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Bradley Bray Wants To Clean Up The HVAC Supply Chain – And A New Distribution Company Is His Answer

For over a decade, Bradley Bray worked alongside some of Europe’s great contracting, wholesaling and manufacturing firms at Advanced Engineering (now part of the Aspen Group), supporting contractors and other manufacturers in offering products and equipment to the HVAC industry. For three years after that, he headed TotalCare Hygiene Services, a specialist cleaning business offering refrigeration and air-conditioning cleaning. As CEO of TotalCare, he got to know intimately the needs and pressures affecting the HVAC engineers on the ground. The longer he looked, the more he knew what he wanted to do next.

‘There were a couple of areas I could see that I could do some good in’, he said. ‘The first was this common complaint among industry institutes, that there’s an engineer skill shortage in the industry. The second was the supply chain that brings products and equipment from the suppliers to the engineers themselves’.

Enter EvoMart Ltd, Bray’s proposed contribution to both these issues. A new privately owned, limited company, EvoMart proposes to offer an alternative route to market for a range of brands that haven’t managed to secure a foothold in the complex web of contracts between wholesalers and distributors, or don’t want to.

‘That’s an established business model that works for lots of companies, so I’m not looking to disrupt it’, explains Bray. ‘But I thought there was scope for giving a wider range of brands access to the UK HVAC service market – and also that simplifying the supply chain might result in cost savings I could then pass to the engineers themselves. The engineer is at the heart of everything we do, from product sourcing and supply to service and delivery’.

Accordingly, EvoMart Ltd aims to focus on driving costs out of its business and passing these onto its clients. One cost-cutting method is its online ordering platform. The warehouse will have a trade counter, but sales focus and activities will be online. Its founders hope that sourcing straight from brands and distributors will give them the latitude to pass on cost savings to the customer, via promotions and rewards.

EvoMart’s website provides features like multiple, customizable wishlists called ‘VanLists’, where a manager could create a van stock list for, for example, a new starter’s van, a maintenance engineer’s list, or a customer specific component and tool list. The list would include everything needed to kit out a new engineer’s van and replenish the vital day-in-day-out supplies, tailored to his or her specialism. Every time the company took on a new starter the manager could order the whole list with a click of a button. EvoMart offers next-day delivery, so everything can be ready to maximize the engineer’s working time.

The direct-to-brand approach also means that the company can meet the supply needs of a one-man engineer or a larger company with many employees. Bray envisions a wide customer base where the big and little guys can be catered for equally. He’s created an option for VIP membership, where a monthly subscription would allow access to additional discounts, reward points for future purchases, free delivery and other perks.

‘The HVAC industry is having to change as the technology changes’, Bray says. ‘It has to get more direct, more time-efficient. I’ve been the engineer and I’ve sold to the engineer, and I know that the squeeze on time vs cost is making profit margins narrower than they’ve ever been’.

It’s an industry that remains pressingly vital to the modern world, despite its unglamorous image. As this year’s inaugural World Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heat Pump Day tried to convey, refrigeration technologies support human society in many hidden ways. Its founder, refrigeration consultant and leader of trade associations Stephen Gill, wrote in 2017: ‘Surgeons operate in air-conditioned hospitals. Chilled vaccines are delivered safely to millions in need. Artists perform in air-conditioned theatres. Low carbon heating solutions keep people warm through heat-pump technology. Food is produced and delivered to billions in hygienically safe conditions. Man travelled to the moon in a temperature controlled rocket’[1].

Bradley Bray hopes that EvoMart will help support the growth of the industry through education. He has secured a knowledge/resource partnership with professional services trainer Business Edge Ltd, allowing EvoMart to provide a free digital library of educational articles, as a resource for engineers hoping to refresh or advance their skills. The first 24 articles will be released at once, with one a month following thereafter.

‘The content starts with HVAC fundamentals, then gradually gets more in-depth’, says Bray, ‘So engineers of all levels can gain a deeper understanding of the technical aspects of working with refrigeration and air-conditioning systems. In return we’ll promote Business Edge courses – not for profit – to give engineers and contractors another route to developing their skill set’.

EvoMart are also planning to offer a scheme for new starters, where upon completion of their training, apprentices can sign up to the website, and order the items they need without busting the bank. They’ve called this their ‘Get Off the Ground’ initiative.

‘It’s a bit of a two-pronged problem, as I see it’, Bray explains. ‘It’s true I think that there are fewer engineers coming in to the industry – though no one actually knows how many individually qualified engineers there are in the UK, which is one of the issues. But it’s also the fact that the technology we work with is changing: smart machines connected to the wifi that can self-diagnose, even order new parts automatically when the old one dies. When it comes to training, it’s important that the fundamentals are there, but also that our education moves with the times’.

It’s a process he’s determined to be involved in. EvoMart wants to keep up as the market changes, as the technology evolves, and as the pressures of climate change continue to prompt more sustainability legislation.

‘Heat transfer theory is important to everyone, from astronauts to consumers storing refrigerated goods at home. Refrigeration underpins it all’, he says. ‘It’s only going to get bigger with time. We want to be there, and keep serving that industry as it grows’.

Evolution in Distribution is the name of the game. We play to please our clients!

[1]https://gineersnow.com/industries/hvac-r/global-trends-refrigeration

Edited: Rachel Jeffcoat, NotesintheMargin.org

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