Certainly not Steptoe’s yard

20 January 2021

“Who knows what’s going to happen in the next few months?”

That’s what Brett Thompson, managing director of Alide Hire Services told me when we did the interview for his Q & A article that appeared on the blog at the end of October. And the answer is: a lot, with many ideas falling into place much more quickly than anticipated.

The company has since re-located its flagship depot in Bristol and welcomed a new member to the Board, namely James Mulrooney, sales director.

“Alide Hire has been in Bristol since 1981 and we consider it as our home,” says Brett. “Starting in the St. Werburghs area, the business grew into what we sometimes referred to as ‘Steptoe’s yard’. Driven by founders Gareth Hayward and Shaun Thompson [Brett’s father], the company increased in size, turnover, staff and equipment. Depots in Bath and Keynsham were added."

Soon the original Bristol location was bursting at the seams.  

“It took the best part of five years to find a suitable alternative location which would ensure we not only maintained our existing customer base, but which we hoped would also entice new customers through our doors.”

In 2012, Alide moved into a 22,000 sq ft ‘super’ depot located next to the busy Cabot Circus area in the centre of Bristol. With that much space, surely they would never need to move again?

“Fast forward to 2018 and comments such as ‘you could swing a cat in here’ turned to ‘wow, it’s like an Aladdin’s cave of tool hire equipment’,” recalls Brett. “It was apparent that bigger is not always better and, despite our first impressions, the location did not encourage people through the door.

“In fact, despite being in the centre of town, there was no passing trade. It was becoming apparent that we needed to re-locate the depot.

“However, I am sure many blog followers can relate to the difficulties in finding city centre premises to buy or lease. Bristol is no exception and, despite a variety of options, nothing really ticked all the boxes. We must have seen more than 20 potential properties over a number of years until we finally found our new premises in Days Road.”

The new depot is about two miles away to the east from Alide's former location, and the first thing you notice is the amount of passing trade.

“There are hundreds of cars using the road on a daily basis. Most of them are passing through, but a significant number are visiting businesses such as ours or the builders’ merchants opposite,” says Brett.  

“The depot is slightly smaller, but better laid out, and this is what we were looking for. It took some time to get our heads around function, given all the space we previously had to work with, but after some discussion, sleepless nights and beer-based ideas, we have come up with something that we are all rather proud of.

“It certainly did happen faster than we anticipated and I must say how proud we are of our employees who helped achieve this mammoth task. The new depot offers plenty of storage space for equipment, adequate offices for our sales, operations and hire desk teams and a separate trade counter.”

Brett says that the only possible drawback about the new site might be the rather tempting snack van located opposite...

I wish him and the Alide team all the best in this impressive new facility.