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UKSSH invests a further £150K in logistics and knowledge centre UKSSH is well advanced in the development of a £150,000 Logistics and Knowledge Centre at its Midlands depot in Tamworth ❖ The company, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, bought the premises – the former Head Office of HAKI UK – in late 2020 and has so far spent in the region of £150,000 to fully refurbish the office block and create a classroom facility in the building. It also has plans to develop a fully enclosed training and demonstration area to provide customers with a fully integrated learning facility. UKSSH has experienced continuous growth over the last 10 years and puts its success down to adapting and responding to customer needs: As its full name – UK System Scaffold Hire – suggests, it started life concentrating exclusively on the hire market, but now says that a significant part of its business includes the sales of HAKI equipment. HIRE AND SALES
Gary Griffiths, MD of UKSSH, explains: “To be successful, a business needs to be flexible. Many of our customers use UKSSH for the first time as a means of discovering the true potential of HAKI Systems without the pressure to invest heavily in the product. As customers become increasingly aware of the advantages of HAKI and realise the number of applications that it is ideally suited to, they often make a strategic decision to purchase their own stock and prefer to do so through us because of their existing relationship with – and trust in – UKSSH. This means that our relationship with customers evolves over time, and we frequently undertake projects where a combination of ‘hire and buy’ provides the optimum solution for them.”
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TRADITIONAL VALUES
UKSSH is proud to be a company with its roots firmly in system scaffold – and HAKI System Scaffold in particular. Gary Griffiths started his career with HAKI UK some 34 years ago: “1987 seems a long time ago, but back then HAKI instilled a business ethic that has stood the test of time. Working in all areas of the business meant that when I went out ‹on the road’, I could offer practical experience and advice and understood a customer’s needs. Knowing the theory is all well and good, but you must be able to employ it in real situations. Being on the road also taught me another valuable lesson: treat people as you like to be treated yourself. You can win customers with promises, but to keep customers you have to deliver. Customers must have confidence in their suppliers.” BELOW: UKSSH can organise structured training, but are equally happy for customers to ‘drop in’ for an informal chat to discuss projects.
It’s those lessons that are the driver behind UKSSH’s new Logistics and Knowledge Centre: “We work with top-class scaffold designers and invest time and money in helping our customers develop plans which optimise the strategic and financial benefits of HAKI Systems. Our Tamworth premises provide the perfect location to offer a hands-on training facility to enable a customer’s scaffolding team to get to know the product. We often do trial erections at Tamworth or at our Chesterfield site to ensure that customers know exactly what to expect when scaffold is delivered to site.” UKSSH is evangelical in its commitment to system scaffold. It believes it is important to promote the strategic and cost advantages of HAKI Systems and to explain how adaptable it is – and it intends the new offices and depot to help it to spread the word. “We are relaxed about how customers use the facility – we can organise structured training, but we are equally happy for
