Diary of an SME Owner: Eastbourne To Be Wild

In my regular monthly column, “Diary of an SME Owner”, I tell all about the highs and lows of running a tea company, MDTea, alongside my wife, Helen.

This month, I get hooked on a new tea, land a big client and wear out some shoe leather on a day of face-to-face sales.?

February 3rd?

Part of the joy of running a tea company is getting high on your own supply. So enamoured have I become with one of our Japanese senchas, I’ve consumed far more of it than we’ve sold.

It’s a variety called ‘gyokuro’ and is grown in the shade, making its leaves thirst for light. As a result, those little guys pile on the chlorophyll, like a weightlifter loading on protein, the better to grease the cogs of photosynthesis in their twilight world.??

The result is a vivid, green leaf (‘gyokuro’ is Japanese for ‘jade dew’) and an exquisite seaweedy taste. And there’s more – this magic brew seems to have seen off my lifelong need for snacks (I did not choose tight trousers; they chose me), making it much easier to swerve Greggs on my regular morning trips to the Post Office.

The icing on the cake? We’re buying our gyokuro for only ￡14 per kilo, softening the commercial hit my habit inflicts on MDTea. Therefore, anyone hoping to catch this diarist in a good mood, should seek me at 9.30 on weekday mornings. That’s when I have my gyokuro in hand.?

February 7th?

Up here in the rarefied air of the management suite, Helen and I have always divided our roles. She is in charge of ‘product’, meaning she is the mind behind the sublimely-blended and beautifully-packaged goods that are created way down there on the factory floor (yes, that's also us). I, on the other hand, direct the sales and marketing strategies that provide a story for our teams of content creators and sellers (us again).?

Accordingly, I’ve come up with the idea of abandoning our phones and laptops for a day to conduct face-to-face sales. As any musician knows, there’s only so much you can learn from jamming in a garage. If you want to improve your technique and learn what your fans love, you gotta hit the road. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re going on tour.?

To be precise, we've planned a day in the neighbouring town of Eastbourne, armed with sample boxes of our tea. We want to see if we can meet senior managers and owners of hotels and entertainment venues so we can charm them in person. The date we’ve set is February 28th, giving us three weeks to contact prospects ahead of time so they’re already 'warm' when we arrive.?

February 12th?

Woop! Pop open the corks, dance the jig, ring the New Client Bell and feel free to generally act like a dick for a few minutes!

A key element of almost every business success is luck – but you still have to ride it. Which is exactly what Helen did when she called the catering manager of a major new tourist venue that’s opening in spring – a refurbished art deco lido with a large café, a bar and two airstreams.

It turned out she’d caught him at the perfect moment and within hours, and a bit of negotiation, we had secured the business. Despite having been closed for years, the lido is a famous venue here on the south coast and should be a fabulous client.??

February 17th?

Business leaders say there’s “smart wrong” and “stupid wrong”. An example of the former might be to make a considered decision to ignore a consumer trend, thinking it won’t catch on, only for your competitors to make a prolonged profit from that same trend.

Stupid wrong, on the other hand, might be failing to understand features of your own products. Turns out the gyokuro I’ve been selfishly quaffing is costing us ￡140 per kilo, not the ￡14 per kilo described above. I misread the label. It also turns out that any fool would know that gyokuro is expensive.

That’s why Helen does product and I do sales & marketing.

We are at the frosty peak of Mount Stupid here, having evacuated the pleasant shores of Smart Bay long ago. My dreams have unravelled, like cheap twine.??

February 28nd?

To Eastbourne for our day of sales! We put Brighton in the wing mirrors of our VW campervan at 8am, giving us time to call in at the lido on the way to drop off their first order.

We ended up meeting the entire serving team and Helen led an impromptu training session in an almost untouched commercial kitchen that sparkled with vestal innocence. My god, it was beautiful! And the enthusiasm in the room was even more impressive.

I’ve been a marketeer in local authority services, finance and tech –?so it’s liberating finally to be selling something that most people are predisposed to liking – a product that they can touch, taste and sniff. My teacup runneth over!??

By midday, we were in Eastbourne hoping to ride more luck. Predictably, we hadn’t done the pre-contacting phase of 'Operation Tea On Tour'. So no-one knew we were coming. If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, etc.

No matter!?Over three hours, we spoke to nine managers and owners and dropped off as many sample boxes. Everyone we spoke to was friendly and interested and I’d say we have at least three very good leads to follow up.??

I wrote earlier this month (and have long believed) that the road to business success is paved with luck – but is there even such a destination as ‘success’? People who believe it lies at the end of a business journey often find that, when they get there, they’re in a Potemkin village of possessions and property they never really wanted.?

Maybe success is like a walk to the horizon – you never get there. I prefer a third idea: that if you travel with a smile and a song, the success begins as soon as you set out. Helen and I are building something together and that’s the destination; we’re already there.??

At one moment today, we were in the rain-lashed VW, doing silly voices and laughing about the pleasant absurdity of our day and, in fact, of our lives. Fate may laugh at our schemes – but the striving together is its own reward.?