Greg Ford’s Trade Tools nails success without being screwed by banks or lawyers

GREG Ford says it plain: ‘I don’t trust banks and I don’t trust lawyers’. It’s one thing to say that, it’s another to build a booming business without ever going cap in hand.

Greg Ford was a ten pound pom who has built one of the largest tool businesses in Qld. Pic by Luke Marsden.

GREG Ford has built his $100 million tool business without ever going cap in hand to a bank.

The English-born businessman, who arrived in Australia in the early 1970s after a stint travelling the world, built his TradeTools business from one store in 1987 to the current network of 14.

With turnover approaching $100 million, Mr Ford’s unconventional, plain-speaking approach has seen him succeed in a sector dominated by big-barn hardware chains.

“The company has never been in debt and owns all its own stores,” he said.

“I suppose we are more of a property company now.”

Mr Ford said Ormeau-based TradeTools thrived by avoiding financiers and debt.

“I don’t trust banks and I don’t trust lawyers,” he said.

“When we started in the late 1980s, the economy was quite strong and that helped.

“Our competitors had dropped the ball and we took advantage of that.

“Instead of dealing with wholesalers we went straight to the factories overseas in Japan and Taiwan.”

After coming to Australia as a fresh-faced 21-year-old, Mr Ford worked on building sites and had only planned to stay for about a year.

But after his parents joined him from England, he and his father opened a tool shop, Glenfords, at Slacks Creek.

“My dad had been in the tool business in the UK,” said Mr Ford, who has a collection of old tools sold by his father on display at TradeTool’s headquarters.

When Glenfords was sold, TradeTools was born in 1987, and the company has seen the ups and downs of the often volatile building sector.

“We are a litmus test for the economy as a whole, and at the moment we are enjoying a prosperous time because the construction industry is quite strong,” Mr Ford said.

He said the expansion of hardware chains such as Bunnings had created pressures on the company and wiped out most of its competitors.

“It forced us to become more specialised,” he said.

“Seventy-five per cent of what we stock they don’t stock. It would be very hard to start this business today because of the buying volumes required. We have to buy millions of dollars of stock just to be competitive with the likes of Bunnings.”

TradeTools is also a manufacturer, with a factory near the company’s Ormeau headquarters busy pumping out its own brand of air compressors.

“We are probably more famous for our air compressors than anything else,” Mr Ford said. “We sell 200 a month.”

Mr Ford said customers would buy Australian-made goods if they were of good quality and represented value.

“What we have to do in this country is make things like we used to,” he said.

“Without making things, no economy can survive.”

Mr Ford said when he eventually stepped back from the business, he would have a large group of potential successors.

“We have 36 shareholders, most of them sales staff,” he said. “If you’ve been here for 10 years, you get shares in the business.”

He aims to double TradeTools’ turnover to $200 million over the next decade as it serves a number of tradies, renovators and construction companies.

He jokes that not all of his customers are in the building trade.

“We used to get a regular order from a brothel for orbital sanders, but they would never want any sandpaper,” Mr Ford said. “When I summoned up the courage to ask them what they used it for, they said it involved something with lamb skin.”