The Merchant method

The MERCHANT Method is Peter Drakeley’s guide to helping builders’ merchants optimise inventory without drowning in theory, jargon, or overcomplicated transformation projects.

Written for the real world of merchanting, the book tackles one of the sector’s most persistent challenges: how to keep the right stock available for customers while reducing excess, freeing up cash, and improving branch-level decision-making.

Builders’ merchants live with inventory tension every day. Branches want product on the shelf. 

Customers expect availability. Finance wants less cash tied up. Purchasing teams wrestle with suppliers, lead times, rebates, promotions, and price changes. Meanwhile, slow movers, excess stock, and outdated replenishment settings quietly eat into performance.

The MERCHANT Method gives merchants a practical way to understand and improve that reality.

This book is about making inventory optimisation practical for builders’ merchants.

It explores how merchants can improve availability, reduce unnecessary stock, and make better decisions using the data and systems they already have.

Rather than treating inventory as a purely technical problem, The MERCHANT Method looks at the commercial, operational, and behavioural side of stock management too — because better inventory performance is not just about formulas. It is about people, processes, systems, habits, and decisions.

This book is for:

• builders’ merchant owners and directors 
• branch managers 
• purchasing and procurement teams 
• finance leaders 
• stock controllers 
• operations managers 
• anyone responsible for availability, stock value, or working capital 

It is especially useful for merchants who know they have too much stock in some places, not enough in others, and a nagging feeling that their current approach could be sharper.

I wrote The MERCHANT Method because builders’ merchants deserve inventory advice that reflects the way their businesses actually work.

Generic inventory theory often misses the realities of merchanting: local branch demand, trade counter expectations, bulky products, supplier constraints, seasonal patterns, slow movers, customer relationships, and the everyday pressure to say “yes” when someone needs stock now.

This book is my attempt to bridge that gap.

It brings together my experience in supply chain software, commercial leadership, inventory optimisation, SME research, and years spent thinking about how businesses make better stock decisions.

The book is not about cutting stock blindly.

It is about helping merchants answer better questions:

• What stock really matters? 
• Where is cash being trapped? 
• Which products drive service? 
• Which settings are no longer fit for purpose? 
• Where are decisions being made by habit rather than evidence? 
• How can availability improve without simply buying more of everything? 

The aim is simple: Better availability. Leaner inventory. Clearer decisions.
 

The MERCHANT Method is a practical inventory optimisation guide for builders’ merchants.

It is written to help merchants move beyond reactive stock management and towards a more confident, data-led, commercially grounded approach.

Less guesswork.
Less dead stock.
Better availability.
Smarter stock decisions.

That’s the method.