Looking at Resapol now you wouldn’t believe it started in 1999 with a small loan, now we are celebrating our 25th Anniversary.
Now, the company turns over £20 million, built up by co-founders Lloyd Phillips and Sean Ofsarnie. These two northerners have worked incredibly hard over those years to build the company into the success story that it is today. Over the years Lloyd and Sean have developed a business culture built on mutual respect between management and employees. Even the co-founders of the business aren’t afraid to muck in and get their hands dirty at any level.
Lloyd and Sean met many years ago through the construction industry, eventually working alongside each other at Civmat Bauker. Following the companies closure they made the brave decision to set up their own business with one aim; to distribute construction chemicals nationwide. The most immediate concern was finding the right premises. Here they fell on their feet thanks to Jonathan and Phillip Moss who offered them a brand new unit in Leigh. A unit that is just down the road from the current Resapol Head Office. Without their faith and generosity it is unlikely Resapol would be what it is today.
So Resapol officially started trading 1st December 1999
The first year was really hard, with literally just Lloyd and Sean, swapping between taking order and delivering them on a hired van. In the beginning they started with 20 bags of Flexcrete Monolite, amazingly the first call they got was just for that! In that first year they turned over £500k. The first couple of years flew by, with just Lloyd, Sean, and Lloyd’s mum Jo,who took care of all the accounts and admin.
In 2002 Resapol took the big step to open a depot in London, a small 1,000 sq foot unit. This is in stark comparison to the 13,000 sq foot cutting-edge unit occupied in London today. Lloyd and Sean commuted between both depots, spliting the time between them. They got a lot of their leads from the cafe next door, as well as through using the Yellow Pages and just cold calling, and being themselves!
Their big break in London came when a potential customer, CRL, decided to test their service. They sent them a fax order at 8am for 40 bags of product, needed on site by 10am. Resapol successfully delivered the order and secured their £400k a year business. After that word got around and within 4-6 months they hired a branch manager for London.
A couple of years after this an opportunity came to open the companies’ third depot within Stockton-on-Tees. Further depots were established and quickly followed, opening in Kent, Southampton, Leeds, Bristol and finally Glasgow. Despite the subsequent closures of Kent and Leeds, Resapol boasts the title of the UK’s leading independent national distributor of construction chemicals, with access to over 6,000 products from some of the world’s biggest construction chemical manufacturers.