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John Reddigton began his professional life as training accountant. It wasn’t long, however, before he realised that his personality wasn’t well suited to the accountancy profession. A straight talking northerner, with a passion for business and of 1970s rock music, John describes himself, as a people’s person. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that he forged his career in sales and has built around himself strong sales teams which were instrumental to the success of his companies, firstly Alphason and now Big Red Sales.
The road towards BRS
John honed his sales skills at Mars. Then he worked for several years in sales, becoming a sales director at Harman International and then managing director of Ortofon. He become involved with Alphason through his management consultancy, JR Associates, and spent 17 years with the company. Following Alphason’s merger with Armour, John has worked for Armour for 18 months before deciding to “go my own way”.
BRS concept
While at Alphason John had been using self-employed sales agents who also worked for other companies. “When I was thinking about my next step, it occurred to me that there are many companies in the UK that don’t have enough sales people. A sales rep costs between £100-150,000 a year, and smaller companies cannot afford to have them.”
In Germany, France and the States many companies use so-called ‘repping companies’ which are responsible for sales of the company’s brands in different areas of the country. “Therefore we ran a number of articles in the magazines outlining what we wish to do and enquiries started coming in. We decided which brands we wish to be involved and started negotiating with them, while making sure that these brands do not compete with each other.”
Building the BRS portfolio
Between February and September 2009 the company took on six brands. The first one was Archos, a French specialist in portable entertainment, such as Internet media tablets, who has a turnover in excess of £20 million but had no distribution in the independent sector. Next they took on the US wall mounts brand, Level Mount. Then they were approached by Sennheiser, who are a brand leader in headphones in the UK with a 22% share (by value) of the UK market. Next came Tangent, the specialist in table top radios with retro styling, and Linsar, a UK company, manufacturing middle-range televisions. The last company to be enlisted as a BRS client was Off The Wall – a manufacturer of modern AV furniture.
The USP’s of BRS
Big Red Sales aims to increase the penetration of its clients’ brands throughout the independent sector in the UK; to deliver support, information and promote the brands to the sector.
The USPs of its company are “the delivery of personal service, a wide distribution of our sales force – covering the whole of the UK, and the frequency of visits to its clients’ customers – every five weeks. BRS’s strength is the combined experience of the whole team (BRS employs eight senior sales professionals), the relationships with the customers, and our integrity – people know us and trust us.”
John has no doubts that if his company does a good job for these brands he will lose his customers one day… like a doctor who cured his patents. “This is to be expected in this business. When the volume of the business reaches the level the MD wants, he will want to tackle it with his own sales reps.”
…and independent
John believes that his company fills the gap created by the market situation. “The constant pressure on overheads means that the manufacturing companies are unable to give the customers the service they want. As a result of this the relationship between the manufacturers and independents suffers.
“In these circumstances the companies are forced to do short-term deals – selling products at a discount to move the volume. It means that some retail partners are at disadvantage and become less competitive since as they are not able to buy large quantities – and sell at lower prices. At Alphason we had a level playing field: we had approximately 2,000 multiple dealers and 2,000 independent dealers and we gave them all the same trading terms. I intend to treat independents with the same fairness in my current business.”
