One of the UK tiling industry’s breakout success stories over the past decade, Pro Tiler Tools recently won its third consecutive TTA Award for Best Supply and Service. To discover how the company has achieved this level of excellence and consistency over such a relatively short timeframe, we spoke with managing director Sam Bucknall, who explained a little bit about the company’s history and ethos.
Pro Tiler Tools began – as many companies do – when its founder looked at an existing business and thought: “I can do that better!” That founder was Sam Bucknall’s father, who at the time in the late 2000s ran his own tiling business, which Sam and his brother Todd also worked for. As a tiler, Sam’s father would buy from this existing supplier, but deliveries would take weeks to arrive, and when the owner took holiday operation simply stopped.
Although his business had a very small online presence, Sam’s father had very little experience in building and running websites, so to start an exclusively online company from scratch was “quite ambitious,” Sam says. Nevertheless, his bet that the market needed a more responsive and professional supplier was a good one, and by 2010 Pro Tiler Tools had gained enough traction to become viable as a business.
Throughout the course of the 2010s, Sam and his brother Todd joined the company alongside their father, with both the brothers’ wives also working at the company and their mother taking care of accounts. “So it was a proper little family business!” Sam laughs. But of course, as PTT continued to grow year on year, it needed to grow its infrastructure beyond just the family, hiring additional employees and working with ever more manufacturers. “We just tried to offer a better service than what was already out there,” Sam says. “It was the reason it existed in the first place. We wanted to get the product to people as quickly as possible and for a fair price.”
Fast forward to the 2020s and the company was approached by Topps Tiles with an acquisition proposal. At the time, no one in the family had even considered selling, but Sam’s father was getting close to retirement age, and the business was only getting busier and more stressful. Ultimately, Topps made an offer that the Bucknall family was happy with, and the deal went through in 2022, allowing both Sam’s father and mother to retire, with the brothers taking over the day-to-day running of the business.
The more things change
Naturally, Sam was anxious about the acquisition, but happily he reports that Topps have taken a relatively hands-off approach to PTT. “It’s a big change,” he says “and to be honest we were nervous. You hear about these bigger companies buying up smaller companies and changing the culture, changing the staff and the management team. Topps haven’t changed anything. They’ve left Pro Tiler to do its thing and they’ve really backed us.”
This was especially important for PTT, Sam says, as the company’s staff and culture is its most powerful asset. Despite now having the backing of one of the industry’s largest and most successful corporate entities, the supplier still retains its small, family-business approach and feel. “We’re very laid back, we’re very casual,” Sam explains. “There’s no uniform because we are ultimately a trade business.” With his own tiling background (along with many of the business’ employees) Sam says PTT is able to offer a level of familiarity and experienced service that other companies might struggle to.
“I think a unique thing about Pro Tiler is that if you pick up the phone to talk to one of our customer service staff, you could be speaking to a tiler. If you’re stood on site wanting to know how a wet cutter works, for example, there’s a good chance the person you’re talking to knows because they’ve used it!” In fact, beyond just relying on his employees’ pre-existing knowledge, Sam ensures they’re up to date by providing in-house training on the company’s range of products. This means that regardless of how customers choose to buy from PTT, they’re able to get quick, accurate answers for any follow-up questions they might have.
Ahead of the curve
As is now industry-standard, the majority of the company’s customers buy online. Around 94% of PTT’s business happens through its website, with the remainder being done at the company’s recently launched trade counter located at its Northampton premises. In this, the company was well-ahead of the trend, with online retail certainly being established by 2010, but nowhere near the heights it would reach over the following decade.
This online-focused business model helped to facilitate one of PTT’s other greatest strengths, which is its enormous range of products. The company stocks a staggering 7000 product lines across its different categories, a level of variety and quantity that simply wouldn’t be achievable in a purely physical business.
“It’s a big job in itself to manage and grow that,” Sam admits, “but I think in terms of time saved for a customer, if they can come to one place and get Kerakoll adhesive and Instarmac grout and whatever they need? That’s such a unique offering, especially adding in specialist items that aren’t on stocked on the shelf, like all the weird and wonderful swimming pool products.”
An online-first business model is particularly effective in PTT’s specific niche, where trade customers will have favoured orders they repeat time and time again, but even so, many tilers do want to come and see products in person, whether they be new launches or old standbys.
The company’s new trade counter was designed to meet this need, and according to Sam it’s already been a huge hit. “Our location helps, we’re basically smack bang in the middle of England, and we find that when people want to make a big purchase, they tend to want to come and have a look before they take it away.” Even with the option of next-day shipping, Sam says, the company has had customers drive down all the way from Scotland to pick up an order! Interestingly, although it started as an online-only business, PTT’s ability to showcase its entire range of products from one central, physical location now offers it an advantage over other web-based suppliers.
www.protilertools.co.uk
Look forward to part two of this interview, coming in our October issue, where we discuss the company’s embrace of social media and its sustainability philosophy, as well as how it has survived the turbulence that has defined the UK economy in 2025
