Big is beautiful for Century Logistics entrepreneur

BIG is beautiful for warehousing supremo Stephen Basey-Fisher.

But storing goods for clients in large warehouses is only half the story as far as his business is concerned. Service, he believes, is key to his success.

Stephen started out renting buildings on the family farm near Halesworth after graduating from Writtle College in Essex. He now presides over a growing �6million turnover warehousing empire, Century Logistics, which includes a giant 140,000sq ft flagship building by the A14 at Saxham Business Park, near Bury St Edmunds.

The firm, which employs about 140 staff, has grown to include a customer care call centre, product repairs, quality control, product development and an online service for end-of-line and returned products.

Century maintains a total of more than 400,000sq ft of warehousing in East Anglia, mainly centred around Thetford, where it has a further five sites, and, even as other UK businesses remain stranded in the economic doldrums, it is expanding its workforce in response to rising demand for its services.

The warehousing side of the business is growing at a rate of about 25% a year, while the e-bay sales side has approximately doubled in size year-on-year.

Stephen, its managing director, started the business from scratch 15 years ago with wife, Ann.

Their emphasis was on helping their customers to become more profitable by taking over “the bit in the middle” so that they could concentrate on their core activities of buying and selling.

“It helps to make the customer more profitable, particularly in an economic downturn,” he explains.

“We understand that our success is dependent on the success of our customers and that the formation of a true partnership enables both parties to achieve their growth ambitions.”

Nearly half his workforce are now employed on the after sales side, rather than in warehousing.

The new �10million Bury warehouse, which the firm fitted out itself, was privately financed under a joint venture with Dorel, the world’s biggest nursery products company, after attempts to get a bank loan to back the project failed.

“This is probably the biggest and most modern warehouse in Suffolk or Norfolk. It was a �10million project here and we have spent more than half a million pounds on equipment,” he says.

Century’s other five Thetford warehouses together occupy about twice the space of the Bury site.

“We are still on quite a roll and are recruiting for the future,” he says.

“We are not your typical warehousing company. We are running customer service centres, engineering centres, we are running big ebay sites for customers. That’s where I differentiated myself from the competition.”

Stephen, 51, the eldest of three boys, is descended from Norfolk geese drovers. He began his working life on his family’s 350-acre farm.

His farming background, he believes, helped him to be self-reliant and gave him the confidence ot tackle any problem.

“I do wear many hats,” he says.

“I come from a very hands on industry which is agriculture. Coming from a farming background you have to be able to tackle anything. It gives you a can-do attitude. On the farm, you are the engineer, someone to drive the tractor - that’s me, to do the books - that’s me.”

He diversified the business by building a grain store, and got involved in commercial warehousing. Later, he moved into forklift and health and safety training and started his own training company, Century Industrial Training. From there, he moved back into warehousing.

Century has been working with Dorel for the past 10 years and its relationship with the large multinational company has helped it to expand and evolve. Starting with just four staff on its Dorel contract, it now employes 70. Partnering up with companies has become its stock-in-trade.

“The more successful they are, the more successful we’ll be,” he reasons.

“Actually we are growing business in Thetford as well and since last year we have got bigger in Thetford because we are attracting more customers.

“We had 10 sites in Thetford and we have now consolidated down to six, but in square footage we have added about another 350,000sq ft. I own two big sheds in Thetford.”

While around half his customers are national or international companies, the other half are local - firms like Pine Solutions of Norwich, Flooring Supplies at Thetford, Just a Soap of Bury St Edmunds.

“Our success has come on the back of local successes,” says Stephen.

“Just a Soap - I started two years ago helping them. They are IT consultants. They started making hand-made soaps at their holiday cottage in Bury. They decided to sell the different parts of the soap. From one to six people they have gone to a multi-national company. It’s just amazing the companies we work for. We are just so lucky.”

Other customers include Hahn cookware, the Champion Clothing brand, based in Halesworth, Fragrances and Toiletries International, University Games, Manhattan Toys and another company which supplies a large proportion of store mannequins in the UK.

He puts down the success of these partnerships to Century’s ‘can-do’ attitude. With Dorel, it took on the customer services function after Dorel’s customers began phoning in.

“We have built it from one person to 12 who take 200 calls a day,” he says.

“If you ask who’s got the best customer service, it’s Dorel.”

In order to make optimum use of the machinery, the Bury warehouse operates from 7am to 11.30pm from Monday to Friday and at weekends there is training, and the company will work if clients require it.

The Bury warehouse has been fitted out to Century’s exacting specifications. The floor had to be absolutely flat to ensure the machine which is used to lift goods on and off shelves didn’t start to sway at 15m high. The building includes 20km of sprinkler pipes and the wiring is probably twice that.

“There’s 100,000 litres of water out there for it. All the forklifts are wire-guided. It’s like a kid in a candy shop because this is everything I always wanted,” says Stephen. “We project managed it completely ourselves.”

In fact, it was Stephen’s 18-year-old son, Alex, who took on the site supervision of the fitting out project at Bury just before he started his military training at Sandhurst. It was quite an achievement - and all completed without any disruption to customers.

“I thought it would be a good experience for him looking after about 50 contractors,” says Stephen.

“We took the building on in August and went live at the end of October (2010). So we had about three and a half months of fit-out. We transferred 15,000 pallets to here and we only had one day of down time when we swapped the IT system over to this building. Dorel, none of their customers even knew we had changed buildings.”

The building was put up on spec by a developer about two or three years ago, and is the largest property lease in East Anglia in 10 years, says Stephen. Through a deal with Dorel, Century has use of it for the next 12 years. Stephen tried the banks, but could get no help, and is scathing about the perceived lack of support.

“Everything has been done privately through investors. No bank support. The banks would not support us one bit,” he says.

“We had to keep within a small radius of where we were operating from. This one ticked all the boxes and also gave us future proofing. That’s why we are trying to get new local businesses and attract them to this site or the others in Thetford.

“It’s also a fantastic project to say we did it all in-house. This is what makes us so different. That’s why I’m so passionate. I have been involved in the industry for the past 25 years in some form.”

Century has scooped a clutch of industry awards, including Warehouse Manager of the Year and Best Warehouse Employer of the Year.

The staff, says Stephen, are “second to none”, and the skills level is high. The warehouse diversifications are the most dynamic parts of the business and the ones with real added value, which differentiate Century from the competition. The firm has just taken over all the after sales for a leading high street company and has taken on about 10 extra staff at Thetford to cope with the workload.

Century now has a team of 20 engineers in its returns department working on about six container loads of pushchairs and car seats every day. If they can’t make them good, they will sell them on ebay, having identified a market there for repaired second-hand products.

The ebay department has grown to about six staff - web and graphic designers - who spend their time selling on the site.

“We are now one of the leading ebay sellers in Britain. We do gardenware and all sorts of things,” he says.

“At the end of the day, we are adding value and helping customers be profitable in an economic downturn. That’s why we are successful in an economic downturn because we are helping our customers concentrate on their core business. It’s no coincidence that the majority of my customers are also bucking the trend.”

The diversity of jobs they are able to sustain is remarkable - and for Stephen it’s about bringing professionalism to warehousing, and creating a ‘one-stop shop’ for customers.

Last year, the company’s revenues doubled, and it expects the same to happen again this year. The warehousing side is growing by about 25%, and about a fifth to a quarter of the turnover is from the aftersales businesses.

But while the company can celebrate its successes, Stephen, who is chairman of the UK Warehousing Association (UKWA), the lead body in warehousing, is not complacent about the difficulties his and other firms will face over the coming months and years.

“This economy does worry me. I don’t like coming across smug or arrogant. It’s tough out there. The market place as I see it is only going to get worse. We are no way out of this recession,” he says.

“I don’t see where that glimmer of light is yet. There are five million small businesses out there and we keep getting told again and again we are going to be leading the recovery.”

The new Bury warehouse has proved a great success, particularly as 75% of Century’s business comes out of Felixstowe, but the Thetford part of the operation has also thrived following the move.

“It has been absolutely fantastic. It has already attracted more business and more business leads especially, and also it’s a great flagship to show the diversity of our company,” he says.

“While the rest of the UK has been making redundancies, Century Logistics has seen its workforce expand from 110 to 140 people over the past year and we are looking to recruit once again as we continue to offer our unique services to existing and new clients, ranging from internet start-up companies to multinational retailers.”

He adds: “We are a success story in a difficult economic climate and we are creating jobs and quite a diversity of jobs.”