Find YourChris Hayward
Chief Executive Officer
Chris has been CEO of NMBS for over 20 years, in which time it has grown to be the largest buying group for Independent Building, Plumbing, Hardware & Timber Merchants in the UK, with an annual turnover in excess of £2bn, with over 1150 members and 4500 branches.
During his tenure as CEO he has focused on the strategic development of NMBS, which included the amalgamation with United Merchants in 2014 which effectively doubled the annual turnover, whilst simultaneously driving up returns to members, with the extra economies of scale falling straight to the bottom line.
In 2020 NMBS developed an online order portal, “Oneplace” for its members and suppliers and there are plans to develop this into a full B2B trading platform, enabling the full digitisation of transactions between members and suppliers, to rival the capabilities offered by Amazon and similar online marketplaces.
In addition, he was elected President of EURO-MAT, the leading European cooperation of independent builders’ merchants in 2015 and has been president for over 8 years.
Euro-mat was founded in 1989, the cooperation is based in Luxemburg and has today a market leading presence in 21 European countries with a portfolio of 19 shareholders and more than 7,300 outlets and a combined turnover of 32 Billion Euros.
EURO-MAT acts on behalf of its members and generates exclusive European wide partnership agreements between suppliers and its builders merchants members.