Among the eight awards on offer at the Service Dealer Conference and Awards was the Best New Initiative Award. Brothers Alan and Declan Maher of Barrow Valley Spares (BVS) were nominated for this category award with their QR code system for machines.
Alan and Declan Maher at the Service Dealer Conference and Awards
Formed in 1996 in a small shed beside their family home the company focused on serving the local community. This tradition is still at the heart of their business values today. Through the introduction of their online shop they can now reach further across Ireland.
Today the business is still a family run company. Alan and Declan together moved the business to its new location on Kilkenny Road in Athy whereby they expanded their customer base by offering a large retail store dedicated to the supply of Farm and Garden products.
In late 2017 BVS actively sought out large scale supplier’s with the goal of opening a large scale farm and garden parts distribution centre in Athy. That goal was realised through a chance encounter with Kramp, who at the time had only begun to look to Ireland for its next phase of expansion.
Almost two years exactly to the day from that meeting, in November 2019, they opened their doors as Ireland’s only Powered by Kramp retail store but it wasn’t all smooth running in the beginning. “When we opened our store in November 2019 things were going along nicely but then Covid-19 struck and we had to close our shop”, said BVS director Alan Maher. “Talk about bad timing. As you can imagine, after having just expanded your business the last thing you’d want to hear is that you have to close up shop. It’s hard to explain how huge a disappointment that was. However we knew we were protecting our customers and we were lucky that we were still able to take orders on the phone and online."
The BVS Powered by Kramp retail store in Athy
But the two brothers noticed that some of their customers, especially the older farmers, were struggling with purchasing goods online. Those customers would recoil at the thought of going onto a computer to order parts. Instead they would phone BVS describing what they wanted from an old and sometimes faded parts manual. “This was getting very frustrating for us and the customer because we weren’t sure if they were describing the part they wanted correctly” said Alan.
The brothers came up with the idea of creating a unique QR code for a particular machine. When completed, all the customer had to do was scan the code on the machine with his or her phone and the parts for that machine would appear on their screen. “Creating the QR code was tedious at first as we had to manually input all the parts associated with that machine. However once we had it done, it was set up forever and soon we began doing this for all the machines our customers had, whether it is a garden lawnmower, slurry tanker or a farm tractor. We got a lot of support from our supplier, Kramp, particularly from Chris Cashman, Kramp’s account manager for Ireland”. said Alan.
The system works on the principal that the customer is given a unique sticker with the QR code on it, which they place on their machine. The customer can scan the QR code with their phone whenever they need to order parts.
A year later, BVS now have hundreds of their unique QR code’s being tested across Ireland. This unique system was recognised by Service Dealer by nominating them for the Best New Initiative Award.
