David Grice: man on a mission

David Grice, Procurement Director at grs, is a man on a mission – to make life as easy as possible for retailers.

“Traditionally, many companies have considered buyers and sellers to be worlds apart – completely separate teams with little in common, which means they end up rarely speaking or even work in ‘silos’,” he says.
While that has never been the case at grs, David Grice, who is now responsible for overseeing both the company’s sellers and buyers, is ensuring they take a ‘one team’ approach to everything they do, ensuring they can add even more value to retailers’ businesses.
“This approach makes absolute sense, as our account managers are talking to retailers throughout the UK every single day, so they know what’s selling well and what the latest trends are at any given moment,” says David.
“As well as sharing this valuable market insight with other retailers to help them maximise their own businesses, it’s also essential that they share their knowledge with our buyers. This ensures that the stock they are buying is tailored to the needs of our retailers.”
According to David, the old-fashioned definitions of buyers and sellers are too rigid to be of much use in today’s rapidly changing market. “Our account managers – who in the past would have been defined as the ‘sales guys’ – are effectively working as buyers for our retailers.
“We’re keen to develop a partnership based on confidence and trust by taking the time to really understand retailers’ businesses, which enables us to offer advice based on their individual buying profile, while at the same time making suggestions additional stock which may be of interest.”
David Grice has also been overseeing a number of practical changes, such as making the regular stock lists more user-friendly; they are now easier to open and include an image of each vehicle.
But is this quiet revolution reaping rewards? “Only time will tell,” laughs David. “Our main focus is to share our market intelligence with our retail partners, to enable us to build further on all the things we already do well – we believe that’s what will make retailers’ lives easier and we will continue to work hard to achieve this every time we talk to them.”