Bayford is a major player

News Extra

If you had to guess, you'd say that Bayford is a Ford car dealership which originated somewhere near Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay. But you'd be well off the mark.
It deals in Ford cars, certainly, but there was, and still is, a Mr Byford running it. The company also deals in Volkswagen and Peugeot cars plus a huge range of parts, paint and consumables.
The Bayford Group Pty Ltd, as it is called, is now in the hands of Hugh Bayford, great nephew of Richard Bayford who founded the company in 1917. The original address was in Victoria Parade, Fitzroy where St Vincents Hospital now stands.
After Richard Bayford came Alwin Bayford who ran the business from the mid-1940s until he retired in 1975.
Now Bayford has 12 locations around Melbourne, covering dealerships for the three car brands, mechanical service and a staggering variety of care and repair products and parts.
Bayford Broadmeadows Superstore/Auto Pro appears as a car carers retail store at the front, but behind is a giant warehouse which stocks and dispatches vehicle paint and consumables covering virtually every end use.
Bayford is the leading Victorian distributor for PPG, the highest selling paint brand in Australia. Bayford not only supplies pre-packaged single cans to repairers but also handles bulk quantities which it breaks down to smaller amounts. For established customers it will mix a specified quantity of a colour from the PPG database.
Then there are consumables, from polishes to abrasives to fillers: they're all there, some represented by competing brands.
Mechanical and body parts are also dispatched from the Hume Highway warehouse where annual turnover now tops $50 million, running on a stock of around $5 million. It employs 73 staff Ð out of a Bayford Group total of around 385 people.
Last year the company began to dabble in selling on eBay when it saw how much automotive product was being moved through the internet, not only to private customers but trade as well. With the right manpower behind it, Bayford's eBay business has boomed. It now averages 80 transactions a day ranging from regular consumable lines to auctions of car parts which, as time passes, gain in rarity value.
Keeping track of so many stock units has been entrusted to a Reynolds and Reynolds system where inventory management mergers with accounts. Shelving, barcodes and stock numbers have all been modified to minimise handling and duplications. A contract carrier handles all the deliveries. The Hume Highway facility also acts as the main feeder storage for the other Bayford businesses.
Bayford has won an impressive number of awards since 1988, topped by being declared Ford national dealer of the year in 2006. Quite early in the company's life its motto was 'where better Ford service costs less'. The company's service culture has never wavered. In its manual, which is given to every new employee it says 'No customer's need is ever "not my job". Customers' needs can arise at any time. Therefore if a customer needs help you are never "clocked off". The people who ultimately succeed in the car business are those who are always willing to help a customer.'