Case studies

Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood — thirteen years, three scoreboards and an annual service

Merchant Taylors' School in Northwood is one of our longest-standing customers. The relationship started with a DCPro scoreboard in 2013 and now covers three cricket scoreboards, a hockey scoreboard, an indoor cricket centre fit-out…

Merchant Taylors’ School in Northwood is one of our longest-standing customers. The relationship started with a DCPro scoreboard in 2013 and now covers three cricket scoreboards, a hockey scoreboard, an indoor cricket centre fit-out and a range of ground equipment — all of it serviced by us every year.

The DCPro, installed 2013

The original installation was a DCPro: a large-format scoreboard standing roughly 4 metres high and carrying more than 50 digits. It is the kind of board that gives a school ground the feel of a county venue, displaying a full scorecard rather than a handful of figures.

It is still in service today, more than a decade after installation. For anyone weighing up the cost of a large electronic scoreboard, that is the number worth holding on to — not the purchase price, but how many seasons it goes on working.

Adding to the setup

The school has since added a DC22, and in 2026 a DC9 Solar that replaced an ageing manual scoreboard.

The DC9 Solar is a straightforward answer for a second square or an outground, because it needs no mains supply run out to it — which is usually the thing that makes a second scoreboard expensive rather than the board itself.

Alongside the cricket boards we have supplied a hockey scoreboard and a range of ground equipment, and completed the fit-out of the school’s indoor cricket centre.

Serviced every year

Every scoreboard on site is serviced annually, including the school’s Sportyco scorebox — a unit we did not supply, but maintain alongside our own.

An annual service is why a 2013 scoreboard is still displaying a full scorecard in 2026. Electronic boards sit outdoors through every winter, and the difference between one that lasts five years and one that lasts fifteen is usually whether anyone looked at it between seasons.

We service boards whoever made them, so a ground with a mix of equipment from different suppliers can still have one visit and one point of contact.

The result

Merchant Taylors’ has built up its cricket and hockey provision piece by piece over thirteen years, adding as budgets allowed rather than replacing everything at once, and keeping the original investment working throughout.

That is the pattern we would recommend to most schools: buy well once, service it every year, and add to it.