Since YuppieChef is one of the online businesses whose success and customer service I aspire to emulate, I was amazed and thrilled that on the same night of the Grande Finale of the 6 week R1000 Money Show Challenge, Bruce Whitfield interviewed Andrew Smith, co-founder and Managing Director of YuppieChef:
Bruce Whitfield:Our Big Issue is all about Entrepreneurship and how hard it is to start a business, how tough it is to start a business...So what we’ve asked is this evening that 2 of our Shapeshifters who we’ve spoken to this year on the Money Show, Simon Mantel the owner of Mantelli’s Biscuits and Andrew Smith co-founder and MD of YuppieChef.co.za come on and just join us and tell us some of their trials and tribulations. We’ve had a most remarkable evening here at Prime Media Place, I’ve not been this moved in a long time by the genuine efforts of 5 incredible people who took up our challenge and have delivered way beyond my expectations. I honestly believe that if we gave the Starfish Foundation R5000 at the end of this evening we would have done an incredible job. What we’ve succeeded in doing was giving them R65000 largely due to the miracle efforts of Pavlo Phitidis, but I don’t want to downplay the hard work done by Warren Ingram, done by Tsego Modisane who has had a nightmare 6 weeks, he has tried things, he has had the guts and the spirit and the determination of a Jack Russell terrier, to Paul Theron who has been beaten by the wind and the rain, and then of course to Valerie Pole who has been an exceptional contestant as well. Congratulations to all of them.
Andrew Smith is the MD of YuppieChef He joins us on the line from Cape Town. We’ve heard amazing stories this evening of start up businesses, Andrew, of how difficult it is and of how people have used their networks. When you started YuppieChef and you look back at the history of YuppieChef so far, what are the 3 things that you would have done differently in setting up a website which sells the most extraordinary array of culinary artefacts, and useful things too, online? What are the 3 things you would have changed?
Andrew: Evening, Bruce. You know, I always disappoint people with my answer to this question because I’m very happy with where we are now and if I’d changed much of our path to this point, we’d be in a different place. So I don’t actually have 3 things we could have done differently, but I did think of 3 things that I’m very glad we did do.
Bruce: Then tell me those..
Andrew: Well, first of all I’m very grateful that we started a business that we were passionate about. Getting a business off the ground and where you’re going to spend 10-12 hours a day slogging hard, it really helps to do something that you actually care about doing. I tried to imagine myself in a business that I didn’t enjoy what we sold, didn’t enjoy dealing with the customers, or dealing with the team, and I think that would be an aweful place to be. So that’s my first thing – is it something you’re passionate about?
The second thing I’m very grateful that we did is prioritise the relationship with customers over short term profits. And I think that really serving and being generous to your customers is what makes it a more enjoyable process but it has also reaped the rewards, we see it now. And even in the beginning it can seem like a long investment, if I deal with this customer well, is it going to pay off in the long term. And it has over the years, and I’m very glad that we’ve done that.
And then finally, I’m very glad that we stayed focused. We sell kitchen tools, we sell them online and we sell them in South Africa. And there’ve been along the way all sorts of opportunities to open physical stores or to branch out into other things and just being able to stay focused on that and everyone we meet and everyone we speak to, it’s a very simple thing that we tell them, and that’s helped us, and it’s also helped our positioning in the marketplace.
I think if you look at all 3 of those things, so many choices are about making more money, or sticking to what you’ve decided to do, and really, these things that I think of as our key lessons are about deciding to stick to what your core is and customers will notice and the results come out. And that’s really what your Brand is. It’s not a marketing campaign or a clever slogan. Your Brand is what you decided to stick to at your core.
Bruce: But it’s inasmuch as what you don’t do as what you do do, because, if you do a bunch of stuff you shouldn’t, it’s going to distract you from what you should.
Andrew: That’s right. I think businesses are so much simpler, particularly new businesses are so much simpler than other people make out them to be. If you do what you say you’re going to do in the time you said you’re going to do it, you’ll be successful. And how many of us wanted to have someone come over and quote on some plumbing and they never even arrive, or if they do they never get back to us on the quote? Work out what problem you’re trying to solve, and do it, and the rest just follows.
Bruce: And have you had issues with regulation, have you had issues with that regulatory environment. Internet access has been a big hindrance to the explosion of YuppieChef online.
Andrew: It’s been ok. Everyone would like to have faster internet. Browsing websites is accessible to just about every customer we could have, but what I do wish the Government had done is to fix the Post Office. That would have been great in an E-commerce environment. But I don’t think there is much hope of that. What I really would have been grateful for is a simpler labour law environment. I’m not the first person to say that. You hear everyone saying that from the biggest companies down to the small. On behalf of the smaller entrepreneur, the fear about, if I employ someone, and it doesn’t work out, what if the position is wrong or what if they’re wrong, what happens? And I think there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty and no real places to go get the answers to that. And I think unfortunately it causes a lot of people holding back on employing because they’re worried about what the repercussions might be down the line. And we’ve heard these horror stories about CCMA and all these other things and most people don’t understand what they are but that is something that I wish was different in this country.
Bruce: Andrew Smith, the co-founder and Managing Director of YuppieChef: his experience as an entrepreneur..
You can download the entire Podcast for this MoneyShow here:
The interview above starts 59 min into the Podcast and is preceded by the Grande Finale of the MoneyShow Challenge.
