Design and Specification

Laying the foundations for success with Vandersanden

14 April 2022 | By NBS

Discover why Vandersanden chooses to work with NBS to engage with specifiers directly in this case study featuring National Specification Manager, Mathew Davies.

Vandersanden is the largest family-owned brick manufacturer in Europe, specialising in developing and producing traditional and non-traditional clay bricks and brick solutions, pavers, and facade systems. The company’s ethos focuses on facilitating livability, with its products laying the physical foundations of homes, parks, streets, and communities.

As one of the largest producers of bricks on the continent, Vandersanden was looking to expand its reach in the UK and recognised that gaining access to specifiers and architects would be a key part of its strategy.

Vandersanden understood that by showcasing a selection of UK specific products and systems, NBS could then offer a direct route to present these to specifiers. We spoke to Mathew Davies, National Specification Manager at Vandersanden, to see how NBS Source has helped.

Optimising the specification process

“Historically we used traditional marketing and sales methods with an increasing focus and shift to supporting this through online and digital channels.”

Mathew noted that the UK team understood the importance of identifying specifiers at critical early stages of their project, so initially they engaged with the RIBA Product Selector - which has now been replaced by NBS Source.

The partnership has proved to be a valuable one for both parties - helping Vandersanden to open-up an additional direct channel to help meet its growth objective, whilst helping NBS to shape the platform to meet the needs of its customers.

“We were fortunate to be an early adopter of NBS Source and this has allowed us to input into the platform’s development and refinement and has more recently resulted in us being invited to join the NBS insight community.”

Mathew also discussed the practical ways Vandersanden is able to utilise the NBS platform to reach specifiers:

“In addition to presenting a detailed selection of our extensive product range, specifiers can access related content such as certification and compliance details, case studies and RIBA CPD in an intuitive and convenient way.”

This content is linked to our website and augments our broader digital strategy, so the specifier stays engaged with us throughout the decision-making process.

What makes NBS Source successful?

The Manufacturer Partner Platform in NBS Source is intuitive and enables us to ensure that the product information and related documentation featured on NBS remains up to date.

“The analytics provide a deeper view, which is invaluable in terms of our KPI measurement.”

NBS Chorus integration goes even further, helping us spot future trends and open up new communication channels to offer design advice to specifiers whenever possible.

For suppliers and manufacturers, it is vital that they can effectively display product information, system benefits and related content like case studies directly in front of specifiers and architects at the start of the specification process.

We are now entering our second year of using the NBS platform and the team at NBS are excellent: they are responsive and knowledgeable and work with us to help ensure our products are listed correctly to maximise their specification potential.