United Merchants (Unimer), a leading invoice clearing house for the building products industry, has recently acquired a 10% equity stake in the on-line trading business eBuildingsupplies.
In line with Unimer's strategy continually to offer its members new business opportunities and providing innovative routes to market, the company has been considering how to develop to develop an involvement in on-line trading of building materials for some time.

'Electronic trading clearly represents a growth area for our members and eBuildingSupplies fits our requirements perfectly and provides a solution offering real benefits,' explained Howard Grant, managing director of Unimer.

The business advertises building materials on-line nationally but the supply of products is sub-contracted to a network of regionally-based builders' merchants around the country.

All of the existing merchant suppliers are already Unimer members and the aim of Unimer's involvement is to increase the level of involvement with our merchant membership so that a comprehensive national supply network develops that can respond competitively to all enquiries generated by the trading portal.

Unimer members will have exclusive access to these trading opportunities for a minimum period of 12 months.

Unimer's investment in the business is limited to the provision of book-keeping services and marketing services.

eBuildingSupplies (EBS) charges the participating merchants a commission for the services provided and these charges will be invoiced to merchant members via the Unimer invoice clearing service like any other supplier.

'Procurement for housing was Unimer's first and successful attempt to help secure marketing opportunities and additional sales business for our merchant members' and EBS now represents our second initiative aimed at developing further trading opportunities for our members,' added Grant.

'We are continuing to explore further opportunities to develop the Unimer business model in this way to deliver real business benefits to our merchant members.'