Workshop Magazine (GEMCO Article – Jan 2017).

Home » Latest News » Workshop Magazine (GEMCO Article – Jan 2017).

Workshop Magazine (GEMCO Article – Jan 2017).

You’re sure of an uplifting experience plus much more with GEMCO.

The workshop world is fast moving and technologies quickly develop, but none so much as the workshop set up itself. As cars move on and the requirements of a garage become more demanding, having the right facilities can make all the difference.

 

That is where GEMCO Equipment Ltd comes in. The business specialises in creating the right space for your business to work at its peak and can future-proof it with the latest technologies.

The business is at the forefront of its field, and works closely with manufacturers and their franchisees to ensure that the equipment fitted, fits the bill.

By offering the turnkey solution project management, all of which comes as standard with GEMCO, plus the fact that there’s just one single point of contact to make customers lives easier, the business has built an extremely large customer base that spans the UK.

Product and marketing divisional manager James Furk explained: ‘Just vehicle lifts alone we have over 100 different options for customers both in-ground and above ground.

‘More and more customers nowadays are focusing on the in-ground lifts because of space, as they take up a lot less room and they can fit more lifts in the workshop as a result of going in ground. Investment is quite a lot more but the way they’re working out in terms of space it actually does pay itself off.’

GEMCO are constantly responding to what its customers want, which forces it to come up with new and ingenious ways to improve the workshop space.

‘As well as then clever solutions like integrating the controls into the workbench at the end of the bay,’ says Furk, ‘we can incorporate special colours to match a company’s corporate image.

‘Then there are all the associated services that go with this. Workshop flooring is a big one, where you go to a main dealer and it’s kind of like a kitchen. You’ve got all the really fancy furniture and then the tiled floors and the lifts. They’re almost clean enough to eat off the floor these days.’

He continued: ‘Then we offer all of the service integration, so that could be oil, air, water, anti-freeze, waste oil collection points and everything like that. It’s as little or as much really, we sell to the independents, we sell lifts for their service business, so one-off lifts for a couple of thousand, right up to big projects which is several million pounds.’

As vehicles change and improve, so must lifts. For that reason GEMCO’s parent company Stenhøj’s research and development team are continually improving products and verifying they are fit for purpose. As Furk continues: ‘We know if we put a product in, it’s going to be suitable for lifting entire range of cars that visit their workshop.’

‘We’re owned by a Danish group, called Stenhøj, who are a lift manufacturer,’ said Furk. ‘We work with them in terms of our UK projects, but on a sort of worldwide basis they have an R&D department and a lot of what we sell is driven by the vehicle manufacturers, particularly the German ones because they obviously have the biggest market share. A lot of what we do is based on their requirements for the approval process which depends on manufacturer but can be quite tedious. If it’s good enough for them, it’s definitely good enough for sort of the aftersales servicing people we sell to.

Top of the line at GEMCO is the Autopgtenhoj range, which is its premium brand for the independent and the franchise dealers alike. ‘We’re always changing the arms slightly; although the actual post design has not really changed. We’re always looking at it and adding to it, as well as all the accessories, which go on the end of the arms so that you can lift in the correct way or using the manufacturer’s specified lifting points, which some people tend to ignore but if you want to lift properly that’s what you should do,’ Furk explained.

Of those on the market, GEMCO are the only ones providing the complete sort of service using its own in-house team made up of 250 employees in the UK. On top of that they have over 100 engineers in vans servicing customers through our locations in the UK. As an aftersales business, it attends about 12,000 different customer locations every year to provide both maintenance and aftersales.

Furk added: ‘From the workshop and then the aftersales, associated works, everything, we do the whole lot, as well as services in-house like car design team, we have five people upstairs just doing car design for workshops. We have a dedicated export team.

‘We’re the largest stockists in the UK for both lifting equipment and spare parts and those spare parts are not only for our own brands but for all makes. That’s because a lot of the customers we have in terms of our aftersales offering don’t necessarily have our products in but we still have to look after and provide aftersales services to those customers, particularly the national type customers, such as British Telecom and Royal Mail.’

It’s unsurprising that the business has such a loyal and recognisable customer base, though, as they’ve now been around for more than 30 years in the UK. Furk explained: ‘As a business we’ve been established since 1985 and, as well as those other two brands that we mentioned, there’s a whole host that we sell. For example, Bradbury is very well-known, particularly in the independent motor trade and that’s over 100 years old as a brand name and again is owned by GEMCO. Most of the brands we sell are exclusive to us in the UK and a part of the group of companies that are within the Stenhøj group.’

View the full GEMCO range today at: www.gemco.co.uk

2017-07-04T16:58:26+00:00 January 13th, 2017|