by Matthew Fletcher | Mar 20, 2017 | blog
Hey Entrepreneurs,
Just a quick update on some fabulous things happening around Geelong:
Next EG Breakfast
At our next Entrepreneurs Geelong breakfast we’ll be joined by Brendan McKeegan as he talks about Building Global Technology Giants from the Comfort of the SurfCoast!
Friday 7 April, 7.15am for 7.30am (until 9am)
Australia Post Small Business Hive, 108 Gheringhap Street, Geelong.
Get your ticket today at www.trybooking.com/PCOJ
Geelong Business Excellence Awards
In it’s 31st year, the Powercor Australia Geelong Business Excellence Awards recognise organisations that have achieved business excellence in the Geelong region. This year there are some new categories including Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Nominate yourself or someone else and be at the awards ceremony on Thursday 17 August. For more information, check out www.gbea.com.au.
Small Business Smart Business
Small Business Smart Business is sponsor of Entrepreneurs Geelong and provides low cost education and mentoring for start-ups and existing small businesses in the region.
Seminar topics for entrepreneurs in the next 6 weeks include; time management, taking better photos for social media with your mobile phone, digital marketing tools to grow your customer community, blogging, business planning, Facebook ads, and sales without being awkward.
For more information go to www.smallbusinesssmartbusiness.com.au/events
Check out the mentors available http://smallbusinesssmartbusiness.com.au/our-mentors/
Runway Geelong open for applications
Runway Geelong is Geelong’s startup accelerator and incubator that is looking for companies keen to grow and go global. Applications are now open and close on April 5th. If you are a hard working, motivated, focused and innovative startup, then check out more information at www.runwaygeelong.com.au and apply today!
Upstart Challenge Launch
The Upstart Challenge is an entrepreneurial program and business ideas competition for high school students aimed at building an entrepreneurial culture and fostering strong relationships between students, educators, industry and the community. This year’s program launch will be on Thursday 30 March from 5.15pm to 7.30pm at Deakin Waterfront. Our President, Matthew Fletcher will be interviewing some of the Upstart alumni, so book today at www.bit.ly/upstartlaunch or find out more at www.upstartchallenge.com.au.
Australia Post Small Business Hive upcoming events
We’re always grateful to our partners at the Hive for providing a great venue for our breakfasts. Pamela and her team are running events regularly so make sure you check out what’s coming up so you don’t miss out.
Look forward to seeing you at our next event and go get your entrepreneur on!
by Matthew Fletcher | Mar 20, 2017 | blog
That some of the world’s keenest competitive cyclists choose to describe their hand-crafted Baum cycles as the “world’s best” starts with a cup of coffee at a modest industrial building in the Geelong suburb of North Shore.
Regardless of whether they are multi-millionaires with private jets or people of more modest means, the first step in the process of building bespoke bikes is for Baum staff to listen to what the client wants over a coffee.
It’s a convention, begun by business founder Darren Baum, and designed to get an answer from each and every client to the question ’why did you come to us?’
Equipped with that answer the process can begin of building a bike to exactly meet a customer’s needs.
In one week Darren’s clients might range from a Tour de France winner to a grandmother who needed a bike to address the biomechanical challenges which resulted from knee surgery, some arthritis and living in a hilly suburb.
“We get as much pleasure providing Cadel Evans with a bike as we do helping to change that grandmother’s life,” Darren Baum says.
An A-grade rider by his mid-teens, Darren had an accident which at 17 abruptly stopped his riding career. But the seeds of an idea for a business had been sown when he decided that he couldn’t afford European-made bikes nor did he like the Australian-made products.
Later undertaking an apprenticeship as an aircraft maintenance engineer, his workplace enabled him to experiment and innovate. This with the biomechanical problems he experienced following his accident- which were to give him an insight into both the geometry and handling of bikes- became pointers to the business that would become Baum Cycles.
“These factors ultimately resulted in a naïve decision to have a go at making bikes, something which capitalised on the enjoyment I get through working with my hands,” Mr Baum said. This was despite a concern expressed by his Father about starting a business.
Just as Mr Baum says there is no formal training for what he has done or the paths he has taken to build an internationally-recognised business in his home town, Baum Cycles does not conform to conventional images of a manufacturing business in today’s global marketplace. It is arguable that is why it is succeeding in a market dominated by much larger businesses.
A basic premise of the business is that hand-crafted or bespoke bikes are the best option for racing bikes, given that an individual’s biomechanical requirements dictate optimum performance of rider and machine.
If a cup of coffee helps start a dialogue to clearly define a customer’s needs, then the customer remains foremost in the corporate mindset of Baum Cycles.
“We look at everything from the customer’s point of view,” Mr Baum said.
In this age of multiple types of communication-from Snap Chat to snail mail- this presents a challenge as regards ongoing dialogue with the customer.
“So we operate with a single point of truth, namely a box in which all customer information is stored. This is critical to bespoke or customised manufacture.
“The acid test of success for us is if the customer has a smile on their face when they take delivery of their bike.”
The manufacturing process at Baum Cycles is a very manual one in which it is very obvious what people are doing. Unlike other forms of manufacturing, a lean and agile approach proved unsatisfactory at Baum.
Seeking the advice of a mentor as the company grew Baum was told to established cleaner, more defined work practices, advice that has Mr Baum says has paid dividends.
As part of a vibrant corporate culture, each workstation in the process of building a bike treats the next as an internal customer, something which supports an ongoing drive for quality.
Reflecting the company’s flat management structure and that its founder still enjoys being a welder Darren nevertheless plays a major role in training staff. He says the company has a corporate culture that may not appeal to everyone.
Echoing the experience of many successful entrepreneurs there have been failures along the way.
“Failures are the best time to prove yourself by the way in which you manage them,” Mr Baum said.
With the manufacturing process at the Geelong factory turning out about three bikes a week, the lead time for a bike can be between four and five months. But this is acceptable for people who look to express themselves through their bikes-whether they are former prime ministers, captains of industry or those who value a bike that is widely acknowledged as one of the best in the world.
Would a bigger workforce reduce the lead time? Mr Baum thinks otherwise, given the importance of the staff progressing up the curve that is learning to fit into the corporate culture.
“We also remain competitive by staying lean.”
Certainly diversification into products allied to bikes is a possibility but bikes remain Baum’s true passion
With a third of its production destined for export and Asia being its biggest market, Baum expects to continue steady growth.
Most customers in Australasia and neighbouring regions are direct. Further afield, such as in North America Baum very carefully selects retail outlets with whom it can partner.
While producing a world class product for a sport that has global appeal and following Darren Baum admits that financial support for a professional cycling team is beyond his small company’s capability.
Nevertheless the impact of the internet is such that Baum Cycles cannot be seen as small or think small.
“We are being judged by world’s best practice,” Mr Baum said.
by Matthew Fletcher | Feb 10, 2017 | blog
Frank Costa puts as much store in quality people as he does in quality fruit and vegetables, an attribute which has seen him nurture the businesses in the Costa Group to collectively become the country’s largest growers, packers and marketers of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Speaking of a business career that began in 1950, when he was just 12, the former president of the Geelong Football club shares the philosophies and beliefs of many successful entrepreneurs about the importance of valuing people, especially those you employ.
Frank Costa’s first experience as an entrepreneur was selling newspapers on Geelong’s T&G corner. Wanting a better return than that afforded offered on a single street corner by selling papers to drinkers in the city’s pubs, Frank became an employer. With three other kids selling on his behalf, he covered much more territory.
If selling newspapers fostered Frank’s competitive spirit with his brother Adrian, who sold papers on another city corner, it also lit the spark of ambition for growing businesses.
When the retailer Myer planned to sell fresh fruit and vegetables in Geelong, a city whose fruit and vegetables scene was then dominated by Italian families, Frank saw the signs of a changing industry.
It was a pivotal moment. He reasoned that if he stayed with his not-ambitious Father in a long-established retail business he would not get ahead so, with his brother Adrian they bought out their Father.
With the way paved for an expansion into wholesaling, the brothers were also to demonstrate a flair for seizing new opportunities. Frank saw the potential of harvesting fresh field mushrooms in Victoria’s western district for the Melbourne market, employing staff to peel onions for the food service sector and recycling old fruit crates, thereby differentiating the business from a conventional fruit and vegetable business.
Along the way, the brothers learned to value good people, a theme which occurs regularly in interviews of Costa.
It has become practice within the Costa group of companies to recognise employees for doing something right, however large or small, instead of employees only hearing from management when it thought they had done something wrong. Frank says he also believes in providing incentives to encourage people, as he did when his three younger brothers were invited into the business.
And, in a similar vein, he counsels showing compassion when a situation might call for it, as happened when he discovered one of his buyers in Melbourne had been taking bribes .Knowing the buyer had a young family, Costa chose to fire him, rather than report his behaviour to the police.
If sport helps people achieve a work-life balance, in Frank Costa’s case that sport was Aussie Rules. Despite the fact that being too slow meant he could not pursue a childhood dream of being a footballer, by the mid-1990s his business expertise and success was not unnoticed and he was invited to become president of the city’s Geelong Cats, a position he held until 2011.
In this capacity he oversaw a board with good complimentary skills, which convinced him there is synergy between leadership and entrepreneurship.
“But you must be brutally honest to attract the best people. You must lead by example, and perform yourself. You can’t buy trust, you can only earn it,” Costa says.
These attitudes have become embodied in the recruitment practices of the football club.
“You should hire for character and then train for skills,” he says, describing the exhaustive processes by which those recruiting young footballers check their character before drafting them.
Over time Costa has backed his judgement through having a thorough understanding of the business he was in as well as floating ideas with others. He searched for people who had better skills than he had in various parts of the business.
“But first find an industry that will give you a buzz, enjoy what you do and be the best at you can at it,” he advises aspiring entrepreneurs.
“Being honest earns respect and with it, people will open up to you, even your competitors.”
He has had close brushes with failure, like the decision to incorrectly locate a major distribution centre in Geelong which “put us close to going under,” he said.
But with eight children and 22 grandchildren, Frank Costa is convinced there is no other place in Australia to beat Geelong for family development. He lists affordable housing, as well as access to good health services, educational institutions and sporting amenities as underpinning that conviction.
In the end though, it all comes back to quality people says Frank Costa.
“If all our plant, facilities and resources were suddenly taken away, we could re-start if we had good people.
“Conversely, without good people all the plant and facilities would mean we would quickly go broke.”
by Matthew Fletcher | Nov 30, 2016 | blog
The choice of Geelong as a pilot site for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) made it a logical decision that a business which enables the disabled to make informed choices about services should launch its website centred on the city.
Now poised to expand into other states Clickability may well represent the first of many opportunities for entrepreneurs based on the ongoing roll-out of the NDIS.
Co-founder of Clickability Jenna Moffat, a qualified social worker, did not initially see herself as an entrepreneur when the website she describes as “Trip Advisor for the disabled community” was launched.
The catalyst for the business concept and the website stemmed from the arrival of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and Jenna’s recognition that she and her partner were holding lots of information which was relevant to disabled people, in their heads.
“Until Clickability social workers had been consistently advocating for direct communications between services providers and the disabled person. Moving people who had been denied a consumer mindset had been a huge task.
“All disabled people had the same or similar problems. When we started to tackle those problems collectively and we could see the changes happening.”
In a business that started as a partnership, Jenna says there were lessons learned early on about over-communicating at times and the need for a better understanding of each other’s skills. Now a proprietary limited company with a growing number of employees, the next lesson was learning how to let go and give responsibility to others.
Reflecting on the entrepreneurial journey so far she said “we would back ourselves more strongly than we did at the outset. “
As the company expands, finding appropriate resources to replicate its success elsewhere may happen more quickly but will not be without its challenges.
Jenna advises those with similar aspirations as social entrepreneurs to have strong self-belief while immersing themselves in the communities they are working with.
“The label ‘social entrepreneur’ is not yet widely understood in Australia. It’s not about money and sometimes measuring outcomes is difficult,” she says.
But Clickability is already garnering supporters at the big end of town with a major bank providing the venture with a grant, mentoring and in-kind support.
Jenna sees more funding for NDIS leading to more opportunities in the sector, with the proviso that while it is a world-leading program “will it lift the country’s ability to look after those with disabilities?
“It is critical that consumers are mobilised and know their rights.”
The Clickability business model requires service providers to pay a subscription. Such providers range from those who grasp fully the idea of the business and website to those who are scared.
“We need to work closely with them,” Jenna says, harking back to the earlier challenges encountered of moving providers from an initial free to a paid service.
Nevertheless, overall engagement once a subscription was applied has increased.
The future will see Clickability add more services as well as address gaps in the geographic areas it covers. Jenna sees it as having international potential, either for the website or the work that goes on behind it.
The few businesses which might have represented competition do not appear to address the scope of Clickability’s services or they have disappeared after a short life.
Among the risk factors Jenna has identified is that the market may not mature as the two founders have envisaged. Long term success may well be dictated by how well the NDIS works.
Jenna Moffat, co-founder of Clickability
by Matthew Fletcher | Oct 13, 2016 | blog
Carolyn Probert candidly admits that more research and a detailed plan would have made the launch of a business in a new market so much easier.
As managing director of Australian New Energy Ltd (ANE), which aims to capitalise on the growing desire for renewable energy products, she brought a diverse business background to the Geelong-headquartered company she co-founded in 2009.
“We thought it would have been easy but we could have done a much better job of our research,” she says, drawing on her earlier experience in having run two high profile fast food franchise outlets in Geelong with her husband, as well as time spent in clothing industry marketing and real estate.
She readily admits that she now loves what she does in contrast with her earlier business career.
That love is for a business that initially started with the production of pellets for heating applications using waste wood.
ANE is seeking to become the major energy supplier from wood residues and fibre for the production of renewable energy. About two centimetres long by half a centimetre thick, the pellets made from clean timber waste are an increasingly popular heating fuel in Europe and elsewhere in the northern hemisphere. Pellet heating is slowly gaining a share of the Australian heating market with Tasmania an early adopter.
A similar production process is now used at ANE’s Moolap facility to also produce pellets for animal bedding and/or litter.
With her extensive experience now honed in a business she loves, Carolyn lists many of the things learned along the way.
Perhaps the biggest of these lessons, financially at least, is the company’s decision to commit to equipment for pellet-making from a European manufacturer. While the capital cost is many times that of the first pellet-making machine sourced from China, the initial machine was plagued with operational problems.
Carolyn says “you need to take risks and to make mistakes. And, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Importantly know your customer, your competitor and your product.
“Customer service is of paramount importance. As we get busier it is getting harder to deliver and I strive to keep it as good as I would like it to be.”
Carolyn says “while the fast food franchises were cash cows, being accountable to the franchisor we were not really our own bosses. We ended up in “waste” because we could see the potential of recycling and sustainable activities.
“We thought it would be straightforward to install and operate a plant to turn clean timber waste, which would otherwise have gone into landfill, into pellets for heating. “
Given the pellet heating market in Australia was in its infancy, ANE could see more immediate cash- flow in pellets for clean, dry horse bedding. However, this was to prove a small and somewhat seasonal market in comparison with the year-round production of bedding or litter for domestic pets.
If developing markets was initially a challenge to ANE, so too were issues like freight.
But five years on and many lessons learned says Carolyn, ANE’s staff of 10 looks towards the installation of a major heating pellet system and the Catmate litter product being sold through by a large retail chain.
