A buying operation
you can borrow
Flatout Customs is a procurement business. Clients hand us a category, or several, and we run the buying for it: sourcing, specification, negotiation, audit, shipping and the annual argument about price that most buying teams never have time for.
The working end of the business: a buyer at a desk with supplier paperwork and samples, or a warehouse aisle. Documentary, not corporate-stock. Muted, natural light.
How it grew
The business began by sourcing for a small number of clients who kept asking for things outside the category we had been engaged for. Rather than turn the requests down, we went and found the supply, and the pattern repeated often enough to become the actual business model.
The moment it stopped being brokerage was when we started combining those requirements. Two clients wanting the same specification is an inconvenience. Ten is a negotiating position. Once there was enough combined volume to interest a manufacturer directly, we could commit to annual supply, and the rates changed accordingly.
The company now places over fifty million pounds a year with suppliers and manufacturers across fourteen categories, most of it under contracts we have underwritten rather than orders we have passed on. We mention the figure only because it is the reason a factory returns our calls.
The range is still set by whoever asks. It has not stopped growing yet.
Three things we hold to
None of these are unusual. Doing all three consistently, in a business where the easy money is in doing none of them, is the difference.
Be difficult to remove
The aim is not to be a supplier a client reviews annually. It is to be the part of their buying operation they would have to rebuild if we went away. That takes years and it is deliberate.
Say no out loud
Where we cannot beat a client’s current position we say so. A sourcing house that always finds a saving is either very lucky or not looking properly, and clients work out which soon enough.
Let the clients set the range
Every category we trade started with a client asking for something we did not yet supply. We would rather build a new supply line than explain that it is outside our scope.
Part of the Flat Out Group (UK)
Procurement and demand aggregation across fourteen categories. The registered company, and the buying operation behind everything the group does.
The group’s food wholesale and catering supply brand, trading in its own right. Thin margins, high frequency and an unforgiving cold chain, which makes it the most demanding test of the model we run.
Credentials
We do not list accreditations we do not hold, which is a lower bar than it sounds in this industry.
What we do hold suppliers to is set out category by category on the sectors page: MHRA registration and a UK Responsible Person in health care, Sedex and SMETA in apparel, E-mark and IATF 16949 in automotive, WEEE and battery producer obligations in electronics, and packaging specified against its recyclability rating in consumer goods. Those are verified at source before a first order, not taken from a supplier’s own website.
Worth a conversation?
The first step is always the same: what you buy today, in what volume, at what price.