Expert Financial & Business Insights for South Africa
Strategic analysis from Idea Accelerator and ready-to-publish content from Financial News Daily.
The other day a bridal company entrepreneur was talking about her worst nightmare. She had ordered over 300 hydrangeas for a “white ” colour wedding from a grower in KwaZulu-Natal because she did not want to import the flowers. She placed the order six months before with the grower. This was good planning. Continue reading “This small business owner was forced to draw on her creativity”
The other day I was talking to a successful entrepreneur that I’ve known for some time and I asked him what was the biggest lesson he had learnt as a business person. He immediately came out with this answer: don’t take too much risk. About two years ago before he started the business that he is presently running, he imported a container load of product. Everything was working out well until the local currency dropped overnight. He had not taken any forward cover and his loss was astronomical. Continue reading “A lesson about risk from a successful entrepreneur”
One publisher was so fed up with the collapse last year of the Post Office services that he has vowed never to use them again. For his subscribers he set up a door-to-door delivery service and deliveries via POSTNET.
The complete breakdown of the postal service showed how quickly a going concern can die because of poor management. It’s ironic that the executive managers were patting themselves on their backs over and over about how “sustainable” the business was when they completely lacked a plan to deal with changing circumstances. Continue reading “Picking the eyes out of a failed business”
One of the small businesses I was trying to get up and running some years back gave me a lot of headaches. A big challenge was getting the distribution right. Without distribution channels, the business could not get off the ground. Another issue was trying to attract a specialised staff person but with the small business not having any track record.
These are the kind of issues that the person who is starting something from scratch often confronts. Other issues could involve product prototyping and estimating market demand. These are not easy to issues to solve especially when you are a small business person operating on a shoestring budget with your resources only being yourself and meagre savings. Continue reading “Information is a commodity, specialised knowledge is valuable”
A top, seasoned tenor, Stéfan Louw announced his plans to come up with a new opera company to help bring back the “mysticism” and “singing excellence” of opera. He has named his company Big Wig Opera – because he is so tired of pretentious names that no one understands – and will operate from the Roodepoort Theatre. He has already produced “The Tragedy of Werther” at Roodepoort and hopes to do bigger productions in 2015. Continue reading “Even the top opera singers are in search of new business models”
The seed of success for most things in life — personal relationships, health, business, community — is creative thinking. It doesn’t matter if it’s thinking disguised as intuition, decision-making or problem-solving.
Creativity helps you come up with more imaginative ideas, do something new and different and even profit from your ideas if they are materialised into products and services.
Continue reading “Five creativity techniques to help you in your personal life and business”
We went to visit a fashion designer in Salt River, Cape Town, because of my daughter’s interest in fashion. It was two days before New Year and the fashion designer was working flat out at 3 PM. She showed us some of her many patterns, we watched one of her staff cutting cloth from a pattern and were told how she farmed out the garment construction to a sub supplier. She preferred to outsource this part of her garment construction because it is a specialist field in itself and requires a different overhead to where this fashion designer is presently located. But one thing stood out. Continue reading “Hard work comes easier when your work is your passion”
Over the festive season, I walked down to the rocks near Kalk Bay to show my daughter and son an old fish trap along the coastline. They were amazed. They asked me how old the fish trap, made in the rocks on the water’s edge, was. I really can’t give a precise answer because to my knowledge there is no history of these fish traps around the South African coast. Some romantic historians would put these fish traps in ancient times but this one in particular looked as though it had been made about more than 100 years ago. Continue reading “An old Kalk Bay fish trap reveals a secret to sales”
A few weeks ago I was walking through a mall in a coastal town and noticed a retail shop that was converted into a play room for children. Inside the playroom were several children sitting at tables playing games, making things and enjoying themselves.
Some mothers can have an awful time of it shopping when the children are nagging and even screaming for attention. This is a problem for mothers. I have not seen local entrepreneurs come up with such a playroom but have heard of an entrepreneur who has developed several for mothers in Malaysia. Their children play mainly with Lego which he sources cheaply from an Asian country. Now an entrepreneur locally has woken up to the problem that mothers face while shopping and has developed a playroom for kids where they can enjoy themselves while their mothers shop peacefully.
An author of a little book on advice for entrepreneurs claims that employees are problem solvers while entrepreneurs are solution finders. But is it really fair to say employees are problem solvers rather than the solution finders? The thing is that when people write books like these they tried to simplify everything and often these statements are not accurate or based on fact. As much as entrepreneurs can be solution finders, employees need not only be problem solvers but can also look for solutions that benefit business entrepreneur really.
Just in recent months I have come across entrepreneurs who have found solutions for green gardening and landscaping, energy efficiency in the home, an ointment for bluebottle and insect stings from the humble pawpaw fruit and a woman entrepreneur who came up with specially designed swimwear that doesn’t fall off when women are surfing.
What problems save you come across recently in your daily personal or business life or that of others that you can turn into solutions other people would be willing to pay for? There are so many problems that consumers and customers have that it pays to look and listen. What about health and safety issues in small businesses? What are entrepreneurs doing to protect their staff from harm? As you probably know, many accidents don’t always happen in an industrial workshop or factory but occur at home. Slips, trips and falls are common accidents at home where many entrepreneurs now set up the home businesses. How can they better protect themselves?
Problems with poor quality products seem to have grown exponentially. Do you have any solutions for helping to improve the quality of products or come up with a better quality product? It was sad to see how many presents under the Christmas tree this year – sourced from Asian countries – were damaged or fell apart. What can we do about better quality products? Do we have to accept such cheap junk?
Poor quality service is now so prevalent if you stand out with excellent service you will be far ahead of other businesses. Small businesses have a huge edge for better quality service. The cost of eating out needs better solutions as the price of meals rises out of reach of many people. The high cost of electricity is begging for domestic energy efficiency solutions.
If you are looking for a solution to turn your promising business idea into a source of income, you may want to consider “Breakthrough Ideas”. It’s essentially a solution finder. It helps you find a solution that you can turn into a product or service to form a small enterprise, something of your own from scratch. You have an opportunity to secure this resource with a special incentive before the general public… So don’t miss out! Don’t let your dream pass you by. Secure your copy now by putting your name down on the waiting list.
On Christmas morning we went down to the beach at Muizenberg for a swim. The water was lovely and cool and enjoyable beyond measure. Afterwards, we all felt a bit peckish from the sun, sea and sand and went up to a small restaurant for some calamari, chips and coffee. The coffee was all right but the chips and calamari were nothing really to speak about. In fact, the calamari was tasteless. It was so easy to spot the fault with the calamari. It had been soaked in meat tenderiser to make it soft which had left the calamari tasteless. Continue reading “Businesses that don’t keep their promises to customers get away with it but at their own peril”
