Stax Trade Centres have underlined the strength of their offering to the DIY market by scooping a major award from DIY Week magazine. The company fought off stiff competition to win the Retailer Support Initiative Award at a recent ceremony held in London.

“Our independent retailer customers are right at the heart of our business, so it was a huge honour to win the award for retailer support,” says Stax joint managing director David Hibbert.  “Having our efforts recognised in this way is a real success and it reflects the great importance we place on those customers and the ways in which we support them.” 

In nominating Stax as the winners, the judges highlighted the company as showing real long-term commitment to its independent customer base. They took a number of different factors into account, including the company’s e-commerce support activities and the subsidised and integrated e-commerce websites which it provides for customers. 

“The face of the wholesale industry has changed enormously over the last 20 years,” adds David. “We work tremendously hard to help our independent DIY retail customers keep pace with that change and benefit from the opportunities it creates, and we believe that this partnership approach is a key element in our success.

“We’ve recently secured a series of exclusive distribution deals which give our customers access to more leading DIY, home improvement and garden product brand names. They can source brands such as Rawlplug, Bosch, Draper, Stanley, Rolson and De Walt, all at prices which allow them to compete effectively against high street and national retailers.”

Among the many Stax retailer support initiatives are the company’s rebate schemes, and its increasingly popular StaxPerx customer reward programme which has already attracted over 6,500 members within its first year. There’s also a 650-strong team of experienced field representatives, plus merchandising packs and comprehensive product catalogues.

The company has also invested heavily in its online presence, providing customers with a flexible, practical and user-friendly platform that gives them access to a wide range of analytics, including live data feeds which they can use to plot their business activity and

increase sales revenue via their own websites. Stax supports this by providing stockholding facilities at its warehouses, which enable customers without their own storage facilities to hold much less stock, but still respond rapidly to changing demand patterns.