5 December 2010
Shopping in Arctic conditions can be a challenge, not just for customers, but for store owners too. Snow from boots creates all kinds of mess, leaving carpets and floorlevel goods covered in unwanted debris.
Doormats offer an effective solution, preventing 80% of dirt from entering a building. To that end they are used extensively in colder parts of the world, particularly in places that expect and prepare for snow in winter.
But doormats work best when they are clean - and this is where davis service group makes its mark.
The company rents doormats to shops and offices in Scandinavia and the rest of northern Europe as well as some in Britain. The mats are delivered ready for use, collected when they are dirty, cleaned and then returned to their users. The system works well and the business is highly profitable.
It is just one arm of Davis Service Group, however. The company operates a broad-based British and Continental business, renting out work uniforms, sheets, towels and even surgeons' operating gowns as well as doormats.
Operating under the Sunlight brand in Britain, customers include Tesco and Premier Inn. Davis also provides the Fire Service with firefighters' uniforms and works closely with the NHS, providing fresh laundry daily.
More than 1m people wear a Davis garment for work and the company launders 725m items every year, delivering 100,000 parcels of clean linen and uniforms a week around the country as well as abroad.
In January, Davis appointed a new chief executive, Peter Ventress, who previously ran multi-billion pound Dutch office products group Corporate Express. After almost a year in the job, Ventress is keen to make Davis bigger and more profitable and has a strategy in place to deliver on both counts. First, the aim is to attract more business. On the Continent about two-thirds of uniforms are owned rather than rented, so there is plenty of potential there, particularly if cash-strapped firms are looking to avoid spending large sums on workers' clothes.
There is also room for growth in Britain. The NHS, for example, issues nurses with three sets of uniform and gives them responsibility for keeping them clean. As hygiene becomes an increasingly important issue in hospitals, pressure may build for nursing staff to change into fresh, clean uniforms when they arrive at work rather than stay in the outfits they have worn on public transport.
Ventress is also keen to improve the efficiency of the plants where items are laundered, encouraging employees to give each other tips on best practice. And he intends to focus Davis on areas where it is doing well, such as uniform and mat rental, and spend less time and money on peripheral, less profitable activities.
At the end of this year, the company's name is going to be changed to Berendsen, which is its brand name on the Continent. However, the Sunlight brand will be kept in Britain because customers know it and like it.
Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/investing/share-tips-and-fund-tips/article.html?in_article_id=519331&in_page_id=23#ixzz17I2A3CcZ
