Henlow Building Supplies
Turning customer knowledge into a system anyone can use
Henlow Building Supplies is an independent builders' merchant with over 35 years of trading experience, serving trade and retail customers from their branch in Bedfordshire.
Known for strong customer relationships and responsive service, they needed a system that could formalise what the team already knew - and make it accessible to everyone.
"We have been delighted with it so far. It makes it easy for every member of the team to handle any customer enquiry, with no need to dig through lots of records."
Chris Curson, Director, Henlow Building Supplies
The challenge
Henlow's customer relationships were a genuine competitive strength - but too much of that knowledge lived in individual team members' heads.
When loyal customers began requesting discounts, the team introduced a manual loyalty scheme that quickly signed up over 100 customers without any formal promotion. The problem was that applying the right discount to the right customer, across different product categories, relied entirely on memory and manual input. Human error was a real and growing risk.
Stock management had a similar problem. Counting, repricing and updating stock records was time-consuming, done manually and prone to errors in transcription - the kind of work that takes a team away from trading and adds no value in itself.
How Merchanter helped
Customer discounts that apply themselves
Henlow's loyalty scheme required a level of pricing flexibility that a basic system couldn't support - different discount rates per customer, varying by product category, applied automatically at the point of sale.
Merchanter's customer management and trade counter functionality handles exactly this. Each customer's buying history and agreed discounts are held in their record, linked to their loyalty card or key fob. When a card is scanned at the counter, the correct discount applies automatically - no manual input, no reliance on a staff member remembering the arrangement.
Over 100 customers are now on the scheme, each with a fully tailored discount structure across different product categories. A carpenter might qualify for one rate on general building supplies and a higher rate on timber and tools. A painter and decorator has an entirely different profile. Merchanter holds all of it and applies it correctly, every time.
Real-time stock accuracy without the paperwork
Stock-taking and repricing had previously meant walking the shop floor or warehouse manually, recording information by hand and then inputting it back into the system - a process that duplicated effort and created opportunities for error at every step.
Linking a handheld scanning device directly to Merchanter removed that duplication. Stock counted on the floor updates the system automatically. Labels for repricing print on the spot. The gap between what's in the yard and what the system shows closes in real time rather than at the end of a manual count.
The team is also moving towards a rolling stock-take approach - counting stock continuously in sections rather than shutting down for a full count - which distributes the workload across the business without disrupting trading.
"We are moving towards a rolling stock-take system which will save us all a huge amount of time. It's early days but so far we are very hopeful it is going to be a fantastic tool which will save time and effort, and avoid errors in copying the information across." - Chris Curson
A system that grows with the business
Henlow has been with Ten-25 for a number of years, and the relationship reflects something that comes up consistently with longer-standing Merchanter customers - the system has developed alongside the business rather than becoming a constraint on it.
"We started working with Ten-25 because we thought they offered excellent value for money, and have been really pleased with the service. The system is very flexible and has grown with us, and we have a good relationship with the people there. They are always responsive and we know they really listen to what we have to say." - Chris Curson
Merchanter features used
