recent buy-out from Ariens enterprise, we stopped supplying this brand earlier in 2022. We had anticipated after the take-over that changes were on the horizon so we had been doing lots of research into what was out there. 

In September 2022 we relaunched our offering to our dealer network at a focussed event we held in Coventry.  We spoke with the dealers about the equipment line up from brands such as Eliet (Based in Belgium), Grin (Based in Italy), Stella (Based in Germany) and Canycom (Based in Japan). We know that each of these brands offers something unique to the market from ride-on brush cutters to green waste shredders and mulching mowing systems.

The Canycom relationship is the most recent and one we are very excited about. Things began with a simple email enquiry on their website and since then we have welcomed a member of their Sales Management team to our site here in Colne and myself and Stuart have also travelled over to Japan to finalise things. It’s a wonderful beginning to what will be a positive working relationship for PSD and our dealers, and we feel that Canycom has confidence in us to get the product into the market.

Our focus has always been to work closely with our dealers, get the equipment in front of the customers and ensure the end user is getting a quality sales experience from start to finish. We definitely feel that as a dealer ourselves, we understand things from their perspective and in turn that has meant we have a much closer relationship with the dealers. With all the changes we have gone through over the years, they took a risk to stick with us, but they also trust us.

We are hugely committed to Kubota and want to work with all our dealer partners. But we feel that having PSD provides us with that little bit more stability and security over and above our GGM business. All the businesses we deal with through PSD are family businesses and we have good relationships with them. Our sales director Stuart is very proactive in sharing our values as a business with the dealers, communicating with them about our commitment and how important it is to work together as a team. The team aspect is very important for me, the business is so much more than just me. It takes everyone to make it work.

3.    What’s your favourite part of your role in the business?

I can’t say I enjoy it all, despite that being the perfect answer, it just wouldn’t be true. I enjoy seeing other people succeed, seeing people develop within the business. Whether its sales or service, I get a lot out of other people succeeding. I also enjoy looking at where things have developed and where there are gaps where we could offer new services, any opportunity to challenge ourselves and develop gives me a real buzz!

By far one of the most enjoyable activities we do is our fundraisers. We are passionate about giving something back where we can, so each year we choose a different charity to support, trying to keep it as local as possible. This year we chose the Northwest Air Ambulance, and our aim was to raise £10,000 for them. So, in August we did a sponsored bike ride. We cycled the 60 mile route from our Haydock depot to the Colne depot. At the finish line, members of the team organised a BBQ for everyone, with lots of staff in attendance, it was a lovely day and great for team bonding.

4.    How do find you compete against other groundcare dealers who sell direct online?

In terms of selling competition, I don’t think that the online market is much of a threat because a large part of why people deal with us is our service. I do find that people use the internet more for price checking now. But fortunately, you cannot buy service online, so we don’t find that it massively impacts us.

5.    Congratulations on the recent award you received from Service Dealer for ‘Best New Initiative’ can you tell me a little bit more about the process you have implemented?

Thank you! It was a great conference and even better to come away with recognition for the new Service Contracts.

We began plans to implement this new process during lockdown, the time really gave us opportunity to delve into our current processes and look at new ways of working things.

It all started because we sell a lot of our equipment to local authorities or similar style businesses, they would buy from us and we would benefit from the spare parts sales, but when it came to service they had their own workshops, which meant we would lose out on that side of things. We knew that there was more value to be had from the initial sale and we wanted to find a way to maintain a relationship with these customers after the sale. The Service contracts was a way that we could try and get the customer closer to us. It wasn’t just about the machine, we would work with them as a partner in their business and they might talk to us about other machinery we offer.

Implementing this from a business point of view gave us a degree of certainty when it came to planning service income over a period. The challenge is, how do you sell a service contract? The traditional salesperson would go out and sell the machine and then, retrospectively someone from aftersales or at the point of delivery would go and attempt to sell a service contract and at that point the customer isn’t interested. So, what we did was get all the sales team together, we brought in external consultants, and we talked with them about the service contracts and discussed with them about what we were planning on doing, what the offering was, what the benefits for the customer was and for us as a company. Also, the benefits to them as a salesperson to show them that it can be a valuable part of the sale. That very much changed the way we talk about service with a customer. The conversation became less about the product and more about providing a solution. It has been a success for us!

6.    How did COVID effect you or did it change anything about your business?

It changed us massively. It was probably one of the few days in my life when I felt a cold shiver going down my spine, sitting listening to Boris Johnson telling everyone to stay at home. When I had 40 people sitting at home thinking, should I go to work tomorrow? It was very surreal.

We decided we weren’t going to close straight away. But we were conscious that we needed to obviously make it safe for staff. Any of us that could work from home did and we kept the numbers on site at both depots to an absolute minimum and we were fortunate that we had IT infrastructure already in place to do that. Initially it was challenging but because we were at home, we had a lot more time to take a good look at the business, where we were at and what we wanted to achieve going forward. Some of the initial work on the Service contracts project began in that period as I mentioned.

One of the positive things to come out of it was making changes to the site to become ‘more green’. We have always wanted to look more into how we can be better in terms of our environmental impact, it’s still an on-going project but we had some good progression in that period. We worked with the local chamber of commerce, who did an environmental report of the site, that resulted in gaining funding to put solar panels on the roof, put car chargers in and change all our lights to LED’s. Had it been a normal Spring, we would have never had time to be doing things like that, so COVID actually had a positive impact on our environmental mission.  

As well as the environmental side of things, we also looked at the business as a whole. I wanted to look at finding a way to get the team to understand more of the figures of where they are on a day to day, week to week basis. We decided to set out  a series of Key Performance Indicators’s and we would pull the data based on those straight off the system. We would do KPI reports for each depot on things like, spare parts, workshop productivity, new sales orders, invoice tracking etc. For me, it was more about the team having transparency into how we were performing as opposed to checking up on people. They wouldn’t have to wait to be told after the month end if a target wasn’t hit, they can see it and act upon it to rectify it before the end of the month. This has increased productivity no end.

All of these projects evolved over the pandemic period, so in response to the question, we really did change us for the better in a lot of ways.  We had the time to stop and think about it and the whole pandemic made me realise that I don’t have to be here all the time and you can trust the team to just get on with things which is important.

7.    How do you find supply of products and components now?

Looking at our sales numbers, we are proud to have maintained growth each year and that includes the period of the pandemic so although there have been issues, we have still managed to grow which is great. The last 12 months has been the most challenging in terms of managing expectations with more delays from suppliers. I would say we seem to be over the worst of that now and we are seeing more products being delivered and stock levels are where they need to be. However, it has been very challenging.

This has affected us more so from the PSD side of things. We deal with the smaller, more family-owned businesses and they were having issues with component supply, so that was frustrating for them. We worked with them very closely to get product over here but again, it’s all about managing expectation. To be honest, the biggest issue for supply for us has been BREXIT. The paperwork involved is lengthy and the whole process slows everything down. We have sought advice from the local chamber of commerce, but it seems we have to simply get on with it.

8.    Where does GGM sell into?

We have specified areas for certain brands, but we sell across the north-west of England and West Yorkshire. Our team of 6 salesmen can all sell the whole GGM portfolio across the allocated area. With PSD, it is a national market.

9.    How do you find recruitment in the current climate?

In short, very hard work! We are proactively looking at doing more with social media campaigns to really promote the good that a role in this industry can be. Young people are out there, and they are engaging with that content, so we are working more on this. We have also been working with local schools to try and get in there and chat with pupils about our industry, making it a more attractive place to be. When they see that we get to go to some really great places, football grounds etc. their perception changes, but we have to communicate this to them. We currently have apprentices within the business and every year we actively recruit for them, but this is an area we need to keep working on.

10.  Tell us about future plans for GGM & PSD?

For the next 12 months, our plan is to simply maintain our growth pattern. We really want to concentrate on working on the relationships that we have established with the PSD side of our business, there is a lot of scope within that area of our business and we have to continue ensuring that we deliver to our dealers

With GGM, we are always talking to our principal partners about new opportunities with them and making sure that we remain competitive within our area.

We do want to look at introducing a new service this year which BAGMA will hopefully be able to help us with. We think there is an opportunity to offer LANTRA operator training to our customers, both GGM and PSD. Customers are asking for operator training, and we feel like there is a bit of a disconnect, we sell the machine, and install it but when they ask for training on how to use it, you must apologise because we can’t do that bit. It seems a natural progression for us really. One of our engineers is really interested in getting involved with this so we are just working through the training process for that and my next step is to speak to BAGMA to see how they can help with it.

I am also fortunate that I have two great sons, one is in the business currently and is very keen to get involved. He has been an apprentice and through the workshop, so he knows the ropes which is a huge help when understanding the business. When you have your own business, you are always thinking, what am I doing it for? So, to be able to look ahead and see him grow within it is exciting.

11. How have you found being a BAGMA member?

I definitely feel we haven’t used the services enough! I have always regarded being a BAGMA member as a quality recognition. Being part of an industry body and supporting a collective for us as dealers is important and powerful. It’s always meant a lot to me and still does. Recently Keith has got me involved with some monthly calls with other dealers and it’s been great to communicate with other dealer principles, it has actually helped with some support that I didn’t know was available for our business and speaking with another dealer, I then was able to look into it. 

One service we have used substantially is the BAGMA training for installations and demonstrations, this is really important to us as a business. We deal with professional end users, so we are having them properly trained only benefits us when they are in front of the customer.

12. And finally, when you aren’t busy running a business, what do you like to do in your spare time?

I love cycling and spending time with my family. Whenever I can get out on my bike, I will!