Hardware supplier VBH has highlighted the importance of having local stock provision across Great Britain to help provide the best possible service.
The company, whose head office is in Gillingham, Kent, also has sites in East Kilbride and Swansea.
The importance of having local stocks across the country was first recognised back in 1990, when VBH opened its first satellite depot in Dundee. VBH advise that driving factors at the time included a recognition of the importance of the Scottish market and its potential for further growth. Local authority fabricators in particular were extremely busy at the time, and having local stock ensured continuity of supply and smoothed out any spikes in demand when additional hardware was required as a matter of extreme urgency.
In time, the volume of business soon outstripped the capacity of the Dundee site, so VBH relocated to larger premises in East Kilbride, with its excellent transport links to major towns and cities. VBH East Kilbride also looks after VBH’s customers in Northern Ireland.
Fabricators in Wales and southwest England are served by VBH’s Swansea depot, and the rest of England is covered by the main warehouse and head office in Gillingham.
Richard Gyde, managing director at VBH says, “The teams in each site, and the Sales Managers working out of them, understand the requirements of the local area and are best placed to effectively manage them.
“The stock mix within each depot is tailored to the demands of the customers that it serves. For example, the demand for tilt & turn windows has always been higher in Scotland and Northern Ireland than it is in England and Wales, due to differing building regulations and housing stocks in those countries. Consequently, the percentage of TBT hardware from our partners AGB and Roto has always been higher in VBH East Kilbride than in the other warehouses.”
All three sites operate their own delivery vehicles, so customers on the local delivery routes benefit from door-to-door delivery direct from VBH.
Richard concludes, “A number of our largest customers are served by the East Kilbride and Swansea depots, and having a local presence and stockholding ensures that we can deliver world class customer service to them all.
“We’re extremely proud to have recorded an average monthly OTIF score of over 99.1% throughout 2025, and the service that the depots provide has contributed to that in no small way.”
