Learning in action

18 September 2018
by BMF Training & Events


One of the quickest ways to learn more about yourself and the team around you is to be thrown in at the deep end. Which is just what the BMF’s annual Mastermerchant Challenge is designed to simulate.   

Mastermerchant is a fun event with a serious purpose as the competition helps colleagues learn more about each other’s strengths and skills and what can be accomplished through teamwork.  

The 2018 competition, held over a weekend in the Lake District, involved a range of challenges that tested the communication and problem-solving ability and physical perseverance of teams drawn from builders merchants and suppliers across the country.   For the second year running, “The Merchants of Menace” – otherwise known as Pierre Krause, Trevor Mudd, Kayleigh Sinclair and Sean Sinclair - from Chandlers Building Supplies emerged as the overall winners, with Alumasc taking the Super Supplier Award as the top performing supplier, their team comprising Pete Wainer, Wayne Willmott, Damascus Msumba and Pete Hickman.  

But this really is a competition where everyone attending wins as they not only develop their problem-solving skills – by playing to the strengths of every team member – they also build stronger bonds with members of their own team and make new friends from across the country.  Which explains why so many participants can’t wait to do it all again.  

The weekend event is organised by management development company Stephen Lee Associates, who specialise in helping both teams and individuals to unlock their potential to help achieve organisational goals, as Stephen himself explains: “It’s easy to work hard, but sometimes you need to step back to really see whether team members are being effective as well as industrious. Mastermerchant is essentially a programme of enjoyable challenges where teams quickly learn to observe the way they work together and begin to spot improvements that can be made in their method and approach to these tasks.”  

Michelle Moulds of Beers Timber & Building Supplies, who took part for the first time says she will take valuable lessons back to her day job.   “We were thrown in with another merchant for our very first challenge to work as a team of eight on the ghyll scramble. We learned to develop trust and how to work with new people unexpectedly. We developed relationships with suppliers and with other merchants and see them not as competition but as allies for information sharing and teamwork in the future.”  

On one of the hottest weekends of the year, the teams were thankful that many of the tasks involved getting wet – if only to cool down.  

Congratulating the winners and all those taking part BMF CEO John Newcomb said: “Whatever the weather – sunshine or storm clouds - this is a fantastic teambuilding event and I’m delighted that so many teams from merchant and supplier members take part every year. I would also like to thank IOBM for their sponsorship this year and, of course Stephen Lee Associates for devising such an ingenious range of challenges.”  

To find out more about next year’s Mastermerchant challenge please contact June Upton at [email protected] or any aspect of BMF training, contact Paige Godsell at [email protected] or call 02456 854980. BMF training ranges from formal Apprenticeships and sector-specific Diplomas, Degrees and a Masters Degrees in Merchant Leadership and Strategy, to on-line product knowledge and other specialist skills training.  


Pictured: Mastermerchant champions, Chandlers Building Supplies accept their trophy L-R: Peter Hindle MBE (BMF Chairman), team members Pierre Krause, Kayleigh Sinclair, Trevor Mudd & Sean Sinclair, and Allan Durning (IoBM President)  


This article appeared in the September 2018 edition of Professional Builders Merchant (PBM)