Grand Prix Legends, the motor sport merchandiser, is more than doubling storage capacity at its Surrey warehousing and distribution complex by installing a new mezzanine floor and its new Regal 4000 bolt-free shelving from SSI Schaefer.
Being installed to cope with the company’s continued expansions in the global marketplace, this latest investment, says finance director Richard Symonds, “will allow us to house twice the amount of stock in exactly the same floor area, while making everything more orderly and easier to access.”
Since moving from London to Cranleigh two years ago – allowing both office and warehouse activities to be under one roof – the privately-owned company has seen a year-on-year doubling of a turnover. It has also expanded its activities into other motor sport areas away from just Formula One Racing, and is currently looking to open its first retail outlet in central London.
As such, stockholding at Cranleigh now encompasses more than 5,000 product lines – 3,000 more than when the facility first opened. This extensive offering, all available on mail order, now extends to collectable goods, clothing and replica models of cars/bikes used by the leading F1, rally car and motorcycle racing teams. It also includes more than 1,000 die-cast models of quality road cars, plus motor sport-related videos, DVDs and books.
Currently all stock is accommodated either in containers within the existing ground level six-high Regal 400 shelving/picking complex or, in the case of bulk items imported from franchised suppliers, in two separate runs of SSI Schaefer’s PR600 pallet racking. Equipped with wooden decking panels at the lower levels, the pallet racking effectively doubles as a shelving system for the low level storage of boxed die-cast models, which currently account for around 40% of Grand Prix Legends’ total annual sales.
“When we first moved to Cranleigh,” says Symonds, “we decided to rid ourselves of our old wooden shelving and cardboard boxes and SSI Schaefer was first recommended to us by one of our suppliers as offering quality products at highly competitive prices. Having looked at its competition, we can only endorse the statement. That’s also why we continue to call on the company’s services each and every time we have needed to further maximize space in order to cope with our continuing expansion.”
Last year, saw the installation of Cranleigh of a new mezzanine level over the existing Regal 4000 shelving system at the ground level in order to more efficiently store additional boxed bulk products. Equipped with staircase access front and back, the mezzanine is now being extended to run right across the entire building and immediately over the packing/dispatch stations below.
Once constructed, one half of the mezzanine will be given over to housing stock on what effectively becomes a two-tier Regal 4000 shelving system. The other half is to be used solely by Grand Prix Legends’ three dedicated European events team for housing promotional items and so forth.
