h&b Group has announced that Steve Durdant-Hollamby is taking over as Chairman of the independent builders merchant buying group.
Durdant-Hollamby brings a background that spans both sides of the merchant-supplier relationship: senior leadership roles at Lords Group Trading on the merchanting side, and at Genuit Group on the manufacturing side. That combination is unusual and relevant — a buying group chairman's job is essentially to hold the line on terms between independent merchants and the manufacturers supplying them, and having sat in both chairs is a practical advantage in that negotiation.
Why buying group leadership matters to the trade
Buying groups are largely invisible to the tradesperson at the counter, but they determine a great deal about what that counter looks like. For an independent merchant, group membership is what makes the difference between buying at scale-competitive terms and being priced out by the nationals. Group scale drives the rebate structures, the supplier agreements and increasingly the shared digital and logistics infrastructure that independents cannot fund alone.
For UK trades, healthy buying groups mean the independent merchant on the local trading estate stays viable — which in turn means competitive pricing, local stock and someone who will take a phone call at seven in the morning.
The appointment also lands in a period of movement for h&b specifically, with membership changes reported in the merchant trade press over the past year, making the chairmanship a more consequential job than it might be in a settled year.
Watch for: h&b's next set of member and supplier numbers, and whether the new chairmanship comes with any stated change of direction on supplier terms or member services.
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