Counter Trade at a Crossroads: Merchants Go Digital and Builders Weigh Up the Price
Photo: Roger Cornfoot, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The builders' merchant is one of British construction's oldest institutions: a yard, a counter, a bloke behind it who knows which plaster you mean when you ask for "the usual". It is also, increasingly, an app. Live stock levels, order-at-6am, same-day delivery slots, digital statements — the trade counter has a smartphone in its pocket now.
The question this transformation raises is not whether merchants go digital. They already have. The question is what it does to a builder's margin, and whether the local yard relationship survives the transition.
Five Merchants Leading the Shift
Across the UK, the digital push is visible at every scale of the trade.
Travis Perkins has invested heavily in its online platform, allowing account holders to check branch stock in real time, place orders for click-and-collect, and manage statements without setting foot in the yard.
Buildbase, under the Grafton umbrella, has pushed digital ordering and improved delivery tracking, targeting smaller builders who historically relied on phone-and-fax relationships.
Selco has leaned into trade-only online ordering with rapid branch fulfilment, positioning itself squarely at the time-poor installer working across multiple jobs in a day.
Jewson, one of the oldest names in the trade, has layered app-based ordering and live availability onto its branch network, betting that convenience and heritage can coexist.
Toolstation, the discount end of the market, built its model on extended-hours trade counters and has since rolled out online ordering with rapid collection — a format that has squeezed traditional merchants' evening trade.
Each represents a slightly different answer to the same question: how do you serve a builder who wants materials at 7am without waiting in a queue at 7am?
The Case for the App
For many small builders, the pitch is straightforward: time is margin.
"I used to lose forty minutes every morning sitting in a queue at the counter," says a bathroom installer from Leeds who moved most of his ordering to a merchant app eighteen months ago. "Now I order the night before, it's picked and waiting. That's forty minutes of fitting time I've got back every day. Over a month, that's real money."
Live stock checking has quietly changed buying behaviour too. Knowing before you drive that the 2.4m lengths are actually in stock — rather than discovering at the branch — reduces wasted trips, fuel and tempers.
The Case for the Counter
Yet the enthusiasm is not universal, and the reservations are worth taking seriously.
The first is price creep. Several builders who switched to app ordering reported that headline convenience discounts eroded over time, with online prices quietly drifting above counter prices for some lines. "The 5% came and went," one roofer put it. "Now I check both before I order anything over fifty quid."
The second is substitution. When an item is out of stock, a good counter assistant finds the alternative, checks the specification, and saves you a callback. An app shows you a red dot and moves on.
The third, less quantifiable, is credit and goodwill. Small builders describe merchants who have flexed a delivery around a programme delay, held materials back during a client's cash-flow wobble, or quietly sorted a return without fuss. No algorithm does that. Those relationships were built over years of counter trade, and builders who abandon them wholesale may find them harder to rebuild than a login.
What It Means for Your Margin
The honest answer is that the digital shift is neither windfall nor threat — it is a negotiation, and builders hold more cards than they often realise.
The practical approach emerging among trades seems to be a hybrid: use the apps for commodity items, repeat orders and out-of-hours convenience, where price comparison is easy and the transaction needs no judgement. Keep the counter relationship for the jobs that need it — the awkward quantities, the urgent substitutions, the credit flexibility that gets you through a difficult month.
And keep checking prices across both channels. Digital has made merchants more transparent; it should make builders more so.
The counter isn't dead. But it is no longer the only door in the yard — and the builders who thrive will be the ones who know which door to use, and when.
