#012 - Interview with Neville Wright: Discover How a Customer-Centric Business Model Can Make You £100 Million (Part 1).

Ecommerce Uncovered Podcast

Uncover the secrets behind e-Commerce success! A Behind the scenes look at what makes e-Commerce a success in today's ever-growing and continually changing online world. Learn and apply these lessons, techniques and strategies to your own online business.

An interview with businessman Neville Wright. Neville sold Kiddicare business to Morrison’s in 2011 after building it up to be the largest independent nursery business in Europe!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Neville left mainstream employment at the age of 24 in 1974. After a few days of going into business he found himself saying yes to every job before even being briefed as to what the job was. That started with property maintenance - window cleaning, painting and decorating, etc.

Hard work isn’t something you were afraid of Neville? Do you get a choice? If you want things in life, really want security, money for 40-50 years time and to reach your goals then there really is no other choice. The normal person will work around 8 hours a day to survive, so you’ve only got to do a little bit more. An extra hour in the morning, an extra hour at night. When they have a day off, if they work 5 days then you work 6.

What’s your attitude on failure Neville? Failure is never classified as failure, only as a way of learning. In fact, I quite like failure because it gets the adrenaline going. You’ve learned something, then you get back up and succeed. It makes the success taste so much better. I embrace failure!

Failure quick is the best thing: It’s better to sell a pram to a couple who are going to go on holiday and use it straight away rather than sell to a couple who are going to store the pram and not use it for a few months. This is because in case the pram is faulty, you can get the feedback sooner and recall the product quicker, saving yourself a lot of time, effort, money and credibility in the long run.

Don’t mix your stock up!

Goal Setting, how has it helped you achieve what you have achieved, Neville? I say no goals, no life. Easy as that. I wouldn’t know what to say to somebody if they had no goals. I compete against myself, not other people. People thought Kiddicare was in competition with Tesco, Mothercare, John Lewis, etc, but we were actually in competition with ourselves.

If I was a customer, what would I want? Every time I would visit a shop, service station, whatever, I would think, “I’m the customer, how are they treating me?” If it wasn’t in a good way, I’d wonder if we did that with our customers. Is my experience in this shop, service station or restaurant the same experience as what customers receive in mine?

BEST MOMENTS

You can’t be a failure if you’ve got 50 year goals. A lot of people will trip up, fail in the first 6 months and they’ll use that as a crutch for the rest of their lives. With a 50 year goal you don't make mistakes, you learn what not to do in the future!

Falling over and getting wet is part of life! If your business hasn’t changed when you come out of it at night to what it was in the morning then somebody is stealing your business and you’re going backwards.

We started Kiddicare with second-hand prams. People would also give us second hand clothes, toys, then gradually we had new toys and clothes. We reinvested everything back into the business due to our 50 year goal of being financially secure.

If you go into a restaurant and try something, if it’s not brilliant, you say, “Oh, it’s the first week.” You leave it for a few weeks and we’ll go back again. If it’s not brilliant then you could say, “Oh, it’s only a few weeks, they’ve had staff leave..” You give it another go and you decide that it’s shit and you won’t visit again. When a business isn’t customer-centric, that business will go downhill quick!

If anyone goes into business thinking they’re going to make a shedload of money, they aint! If anybody goes into business thinking they’re going to take care of their customer, they’ll make millions!

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Core Fulfilment

The Answer Is Yes - Now What’s The Question?

ABOUT THE HOST

Brought to you by the Co-Founders of Core Fulfilment, one of the UK’s leading E-Commerce providers, Paul Burns & Jeremy Vernon.

CONTACTS

Jeremy’s Linkedin