What our customers say

Everything we put in our stores has to carry the UNBS mark, no exceptions. Theirs does, and the certificate was in my inbox before I'd finished asking for it.

It's the same driver most weeks. He knows the gate, he knows the store, he knows where to put things down. You'd be surprised how much of my morning that saves.

December nearly broke us the year before. This time they'd asked us back in October what we thought we'd sell, and then they held it. We didn't run dry once.

I send a message, I get a reply, the order arrives. I don't want a portal. I want somebody who reads my message.

A roll used to be gone by lunchtime in the busy cubicles. Now it lasts the day. My team refills half as often and I've stopped hearing about it.

We asked for something with no perfume in it, because of our patients. They had it on the shelf. The last supplier told me I was being difficult.

One order, eleven sites, and every site gets what it asked for. I used to run that reconciliation myself on a Friday. Now I don't.

The case opens and goes straight onto the shelf. That's twenty minutes a pallet I get back. Over a week, that's a person.

The barcode scans first time, every time. Sounds like nothing. Go and ask a till operator on a Saturday afternoon.

A conference doubled on me overnight and I rang them at seven in the morning. It was here before the delegates were.

They come at five in the morning because they know what Jinja Road turns into by nine. Nobody asked them to work that out.

I went and stood on the factory floor. You cannot do that with an importer. You learn more in an hour there than in a year of emails.

We report waste to our parent company every quarter. The switch cut what leaves this building as plastic, and for once I had numbers instead of a paragraph.

I'm one shop. Most suppliers make you feel like a nuisance at my volumes. These ones just come.

I stopped comparing price per roll and started comparing price per sheet. The cheap roll wasn't cheap. They're the ones who showed me the sum, and it cost them a sale that day.

They told me what a building our size normally uses. We were forty per cent over. It turned out to be the dispensers, not the tissue, and they fixed it anyway.

Renewal came round and there was no theatre. Same terms, a small increase, explained. I'd set aside two weeks for that conversation and it took twenty minutes.

My predecessor left without leaving notes. Their rep sat with me for an hour and rebuilt the account history from his side of it. He didn't have to do that.

Two cartons came in soaked. I photographed them, sent the picture, and the credit was on my next statement. No argument, no inspector, no three weeks.

Our buyers in Europe audit us and they look at everything in the wash area, towels included. We passed without me having to explain anything away.

Our stems fly out the same night they're cut. Everything in that packhouse has to be clean and dry, and the towels are part of that whether an auditor mentions them or not.

Safety and hygiene sit in the same audit here. The washroom is scored whether anyone likes it or not. It's one of the few lines I've stopped worrying about.

Three thousand people on a Sunday and a budget that comes from those same three thousand people. Every shilling gets questioned. This one survived the question.

I inherited a store with six different brands in it and no record of any of them. We're on one supplier now and I can tell you to the roll what we're holding.

A client sits in my chair for two hours. Everything she touches is telling her something about this place. The cheap towel was telling her the wrong thing.

A full house empties into the washrooms in about four minutes. Whatever is in the dispenser has to survive that, four times a night.

We put a pack on every coach on the long routes. Small thing, but passengers remember it, and it costs me less than the complaints did.

I sell nails and I sell tissue. The tissue moves faster. Nobody warned me about that when I opened.

I buy what I can carry and I sell it the same day. What matters to me is that the price on Monday is the price I was given on Friday. It is.

Fourteen branches and not one of them has room to hold stock. They deliver small and often instead of making me warehouse a quarter's worth.

Four hundred agents on rotating shifts, so the washrooms never get a rest. Our consumption looks more like an airport than an office, and they built the order around that instead of around a template.

Site welfare gets inspected and it's the first thing everyone lets slide. Ours passes now, and it isn't because I'm watching it more closely.

Twelve hundred people across three shifts. Nothing about our consumption is normal and they didn't try to sell me a normal contract.

We buy for the mill and for the estate housing. Two completely different requirements, one delivery. That was their idea, not mine.

Six hundred workers live on this estate. What we put in the housing is part of what we get inspected on, and it used to be our weakest line. It isn't now.

Our grading tables have to be spotless and dry. We went through three towels before this one. Two of them left something behind on the beans.

Ink gets everywhere in a print room. We use kitchen roll as a consumable, because that's what it is, and the maths only works if it's priced honestly.

We take deliveries in a two-hour window and at no other time, because of how the lab runs. They have never once tried to negotiate that window with me.

Small shop, small shelf. Whatever I stock has to earn its space every single week. This earns it.

Our procurement rules were written somewhere else by people who have never been here. They met every one of them without me having to make excuses on their behalf.

Fifteen small branches upcountry, each one ordering for itself, none of them big enough to matter. They consolidated the lot and the price came down because of it.

My budget for the block is fixed in September and it cannot move. They gave me a price for the year and they held it. Nobody else would even discuss it.

Eight hundred pupils and a PTA that reads every line of the accounts. When I changed supplier I had to justify it. The justification took one sentence.

We're small and we're not in Kampala. That combination usually means you get whatever is left over. It hasn't gone that way here.

A Friday night here goes through more paper than most restaurants manage in a week. I order for Friday, not for the average, and nobody has ever questioned why.

Banqueting is a different animal and storage is the part nobody plans for. They asked how much space I actually had before they quoted me a volume.

The workshop goes through blue roll like water and the showroom needs something you'd put in front of a customer. One supplier covers both and I write one cheque.

Twenty-five people and barely a cupboard. They deliver monthly in a quantity that actually fits in it, which nobody else was willing to do.

I had a supplier who was about four per cent cheaper and cost me an afternoon a month in chasing. I moved. Four per cent does not buy an afternoon.

Forty-two units, each one restocked between guests. I need small amounts constantly, not a wall of cartons once a quarter. That's how they set it up for us.

Another operator told me to call them. Nobody in this industry hands over a supplier lightly. That's the only reason I picked up the phone.

Six years. Three of my people have left in that time and two of theirs have, and the thing has carried on working regardless. That tells me more than the rest of it put together.

Our stock goes through a security screening before it ever reaches the shop. Every carton, every time. Their paperwork has never once held us up at that door.