OPTIFLOW MERCHANT  ·  COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE  ·  2026

February 2026  ·  8 min read  ·  Written for independent builders merchant owners and directors

Let’s be direct with you.

The builders merchant sector is undergoing a shift in competitive dynamics, and the merchants who move on digital in the next 12 to 18 months will establish advantages that will be very difficult for slower competitors to close. Those who wait are not simply delaying progress. They are actively falling further behind.

This isn’t a technology trend piece. It’s a business warning, written specifically for independent merchants who have built strong businesses on service, relationships, and local knowledge — and who now need to decide how to carry those advantages into a market that’s changing beneath them.

What Your Contractors Have Already Changed

The contractors you serve have quietly shifted how they work. They price jobs in the evening, order materials from their van, and expect answers before the working day starts. They’re not doing this because they’ve abandoned the trade counter, they’re doing it because their customers now expect faster turnarounds and tighter quotes.

When they visit your website at 7pm to check if you have 500 bricks in stock for a Monday start and get nothing, no live inventory, no way to get an answer, no quote mechanism — they don’t complain. They just go to whoever can help them.

1 in 4 builders merchants now openly admit they are falling behind on digital adoption, with a further 5% yet to begin at all. (PushON / Builders Merchants News, 2025)

The contractors placing the most orders are often the ones with the least patience for friction. They’re running multiple jobs, managing tight timelines, and making quick decisions. If you make it easy, you get the order. If you don’t, the next merchant does.

The Chain Merchants Are Moving — But Slowly

You might assume the national chains — the Jewsons, Travis Perkins, and Grafton-owned businesses of the world, have already solved this. The reality is more complicated, and it creates a genuine window for independent merchants.

Large chains have the budgets but also the bureaucracy. Rolling out AI-enabled digital tools across dozens or hundreds of branches, with legacy ERP systems, centralised procurement, and IT change-management cycles, takes years. Their websites are improving, but slowly.

Meanwhile, the contractors they share with you have already started noticing which suppliers make it easiest to do business. Personal service has always been the independent merchant’s edge. But personal service has to extend into the digital channel now, and that’s where most independents currently have a gap.

“Builders’ merchants and suppliers that embrace these technologies now will be better positioned to meet changing customer expectations and drive future growth, while those who delay risk falling behind.” — PushON Managing Director, Builders Merchants News, 2025

The window isn’t closed yet. But it requires decisions this year, not next.

What AI Is Actually Doing for Merchants Who Have Adopted It

Ignore the hype around AI broadly. What matters for an independent merchant is the specific, practical applications that affect your business today.

Here’s what merchants further along the adoption curve are already seeing:

• Contractors can check live stock availability and get accurate lead times without calling the counter — reducing inbound phone volume and freeing up staff for complex queries
• Trade account pricing is visible and queryable online, without the contractor having to log in, call, or wait for a callback
• Out-of-hours enquiries are captured, responded to, and routed correctly — rather than being lost until the following morning
• Billing queries and invoice discrepancies are handled automatically, reducing time spent by your accounts team on routine calls
• Full project materials lists can be priced and quoted digitally, not just individual product searches

None of this replaces your counter staff or your relationships. It extends your service into the hours and channels where you currently have no presence.

92%

of construction companies are now using or planning to use AI — up sharply over the past 12 months. (Builders Merchants News, 2025)

The Contractor Experience Gap You May Not Be Tracking

Here’s the uncomfortable question: how many potential orders are you losing that you don’t know about?

A contractor who calls and gets a busy signal might try again. A contractor who visits your website, finds no useful information, and moves on doesn’t leave a trace. There’s no missed call log, no abandoned basket, no record of the interaction. You simply don’t get the order.

This is the nature of the digital revenue leak most independent merchants aren’t measuring. It’s not dramatic, there’s no single moment where you lose a customer. It’s a gradual erosion of share, as the contractors who value ease start concentrating their spend with whoever makes it simplest.

The merchants who understand this are asking a different question, not ‘do we need to do something about our website?’ but ‘how much is it costing us not to have already done it?’

Why This Matters More for Independents Than Chains

For a national chain, losing 5% of contractor spend to a competitor is a line in a quarterly report. For an independent merchant, the same shift in a handful of key accounts is a material threat to the business.

Independents typically have a tighter base of high-value trade account customers whose loyalty is commercially significant. The good news is those relationships are genuine and defensible. The risk is that digital friction erodes goodwill gradually, in ways that are hard to see until a customer has already drifted.

Your competitive advantage has always been that you know your customers better than a national chain ever will. An AI sales agent doesn’t change that — it carries that advantage into the digital channel, where you currently have a gap.

What to Look for If You’re Evaluating Your Options

Not all AI solutions are built for the trade sector. When you’re looking at options, the critical questions are:

• Does it understand trade terminology — not just generic retail product search?
• Can it connect to your existing stock and pricing systems, or does it require a wholesale data migration project?
• Does it handle trade account pricing correctly, including tiered pricing for different customer accounts?
• Can it handle billing queries and account questions as well as sales enquiries?
• Can it be deployed without a six-month IT implementation — or do you need to rebuild your entire website to use it?

The right solution is one that embeds into what you already have, works from your existing data, and goes live in weeks rather than quarters.

A Practical Starting Point

If you’re an independent merchant owner reading this and thinking about what to do next, the most useful first step isn’t a technology procurement exercise. It’s an honest audit of your digital customer journey.

Walk through your own website as if you were one of your best trade account customers. Ask yourself:

• Can I check stock availability for a specific quantity without calling?
• Can I see my trade pricing without logging into an account?
• Can I get a quote for a full project materials list?
• If I visit at 7pm on a Tuesday, can I get any useful answer to any question?
• If I have a query about an invoice, is there any way to resolve it without calling your accounts team?

If the answer to most of those is no, you have a gap that your more digitally capable competitors — whether chains or other independents — are already exploiting.

Optiflow Merchant

Optiflow Merchant is an AI agentic platform built specifically for builders merchants and trade suppliers. It embeds into your existing website, connects to your stock and pricing systems, and handles trade sales enquiries and billing queries around the clock.

We’ve designed it for independent and regional merchants who want to close the digital gap quickly — without enterprise-scale implementation timelines or costs. Implementing a Sales agent, allows you to convert live website traffic through an advanced AI Sales agent increasing revenues by 11X.

Talk to the Optiflow team →  support@optiflowtechnologies.io

Optiflow Technologies builds AI agentic platforms for the energy, trade, and SME sectors. Optiflow Merchant, Optiflow Utilities, and Optiflow Watch are designed to put intelligent automation where it creates the most commercial value.