FAQs
What does Wolseley do?
Wolseley is the world’s largest trade distributor of plumbing and heating products and a leading supplier of building materials. Wolseley brings together over 100,000 vendors and more than 1 million professional contractors and domestic customers across Europe and North America.
Where does Wolseley operate?
Wolseley operates in six geographic regions: the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, the Nordic region and Central Europe.
Where is Wolseley's headquarters?
Wolseley plc is registered in Jersey (company number 106605) and tax resident in Zug, Switzerland. Wolseley Group Services is based in Theale, near Reading in the UK.
What are Wolseley's strengths?
We are a world leading company and number one or two in most of our markets. Our strengths are in our product and geographic diversity, the sourcing and procurement benefits derived from our global presence and a commitment to excellent customer service.
The industry in which we operate is attractive, based on demographic trends towards ageing populations, smaller households and agency housing stocks, which drive demand for new housing and remodelling, which should remain strong over the long term. The profit pool for distribution is large because of the fragmented nature of our supplier base and customer base.
What is Wolseley's vision?
Wolseley’s goal is to deliver sustainable and profitable growth. Our objective for each business unit strategy is to grow profitably faster than our competition.
Our approach is based on a top down resource allocation process, to allow us to choose which businesses will give us best returns in the long term. In addition, we have developed bottom up detailed business unit strategies to make sure we invest in the right projects and plans to deliver our future growth at a local level.
How does Wolseley work with vendors?
We seek supply chain partners throughout the world. We look to harmonise product quality and prices across our market areas through global trading and preferred vendor relationships and search the world for low-cost country sourcing to bring value to our customers.
What is Wolseley's supply chain?
Product sourcing and logistics. Product sourcing is about maximising growth and margin through how we manage products and our vendor relationships. We want to be the preferred channel to market for our vendors. Logistics looks at optimisation of product and information flow, from the vendor gates to the customer delivery point.
What are the principles that underpin the way Wolseley does business?
Wolseley’s three core values capture the essence of the company and drive how we think and act. We act with integrity. We drive for results and improvement. And we value our people.
If Wolseley is so big, why have I never heard the name before?
Our name is well-known amongst our investor community. We are a Fortune Global 500 company and we are in the UK FTSE 100.
Our name will not be universally familiar to all of our customers. This is because our strength is to operate leading national businesses in home markets. These strong local brands – including Ferguson, Plumb Center, Stark and Tobler – continually exceed customer expectations through wider product ranges and superior service.
