Mitcham Belle Coaches has seen many changes over its 90-year operation, from a name-change to a fleet upgrade, and 2017 has been a big year for the Mitcham-based operator
Currently celebrating 50 years under the control of the Wilde family, we spoke to Mitcham Belle Coaches’ (MBC) Managing Director Kevin Wilde and Marketing Manager Aimee Wells about the past, present and future.
Kevin’s dad, Fred Wilde, acquired Wimbledon and Mitcham Belle Coaches – as it was known then – in 1967, and Kevin always knew he was going to join the family business.
“I came into it in the early ‘80s after a couple of periods of employment,” he says. “The idea of coming into the business was to bring in some new ideas, and obviously continue the good work that my dad had done already.”
Being a family-fun business is really at the heart of MBC, and from carrying out everything from school trips, to weddings and funerals, MBC are “there through every step of your life,” says Aimee.
And while Kevin feels his children won’t take it into its third generation, it is seen as one of the main factors why people travel with MBC, “being a smaller, personal, family-run company,” as he describes.
Less is more
MBC has been in the process of a complete rebrand over the past year, including a new logo, website, and a fleet upgrade, which has seen the operator down-size from 12 to 10 vehicles, and change the colour from white to graphite grey.
“Reducing to 10 seems to be the perfect size,” says Kevin. “If you go larger – and we can because we have the O-Licences to do it – then that’s all well and good. But then you need to almost put in another tier of management to deal with the increase.
“Plus you’ve constantly got the threat that you’re not going to get the drivers,” he adds. “I think if you can concentrate and treat your drivers really well, then they will stay for a long period of time.
“We’re focusing on getting a really good quality fleet and concentrating on providing great customer service. And I think that’s the way forward, whether that’s eight or 12 vehicles, it’s quality over quantity.”
The reasoning behind the reduction is to move the older fleet out in order to comply with Euro 6, “it’s better to put a plan in now to move the older vehicles out, then during the course of 2018 the rest of the fleet will be replaced – so we’ve got six vehicles to replace with Euro 6,” he says. But there is potentially one or two of the vehicles Kevin may keep and look in to retrofitting, these will be on fleet kept as spare. “It’s a possibility depending on the technology available,” he adds.
Recent additions to the fleet have been four Euro 6s: A 19-seater Mercedes-Benz 516CDi Sprinter Unvi Vega GT; a 22-seater Mercedes-Benz 516CDi Sprinter Unvi Vega EX; and two 35-seater Yutong TC9s.
The new vehicles are said to have been what triggered the company rebrand.
Says Aimee: “It’s was a natural step to take, you get the new vehicles and think ‘maybe this is a good opportunity to be able to rebrand’.”
Aimee has a structured plan for the image MBC wants to create with this new rebrand, and it was all done internally by recruiting Aimee at the start of the year.
Kevin adds that it’s not necessarily moving from the old to the new, but trying to develop the business into something that is modern, contemporary and has a buzz to it.
He says: “There wasn’t anything wrong with the old Mitcham Belle logos or anything like that; it’s just a case of really rising to some of our competitors, looking at what they’re providing and how they are adapting to the market.
“We needed to do something. We needed to look at a new logo, and look at how the company is portraying itself and give it a more modern tilt – in the end, it’s about how things are represented.”
Positive ULEZ
As the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) is set to be enforced from 8 April 2019, Kevin and MBC are embracing the change immensely, even though he describes it as a ‘difficult situation.’
“I can understand from an operator’s perspective that it costs a lot of money to change your whole fleet and some of the local coach operators may not have the ability to raise the finances they need, so it can be very difficult,” he says. “But on the other side of it, I know what the air quality is like and so the ULEZ can only be a good thing.
“You have to put some of the monetary side of it out the window and actually think about the long-term benefits for the people in London, south east and UK wide. I know a lot of our competitors don’t feel that way but it’s better living, and we think it’s important.
“The future is really bright. I think the ULEZ will be an absolute boom for the coach industry, it really will.”
Industry knowledge
Regulation and training were the two changes Kevin said he would like to make to the industry, with a request of more free reign and less time spent doing administrative tasks.
“Sometimes it is absolutely overwhelming the things you have to do to comply with the minutiae of government details,” he says.
Kevin says that there has been a dearth of money to fund apprenticeships to train drivers, so it would also be beneficial for the government to invest more money into training, or use outside companies so that drivers can be trained with the aim that there is ongoing throughput of PCV drivers.
“As a smaller company, to actually set up the infrastructure to have your own driving school is quite expensive and with Brexit and a great deal of eastern European drivers now deciding to depart and go back to eastern Europe, it’s leaving the industry with a huge problem,” says Kevin.
Bright future
After 90 years, there must be something behind the company that makes it tick, and Kevin puts it down to the knowledge of knowing that they are serving the local community and customers.
“Our customer service is very good and goes right the way through from first point of contact when we make the booking, all the way to the hire itself,” says Kevin.
MBC faced its biggest change in May this year with the passing of Fred at the age of 85, and now Kevin is looking to the future and carrying on the legacy that he describes as his dad’s life.
“After the issues of this year, what with my dad passing away, I have had to refocus, and I’ve really got no one to fall back on or moan at if I want to – so now it’s just looking to the future, and I think it’s really bright,” he says.