LSI celebrated the final phase completion of their premises move to Braemar and Northfield House by opening the doors to its new purpose built showroom and inviting 15 of their top supply partners to the inaugural LSi supplier Forum.
The day started with suppliers arriving and being given a welcome tour of the new premises and meeting all LSI staff before a table top exhibition held within the newly completed 2000sq ft showroom. All LSi staff attended the mini exhibition over a two hour period and were able to put names to faces, aswell as find out a little more about the suppliers and their products, aswell as discussing procedural issues and improvements. The sales teams also felt they had time to discuss immediate requirements for their customers, not always achievable in a larger exhibition environment.
An informal lunch for all was provided in Braemar House and a small pool competition broke out, where Phil Roberts and Mike White of Fanela were humiliated by the LSi accounts girls!
In the afternoon, the showroom was converted once again to allow 30 people to take part in a 3 hour open discussions relating to the industry in general and then concluded with specific discussion points on how LSi could improve with their supply chain and whether improvements in efficiency and order processing could be achieved. The whole open discussions proved extremely popular with all attendees, despite many of the attendees in direct competition with each other, offering valuable comments for improvement aswell as acknowledgement that efficiencies could be made in their own companies that could benefit LSi moving forward.
The day was completed at a local restaurant where the remaining 24 guests enjoyed some good humour, food and drink and after some arm twisting of the Italian restauranteur , managed to enjoy the England / Poland game. LSi also announced its Supplier of the Year as voted for by LSi staff – The Winner was SPS, with Runner up – Fanela. Steve Bodgers was on fine form and on hand to receive the award for SPS and paid tribute to Lloyd and the team for a fantastic day and excellent hospitality shown throughout the day.
Lloyd Simpson commented ” The intention of the day was to showcase LSi, who we are , what stage we are at now, where we are aiming to be, and exactly what we stand for. I feel the general relationship between supplier and distributor has become a little strained during the recession and through social media channels a lot of pessimism exists both ways. However we aimed to show we class them as friends aswell as suppliers and by working closer together over the next few years, we will hopefully achieve both our objectives. We don’t need to be the biggest, but we aim to be the best at what we do, and always looking to improve. To have the opportunity to show our supply partners the passion, the drive and the buzz we have created in our new home was something I have wanted to do for some time, and so the completion of the new showroom and our warehousing facility seemed the perfect opportunity to do so. I think both sides took some real positives from the day and this can only be good for future business.”
Published on: October 18th, 2013
