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Not Just A Tool Company
All this started me thinking about the place of Draper Tools in the market. I rather suspect that there are many users like me, who regularly rely on the Draper brand as a way of getting good value and decent quality without having to do all the footwork. It seems that Draper have quietly gone about the business of buying, testing and marketing the tools that the Great British Public use and we have not really appreciated their efforts fully, certainly I hadn’t.
The illusion of a small family run company is fostered initially by the outward appearance of the Draper building in Eastleigh. From the road, it seems to be a modest three-storey block of a building in the middle
of a well-established residential area. The reception area is vast, the receptionists friendly and chatty. Only the constant ringing of the phone gives a clue to the number of actual transactions that are taking place.
It was after coffee and biscuits with Clive Richardson, the Marketing Director, that the Grand Tour began. We passed through so many warehouses, racking systems, piles of newly delivered boxes and pallets and laden trolleys that I lost count of them and the distance we covered. It was truly difficult to see from one end of the building to the other. One thing I clearly remember was the despatch room with its circulating conveyor, with a packed box going past every few seconds. The boxes contained few items and many items, but they were all going in their hundreds onto the waiting delivery lorries.
I tried to keep a count of the countries marked on the crates waiting to be unpacked, but I lost it. There were just too many countries and too many different types of tools to take accurate notes as we went. I thought I had spotted a controversy. Perhaps Draper just bought in stuff and sold it on. Anybody can do that can&Mac226;t they? Just advanced market trading. Put simply, that is what Draper do. But the company has made a successful business out of it for many years, so there must be something that they do to add to the quality and value of the products that they procure.
A small laboratory and test facility in the heart of the building provides one of the clues for Draper’s success. Here, many “would be” Draper products are cut up, tested, twisted and otherwise put through their paces. Things like hammers, for example, where steel quality is crucial to safe use and long life can be microscopically examined to establish fitness for purpose.
Individual tools from consignments are also regularly inspected so that ongoing quality control can be maintained. Suppliers to Draper know that their shipments are under regular scrutiny. Draper can therefore afford to offer a decent guarantee and have an enviably low returns rate. In fact the returns/repair shop is about the same size as the testing facility (but not quite as clean as the latter) so the money spent on one reduces the amount spent on the other.
After a working lunch, I was given the chance to visit and use the Draper demonstration and training facility. This is another huge space with groups of products ranged around the walls so that customers, suppliers, sales reps and lucky people like me can really have a hands-on “go” at the tools of our choice. There was no preciousness about the treatment of tools here. I was encouraged to push the power tools to their limits, test the accuracy of the new mitre saw range, weld up ungainly sculptures of steel and knock blooming great lumps off a block of concrete with the new Draper SDS hammerdrill. Draper have long since realized that while many of their customers are skilled, a goodly number are not, and the tools need to be able to put up with the potential of a bit of misuse (abuse?) during their working lives. There was a refreshing honesty from David Heley, Power Key Account Manager, about the ways in which Draper goes about sourcing, developing and testing the products they sell. There is a real attempt to develop a dialogue between the company and the supplier so that both can benefit from the relationship. For Draper this is the capability of selling good quality tools at a reasonable price, for the supplier, a chance to have a guaranteed buyer that will feed back to you and help develop the products for the future.
Perhaps all the above points to a company that is a bit old fashioned in its ways. But the reverse is most likely true. Having no shareholders to satisfy and not relying on any one area for the bulk of its business,
Draper can take a view, act independently and support the interests of itself, the independent retailers, superstores and ultimately its customers. It has been a recipe for success so far, so can we argue with it?
Indepdendent Review by Peter Brett
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