Latest / Best of Business / Bosses Unfiltered Episode 2: Rod Duke

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Bosses Unfiltered Episode 2: Rod Duke · Best of Business

0:01
Speaker 1: The big wins and the big losses, the hurdles, the pivots,
0:06
Speaker 1: and the emotions, raw and honest New Zealand's great business
0:11
Speaker 1: minds like you've never heard them before. This is Bosses
0:14
Speaker 1: Unfiltered with Kerry Woodham used talks be Rod.
0:18
Speaker 2: Duke has been selling things since he was sixteen. First shoes,
0:22
Speaker 2: then appliances and eventually home weares and sportswear. Born in Adelaide,
0:27
Speaker 2: Duke came to New Zealand in nineteen eighty eight to
0:30
Speaker 2: spruce up a flailing Briscoes for sale, but two years
0:33
Speaker 2: later he scored the best Briscos deal ever. He bought
0:37
Speaker 2: the company himself for two bucks. He ended up with
0:40
Speaker 2: twelve shabby stores, but it didn't take long for Duke
0:43
Speaker 2: to turn the business around. Today there are almost one
0:47
Speaker 2: hundred Briscoes and Rebels sports stores around the country, and
0:51
Speaker 2: Brisco's is a listed company that's been defying the odds
0:54
Speaker 2: of the economic downturn. Great to see you, Rot. You
0:58
Speaker 2: started work at six Dean. Were you just sick of
1:01
Speaker 2: sitting at a desk in school?
1:03
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think I'd had enough school. You know. My
1:06
Speaker 3: greatest accompaniments at at school were cricket Nauzi rules football.
1:11
Speaker 3: So I was not a particularly good student. I was
1:14
Speaker 3: just looking forward to getting into the workforce and and
1:18
Speaker 3: getting into a into a shop.
1:21
Speaker 2: Even then, you knew that selling was your thing.
1:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I knew shops were the go for me. Wow,
1:27
Speaker 3: I don't know. I've always had this fascination about buying
1:30
Speaker 3: something and selling something and making a couple of bucks
1:32
Speaker 3: on the way through. So I've always had I always
1:37
Speaker 3: had that, I think in me, I've always wanted to
1:40
Speaker 3: do that.
1:42
Speaker 2: And what about the idea of that customer service? Did
1:44
Speaker 2: that appeal or was it just the buying something that
1:47
Speaker 2: people wanted and selling it Because retail is a lot
1:50
Speaker 2: about people too.
1:51
Speaker 3: I told it it's all about people. Yeah, and it's
1:53
Speaker 3: all about at both ends of the of the transaction,
1:57
Speaker 3: you know, buying at the right price and then being
1:59
Speaker 3: able to sell it firstly but then being able to
2:01
Speaker 3: sell it to the right price. No, my first thoughts
2:06
Speaker 3: were shop seems to be the way I want to go,
2:10
Speaker 3: and it involves one of the steps is buying something
2:14
Speaker 3: and selling something. Of course, you've got to you've got
2:17
Speaker 3: to enjoy the product category that you're in. You've got
2:20
Speaker 3: to enjoy selling to or influencing people to buy your
2:25
Speaker 3: product or buy your service. So it was all those things.
2:31
Speaker 3: But a sixteen year old kid probably at that point
2:33
Speaker 3: just thinks about buying a widget and selling a widget,
2:37
Speaker 3: you know.
2:38
Speaker 2: And at what point did you think, well, this is fun,
2:42
Speaker 2: but I could do better myself. I've got ideas I
2:45
Speaker 2: could bring into a store myself, or I could make
2:49
Speaker 2: more money if I was doing it for myself.
2:52
Speaker 3: Probably a little way on through the process, when you're sixteen,
2:57
Speaker 3: you're first hoping that someone will give you a job
3:01
Speaker 3: close to home, so the bus trip doesn't take very
3:06
Speaker 3: long to get to work and get home from work.
3:09
Speaker 3: So I was pretty fortunate to get one fairly early
3:12
Speaker 3: in the piece in Rundle Street, which is the main
3:16
Speaker 3: shopping street in Adelaide and South Australia. It happened to
3:20
Speaker 3: be in a shoe shop, but the shoe shop was
3:24
Speaker 3: probably the third callt I make, so it didn't didn't
3:27
Speaker 3: matter to me whether it was footwear or television sets
3:31
Speaker 3: or refrigerators. It just happened to be footwear for me.
3:35
Speaker 3: And in those early periods, for me, it was more
3:39
Speaker 3: about trying to do the best job I could with
3:43
Speaker 3: the job that I had at the time. You know,
3:47
Speaker 3: there was not a lot of thoughts about, you know,
3:51
Speaker 3: could I buy a business, could I run the shop better,
3:54
Speaker 3: Could I change the rangers, Could I do a bunch
3:58
Speaker 3: of other things. In the early part, it was just
4:01
Speaker 3: more about being the top sales person, the most valuable
4:06
Speaker 3: person to the company on the shop floor. So that
4:10
Speaker 3: that was my I have a tendency to set a
4:11
Speaker 3: whole lot of targets myself, but achievable targets and reachable targets,
4:16
Speaker 3: and that, from my memory, was my first one.
4:20
Speaker 2: So they weren't sales targets that were set by the store.
4:22
Speaker 2: You were a self motivator.
4:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was just all about having the
4:28
Speaker 3: most number of customers, the most number of sales, and
4:32
Speaker 3: the highest sales.
4:34
Speaker 2: And you did that with your shoes, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:38
Speaker 3: And then I became a store manager, so I wanted
4:40
Speaker 3: to do it with my shop, you know. Then I became,
4:44
Speaker 3: you know, looking after a number of shops, so my
4:46
Speaker 3: group of shops had to be the top performers. And
4:49
Speaker 3: then as you go through your career, you know, for me,
4:53
Speaker 3: it was all about setting targets and making my employer
5:00
Speaker 3: think of me as perhaps the most valuable person.
5:04
Speaker 2: Well, you were clearly valuable because when you came to
5:06
Speaker 2: New Zealand to spruce up Briscoes for a sale, it
5:10
Speaker 2: wasn't doing well. The owners wanted it gone. You used
5:14
Speaker 2: your bonus famously to buy it. Yeah, it must been
5:19
Speaker 2: quite a good bonus.
5:21
Speaker 3: Well, it was because they were hemorrhaging at the time,
5:24
Speaker 3: and so they owed me a bonus for my first
5:29
Speaker 3: year's work, and my brief was to sell it. They
5:36
Speaker 3: weren't particularly interested in getting a lot of money for it,
5:39
Speaker 3: because loss making businesses don't generate a lot of money
5:43
Speaker 3: when you sell, so they were glad to be rid
5:47
Speaker 3: of it. So I guess the gesture of not collecting
5:52
Speaker 3: my bonus but collecting twelve sets of keys was it
5:56
Speaker 3: was probably worth it at the time.
5:58
Speaker 2: So this was nineteen eighty eighth r before the economic
6:01
Speaker 2: reforms in New Zealand. It was two worlds pre nineteen
6:05
Speaker 2: eighty nine, post nineteen eighty nine New Zealand it was
6:09
Speaker 2: vastly different. Yeah, it was a time of real change
6:13
Speaker 2: in this country.
6:15
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I came in September eighty eight and had
6:18
Speaker 3: already done the transaction by March eighty nine. Six months
6:22
Speaker 3: on to take effect from the end of that year.
6:27
Speaker 3: And so I didn't I didn't actually see a lot
6:31
Speaker 3: of economic change because I had no experience of pre
6:35
Speaker 3: September Rady eight.
6:36
Speaker 2: Well, we didn't have any Sunday trading.
6:39
Speaker 3: No, you didn't, and you're you're quite right change. Thank goodness,
6:44
Speaker 3: you didn't. How did you do that?
6:47
Speaker 2: How did you come an? Ah?
6:49
Speaker 3: Look, you look for ways to disrupt the market. You
6:53
Speaker 3: look for ways to get your company noticed. When we
7:00
Speaker 3: Rebel Sport, the primary thing for us then was to
7:02
Speaker 3: get top of mine awareness high. Okay, and you do
7:07
Speaker 3: that by lots of advertising and cheap prices and lots
7:10
Speaker 3: of stores. You can do that. But the but the
7:13
Speaker 3: cherry on top is really the really unusual thing that
7:17
Speaker 3: gets you front page headlines in every paper in the
7:22
Speaker 3: country for two or three weeks. That's that's the big
7:28
Speaker 3: that's the big kahuna. That's that's that's what really gets
7:31
Speaker 3: you noticed. And so Sunday trading did that for us.
7:34
Speaker 2: Right, So was it sort of thin lips and purse
7:38
Speaker 2: lips and how outrageous that this as it up starts
7:42
Speaker 2: coming here and is opening up on the Lord's Day? No?
7:45
Speaker 2: Was it that kind of headline or no.
7:48
Speaker 3: Well, certainly internally with the staff, it was you're going
7:52
Speaker 3: to do what? Wow? Okay, is that not illegal? So
7:59
Speaker 3: what are the fines? Have you thought of everything? I think, Look,
8:03
Speaker 3: we've thought of everything. We've got our ducks in a row.
8:08
Speaker 3: We believe the New Zealand public want it. There will
8:10
Speaker 3: be no victims because at the end of the day,
8:14
Speaker 3: you staff, you're going to volunteer. I'm not going to
8:18
Speaker 3: make your work Sunday. You're going to volunteer, but put
8:21
Speaker 3: your put a smile on your face because you're going
8:23
Speaker 3: to get your picture in the front page of your
8:25
Speaker 3: newspaper tomorrow. And so all the staff volunteered. We kept
8:35
Speaker 3: it relatively quiet because you're always in fear of court
8:40
Speaker 3: orders to remain closed, so we had to keep tight lipped.
8:49
Speaker 3: We got the VID tapes for the TV ads into
8:53
Speaker 3: the television stations very late. We got the all the
9:01
Speaker 3: pre recorded radio media to the radio stations very late,
9:08
Speaker 3: and it became turned out to be the secret was
9:13
Speaker 3: kept and Saturday night television where just blasted, were open Sunday,
9:20
Speaker 3: and by seven thirty Sunday morning there were two or
9:23
Speaker 3: three hundred people waiting outside stores waiting to get in.
9:27
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9:30
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9:39
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9:45
Speaker 2: So, what made you think that the product that was
9:48
Speaker 2: inside those stores was going to be worth buying? Given
9:51
Speaker 2: that you'd inherited twelve stores that were failing.
9:55
Speaker 3: We had already built up quite a reputation for sales
10:01
Speaker 3: or selling events that appealed to the public. I came
10:07
Speaker 3: in September ninety eighty eight, and we had a very
10:11
Speaker 3: very poor track record in terms of sales and in
10:13
Speaker 3: terms of profit. People didn't know about us. We set
10:19
Speaker 3: about a lot of television and media campaigns that raised
10:23
Speaker 3: our top of mind awareness rapidly. This is just Prisco's
10:27
Speaker 3: raised it rapidly. So at that stage that we did
10:30
Speaker 3: the Sunday we're not unknown, okay.
10:34
Speaker 2: And you were confident in your product.
10:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, the product was always going to sell because the
10:41
Speaker 3: deal that we had on the table for people was
10:43
Speaker 3: attractive but perhaps even more importantly, I think for the
10:48
Speaker 3: general public who went down there and stood in line
10:51
Speaker 3: to get in the stores, it was more about this
10:55
Speaker 3: is illegal. I quite like this. It's just back in
10:58
Speaker 3: the face of the government. You should have something about it.
11:00
Speaker 3: There are no victims and I'm going to go there. Look,
11:04
Speaker 3: we had we had church ministers lined up to buy,
11:11
Speaker 3: not to not to Well this was their customers who
11:14
Speaker 3: were supposed to be elsewhere on Sunday, but they were
11:17
Speaker 3: their shopping So it was all of it. It's all
11:20
Speaker 3: a bit surreal, really, particularly those early ones. So we
11:24
Speaker 3: did that for about six weeks, and rather than get
11:26
Speaker 3: fined or slapped on the rest or anything like that,
11:29
Speaker 3: the government the day thought it would be better if
11:31
Speaker 3: they just made it legal, so they quickly passed legislation
11:35
Speaker 3: that made it legal. So from there, you know, I
11:40
Speaker 3: had a lot of other retails open Sunday, so it
11:43
Speaker 3: wasn't quite as lucrative.
11:45
Speaker 2: But you know, you've seen so many different phases of
11:54
Speaker 2: the economy, so many different phases of life with Bruskos,
11:58
Speaker 2: and yet it endures, not just endures, it's doing incredibly
12:02
Speaker 2: well when so many are failing.
12:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think it's all about the market
12:12
Speaker 3: position that we've adopted. Let me take back all the
12:16
Speaker 3: way back to back tonight September ninety eighty eight. I
12:20
Speaker 3: was at the company I and the country about a
12:23
Speaker 3: week and at that still, at that stage, we had
12:27
Speaker 3: thirteen thirteen shops, two buyers and a ops manager, and
12:35
Speaker 3: I got hold of them. So listen, I want to
12:37
Speaker 3: make Saturday morning, get all the store managers up to Auckland,
12:40
Speaker 3: put them in the cheapest hotel you can find, make
12:43
Speaker 3: them walk to work if it's to the office, if
12:45
Speaker 3: it's not too far away, and I want to have
12:49
Speaker 3: a big meeting. I want to figure out where we
12:51
Speaker 3: go from here. Okay, So bought them all, then set
12:54
Speaker 3: them down and then set them home late Saturday afternoon
12:58
Speaker 3: early Saturday evening. And the purpose of that exercise was
13:02
Speaker 3: to figure out where we would sit in the New
13:04
Speaker 3: Zealand landscape. Retail landscape, okay at that stage, probably not
13:10
Speaker 3: that much changed today. It went all the way from
13:14
Speaker 3: two dollar shops all the way through to flash boutiques
13:20
Speaker 3: and flash department stores. Smith and Kobe was probably one
13:27
Speaker 3: of that end, and Kirk's it at the same end,
13:31
Speaker 3: and two dollars shops and two dollars shops look alike,
13:34
Speaker 3: some big ones and some small ones that used to
13:36
Speaker 3: sell very very cheap and pretty horrible merchandise. But you
13:44
Speaker 3: know it was a lot of people want to buy that.
13:47
Speaker 3: So where do we want to fit in between those? Well,
13:50
Speaker 3: we established pretty quickly that there was a there was
13:53
Speaker 3: a slot that was vacant, and the slot that was
13:56
Speaker 3: vacant was real good quality merchandise but a real good price.
14:02
Speaker 3: Now you can buy a real good merchandise in New Zealand,
14:03
Speaker 3: even back in nineteen eighty eight, but you had to
14:06
Speaker 3: go to the flash stores and pay big bucks, real
14:10
Speaker 3: big money. So we thought, if we can get hold
14:13
Speaker 3: of these famous brand names in the homewaes business and
14:18
Speaker 3: we can put them in cheaper shops, not shopping centers,
14:23
Speaker 3: We've got about a lot of rent. I wonder how
14:26
Speaker 3: the New Zealand public would go with that. So we
14:29
Speaker 3: thought that's worth an experiment. I think that might work
14:32
Speaker 3: because everyone wants to buy good stuff. You just can't
14:36
Speaker 3: afford it all the time. Some people can't forard it
14:39
Speaker 3: any of the time. But so we thought we'll put
14:41
Speaker 3: this in there. So we did, and it really resonated
14:45
Speaker 3: very very very very quickly, and we've been true to
14:50
Speaker 3: that all thirty seven years. So we're still doing the
14:54
Speaker 3: same thing. So if you look at our rangers, we've
14:57
Speaker 3: got famous brand name, high qual merchandise, but we try
15:01
Speaker 3: and get it as cheap as we can so we
15:05
Speaker 3: can sell it at the very very very best price
15:07
Speaker 3: that we can. So that's where we sit, and that's
15:10
Speaker 3: where we sat then and that's where we still sit
15:13
Speaker 3: in the New Zealand retail landscape.
15:16
Speaker 2: I suppose you see that with the sneak promotion, you know,
15:19
Speaker 2: with the high quality cook where that people go completely
15:23
Speaker 2: nuts over with the stickers at New World. You know,
15:25
Speaker 2: it's high quality stuff that they might not otherwise get
15:28
Speaker 2: a chance to buy.
15:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
15:31
Speaker 2: So did it all come down to the relationship you
15:32
Speaker 2: had with you A supplies as well? Did you have
15:35
Speaker 2: to build good, strong relationships with them?
15:37
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, Well, fortunately I knew a lot of the
15:43
Speaker 3: supplies from Australia, Okay, So I worked in the retip.
15:47
Speaker 3: I've worked to the retype as all my life in Australia.
15:50
Speaker 3: I work for the biggest department store chain in New
15:54
Speaker 3: South Wales, which is Grace Brothers. I knew the managing
16:05
Speaker 3: directors and the sales directors of each of these famous brands.
16:11
Speaker 3: I had done them a lot of favors. They have
16:14
Speaker 3: done me some favors, and I knew them personally, I
16:17
Speaker 3: knew them particularly well. I came to New Zealand and
16:21
Speaker 3: I called off some favors. Ran so look, I'm here,
16:27
Speaker 3: I need a favor. I need you to do this,
16:30
Speaker 3: and what I'll do I'll repay you with us. This
16:34
Speaker 3: is what I'll be able to do back. That worked wonderfully.
16:40
Speaker 3: They supported us, and now the vast majority of them
16:46
Speaker 3: are still very good customers of ours, and we still
16:52
Speaker 3: remain their biggest account of this country. So we just
16:55
Speaker 3: looked after one of those you just called a favor
16:57
Speaker 3: off a friend. That's basically what I do.
17:00
Speaker 2: It's by relationships, isn't it It is. Yeah. It's interesting
17:04
Speaker 2: too because you famously don't have debt, you know. And
17:07
Speaker 2: I remember at the time that New Zealand was changing
17:09
Speaker 2: in the eighties, there was a Tom Scott cartoon with
17:13
Speaker 2: a little boy walking along, grubby little thing saying, my
17:16
Speaker 2: dad's poor. Heos the bank one thousand dollars, and the
17:19
Speaker 2: private school boy next to him saying, my dad's Richie
17:21
Speaker 2: ows the bank a million, you know, and I think
17:25
Speaker 2: I think some of those old fashioned trading values got
17:28
Speaker 2: lost along the way, and that's where people can trip
17:31
Speaker 2: themselves up.
17:32
Speaker 3: Yeah. Look, I'm not scared of debt, okay, but it
17:38
Speaker 3: just seems to me. You know, if you can manage
17:41
Speaker 3: your costs, you know, that is the cost of your infantry,
17:48
Speaker 3: cost of your labor, and the cost of your occupancy.
17:51
Speaker 3: If you can control those three, you have money left
17:55
Speaker 3: over every week, and you just manage your shop refurbishments,
18:00
Speaker 3: opening the new stores, and your expenditures as per the
18:03
Speaker 3: money you've got in the bank, you know. And that's
18:07
Speaker 3: basically what we've done.
18:08
Speaker 4: You know.
18:09
Speaker 3: We haven't borrowed money for I don't know, thirty five years.
18:14
Speaker 2: The government might like to borrow someone of you at the.
18:17
Speaker 3: Well, I've been lending it out to the banks, you know,
18:20
Speaker 3: but even the interest rates are no good now either.
18:24
Speaker 2: The other thing is too, I mean, you pay your
18:25
Speaker 2: suppliers so they are happy to do you a favor.
18:28
Speaker 2: You know, they don't have to wait for their money.
18:30
Speaker 2: They know you're good for it.
18:31
Speaker 3: Reliabilities, you've got to be reliable. They've got to be
18:34
Speaker 3: able to trust you. You. Look, there was a time
18:37
Speaker 3: you asked earlier, you know about people doing your favors.
18:44
Speaker 3: Back in the early days, I didn't have a lot
18:45
Speaker 3: of money. So one of the favors I am, or
18:51
Speaker 3: one of the favors they did for me, was that
18:54
Speaker 3: I would buy things from them and buy a lot,
18:58
Speaker 3: and I'd be say to them, look, I can't pay
19:00
Speaker 3: it on time. So that's all right, Well when can
19:05
Speaker 3: you pay me? I said, Okay, when is the first
19:09
Speaker 3: day you get into trouble from your finance director about
19:13
Speaker 3: Brisco's what's the first day? They'd invariably say the one
19:18
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty first day. Okay, got thirty days from statements,
19:24
Speaker 3: it really gives you sixty one hundred and twenty one
19:28
Speaker 3: days if starts to ask questions. So I said, okay,
19:33
Speaker 3: you sell me that product. It's half a million dollars.
19:36
Speaker 3: I will give you half a million dollars on the
19:38
Speaker 3: one hundred and nineteenth day. Okay, then you deliver. Sure enough,
19:45
Speaker 3: we're able to do it. So there's suddenly a great trust.
19:50
Speaker 3: He's not getting into trouble from his finance people. Sure,
19:53
Speaker 3: I'm a bit late, but he's already advise them they'll
19:55
Speaker 3: be paying it one hundred and nineteen days. So it's
20:00
Speaker 3: it's trust, it's reliability, keeping your promise, keeping a word.
20:07
Speaker 2: The other thing is not getting over excited by success
20:10
Speaker 2: too early. I think too, because I've met some old
20:13
Speaker 2: school guys who have done really well with their wives.
20:17
Speaker 2: You know, it's a partnership, but they didn't do any
20:20
Speaker 2: major drawings from the company for years, you know, they
20:23
Speaker 2: put it all back into the business. And they said
20:26
Speaker 2: they've seen some young ones get tripped up because they
20:29
Speaker 2: start to live the flash life before they can, before
20:33
Speaker 2: they're ready for it. They don't understand about the work
20:35
Speaker 2: that goes in to build the foundation to build the business.
20:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen that too. Yeah, I've seen it too.
20:41
Speaker 3: Didn't happen with me, didn't happen with us. I don't know.
20:46
Speaker 3: But I've never really been a flash Harry, you know,
20:53
Speaker 3: even when you know, I guess about several years in
20:57
Speaker 3: so early nineties could have border flash Lamborghini easy. I
21:05
Speaker 3: just didn't know.
21:07
Speaker 2: What do you drive?
21:09
Speaker 3: I drive a flash Porsch now by it's a suv,
21:13
Speaker 3: but it's to carry rugby kids. In some years ago
21:17
Speaker 3: with my young fellow used to play Rugby and to
21:20
Speaker 3: those scary golf clubs. So still flash brand name, but
21:24
Speaker 3: it's a SUV. But no, I know what you mean
21:29
Speaker 3: because I've seen it myself.
21:31
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21:34
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21:52
Speaker 2: Your dad was a bookie and you you're and your
21:54
Speaker 2: siblings would count the money. Yep, So you know what
21:57
Speaker 2: kesh looks like. My dad was a small town manager
22:00
Speaker 2: and I remember going into the vaults when I was
22:01
Speaker 2: helping on the school holidays for work, be a part
22:04
Speaker 2: time job, and there's money, all this money in there.
22:07
Speaker 2: But it's dirty too, like it's not you have to
22:11
Speaker 2: work hard and get sweat on your hands to make money.
22:13
Speaker 2: I wonder if and these days it's all screens and
22:16
Speaker 2: people don't understand what money looks like and feels like.
22:19
Speaker 2: Perhaps I don't know.
22:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, I think at the same time, if you're
22:22
Speaker 3: talking about today, you've got to probably go back to
22:26
Speaker 3: primary and secondary education. You know, they're teaching some of
22:32
Speaker 3: these kids and dopey stuff, but they're not talking about budgeting,
22:37
Speaker 3: about economics, about bank interest rates, about compound interest, every
22:42
Speaker 3: day living stuff. No one's getting taught about it. And
22:48
Speaker 3: I just wondered whether it's time to sit down and
22:49
Speaker 3: go hang on a minute, let's have a look at
22:51
Speaker 3: this curriculum. Does it need some sort of correcting, you know,
22:54
Speaker 3: do we need to introduce an amateur accounting something that
23:01
Speaker 3: teaches people about budgeting, about you know, the expenditure of money,
23:07
Speaker 3: how to save some tricks about having this save money.
23:15
Speaker 3: You know, for me, I never had that problem. I
23:18
Speaker 3: had a dad who didn't grow up. He was still
23:21
Speaker 3: a kid in the depression. But even after that, you know,
23:25
Speaker 3: even in the nineteen forties and fifties, he was he
23:29
Speaker 3: was thrifty. You know, well I don't know about the forties,
23:32
Speaker 3: but certainly through the fifties and sixties he was he
23:35
Speaker 3: was thrifty. You know, not mean no, but there's a
23:39
Speaker 3: do threfty. Yeah, have you.
23:42
Speaker 2: Had any I suppose first of all, when did you
23:46
Speaker 2: know you'd succeeded? When did you know it was a winner?
23:49
Speaker 2: Was it about seven or eight years into.
23:52
Speaker 4: Riscoes operator, probably about three years in because my dad
24:03
Speaker 4: at that stage was.
24:06
Speaker 3: He thought I was living his life. So he used
24:10
Speaker 3: to come over, having been an accountant as well, used
24:13
Speaker 3: to dash into the office alongside me to our accountant
24:18
Speaker 3: or CFO at that stage and just say to him, look,
24:23
Speaker 3: how's he doing this. Give me a look of the books.
24:26
Speaker 3: I don't understand this. I don't understand it. So he
24:30
Speaker 3: go through it and he figured out, I think pretty
24:34
Speaker 3: early three or four years in, you know, we were
24:37
Speaker 3: going to end up making some serious money if we could,
24:40
Speaker 3: if we could maintain the momentum. So that stage, our
24:43
Speaker 3: revenues were growing at about forty percent compound per year,
24:47
Speaker 3: so they were growing rapidly, and we turned a loss
24:52
Speaker 3: into profit very quickly and then accelerated the profit out.
24:56
Speaker 3: My mum always said that, you know, I was living
24:58
Speaker 3: my father's life. So he was the one that actually
25:01
Speaker 3: alerted me and came back and said, look, this is
25:04
Speaker 3: you're going to you're going to be very wealthy. But
25:05
Speaker 3: this looks like this looks like a winner.
25:09
Speaker 2: But you didn't care. The money wasn't the thing it
25:11
Speaker 2: was the sale, was it?
25:14
Speaker 3: Yeah it wasn't. But it's never been never about is
25:18
Speaker 3: that been never about the money. It's all about having,
25:23
Speaker 3: you know, the best toy being being the best at
25:27
Speaker 3: your job, getting bigger, expanding, external people writing up how
25:36
Speaker 3: clever these are, these Brisco people are, and blah blah blah.
25:39
Speaker 3: It's all about, you know, it's all about being being
25:43
Speaker 3: the company being recognized, okay, as being successful. And therefore
25:50
Speaker 3: all the key people, store managers, the people who who
25:54
Speaker 3: pack up the shelves, the people who delivered the stock,
25:58
Speaker 3: all having Briscoes on there their shirt labels, you know,
26:03
Speaker 3: getting some recognition from from everyone that you know, it's
26:09
Speaker 3: a nice and successful place to work with.
26:12
Speaker 2: Have there been failures along the way or has it
26:14
Speaker 2: been pretty linear?
26:18
Speaker 3: Have we made some mistakes? Oh yeah, yeah, but you
26:22
Speaker 3: have to you know, I've been a buyer of merchandise,
26:27
Speaker 3: you know, in my view, that's the best part of it,
26:30
Speaker 3: you know, being able to buy because if you can
26:31
Speaker 3: buy the right product, right price, you know, then bring
26:35
Speaker 3: it into the country and just sell it and see
26:38
Speaker 3: it sell like crazy. That's that's the big you know,
26:42
Speaker 3: that's the heroine, that's the that's the real excitement. But sure,
26:49
Speaker 3: I've brought some pretty ordinary product that has been.
26:53
Speaker 2: Are there any that stand out where you thought it
26:55
Speaker 2: doesn't be a winner and then it's just sat there
26:57
Speaker 2: and set there.
27:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, there've been a couple. You know, I famously bought
27:05
Speaker 3: bamboo steamers back in the day before people recognize the
27:09
Speaker 3: value of them. What thousands of them? They took us
27:13
Speaker 3: a long old to digest a lot.
27:15
Speaker 2: While well, I think I've got a couple of them.
27:18
Speaker 3: Fortunately they wear out and people have to replace them.
27:20
Speaker 3: So no, we've look, we've made some mistakes, but you know,
27:26
Speaker 3: you have to make mistakes, you know, to figure out
27:30
Speaker 3: what not to do next time. But I guess the
27:34
Speaker 3: trick is you always got to make more successes than
27:36
Speaker 3: you do mistakes, and you just keep learning, but you
27:42
Speaker 3: just don't get over excited and make very very, very
27:45
Speaker 3: very big mistakes.
27:47
Speaker 2: Is the Brisco's Lady, you're Brisco's buy basically in your mind?
27:53
Speaker 3: No, she was, she was the symbol.
27:56
Speaker 2: She's just every woman, isn't she.
27:58
Speaker 3: I love her.
27:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's like the Tina from Tunas of used to you.
28:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're still we were lucky. Yeah, and then she
28:06
Speaker 3: loves a lifespector. A couple of weeks ago and she
28:09
Speaker 3: just loves it, just loves her job. Yeah, loves loves,
28:14
Speaker 3: loves the work that she does, but probably loves even
28:17
Speaker 3: more being in the stores mixing with the customers. When
28:19
Speaker 3: we open new stores, she's there. And you know, no,
28:23
Speaker 3: she was. She was recruited through an audition process I
28:33
Speaker 3: guess about eighty nine or nineteen ninety something. About nineteen
28:37
Speaker 3: ninety I said, well tell me or no, but I
28:41
Speaker 3: think it was about nineteen ninety. I got sick of
28:43
Speaker 3: doing these loud, screaming scream into the bike, looks straight
28:48
Speaker 3: into the camera ads, you know, get in Sunday thought,
28:52
Speaker 3: I don't want to be there that I don't want
28:54
Speaker 3: to do this, so change So what a female presenter
28:58
Speaker 3: that's our core customer and a face of face of Briscoes.
29:04
Speaker 3: And she's just been massively successful. You know, everyone's in
29:10
Speaker 3: love with her, and so we've kept her on as
29:15
Speaker 3: part of the team.
29:17
Speaker 2: Loyalty seems to be a big core component of how
29:20
Speaker 2: you do things to live your life.
29:23
Speaker 3: It is I am extremely loyal to people who are
29:27
Speaker 3: loyal to us. But at the same time, if we
29:33
Speaker 3: find and we have found suppliers of product who go
29:39
Speaker 3: off and do silly things, you know, we've I have
29:45
Speaker 3: deliberately made a point of making a clear example of
29:50
Speaker 3: them to our own people. And so you know, we
29:57
Speaker 3: had I remember a big supplier in textile area when
30:01
Speaker 3: I first joined and we ask for some help early
30:06
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, went back and said, look, I'm going
30:09
Speaker 3: to support you, but you need to support me by
30:11
Speaker 3: helping me with my advertising and promotional campaigns. In terms
30:15
Speaker 3: of funding. Now we run a buckeload of money with you,
30:18
Speaker 3: I want you to kick in. Everyone else agreed except
30:21
Speaker 3: this one. You know him to be our biggest so
30:28
Speaker 3: we clive off, stop doing business. You're out of here.
30:36
Speaker 3: But that's set an example for everybody else, not just suppliers,
30:39
Speaker 3: but also people inside the organization to say we're looking
30:43
Speaker 3: to support, we want loyalty, we want support. If you're
30:50
Speaker 3: going to be with us, that's terrific. And we've kept
30:53
Speaker 3: the vast majority of all those people all the way
30:55
Speaker 3: through thirty or forty years. But I think sometimes you know,
31:02
Speaker 3: you just got to make examples just to reinforce you know,
31:07
Speaker 3: how serious you are about about supporting those who support you.
31:12
Speaker 2: So the sales have been a big part of the press.
31:15
Speaker 2: I think I tend to go in at white on
31:18
Speaker 2: your weekend and labor weekend to do the big shops
31:20
Speaker 2: of the sheets and the towels and the new crockery
31:23
Speaker 2: that still works, doesn't it?
31:26
Speaker 3: Look? For us, we invented the one day sale because
31:30
Speaker 3: we are not in shopping malls. We're often in places
31:35
Speaker 3: where people have to go and look for us in
31:38
Speaker 3: we're called it destination stores. You have to set out
31:41
Speaker 3: to find us, okay, and so we needed to drive
31:45
Speaker 3: people there. A serious motivator for a lot of people
31:49
Speaker 3: is brand new merchandise, real good price, you know, for
31:54
Speaker 3: a limited period, okay, And that formula has worked for us. Now,
32:00
Speaker 3: if we were sitting in a shopping mall on what
32:02
Speaker 3: we call the ant track where people walk past every day,
32:06
Speaker 3: then I wouldn't have to spend that money on advertising
32:09
Speaker 3: and promotion. But of course those premises cost five times
32:13
Speaker 3: as much in terms of rent to be in. So
32:16
Speaker 3: it's a devil if you do and a devil if
32:17
Speaker 3: you devil if you don't. So if you're in the
32:19
Speaker 3: shop wall, you don't need to do it, but you've
32:20
Speaker 3: got to pay that in rent. If you're in a
32:25
Speaker 3: destination center like a high street or a or a
32:27
Speaker 3: homemaker center with a couple other like folks or retailers.
32:34
Speaker 3: Then sure you don't pay we near the rent, but
32:36
Speaker 3: you've got to drive people to the center, and you
32:39
Speaker 3: do that by way of promotions and incentives and what
32:43
Speaker 3: have you.
32:44
Speaker 2: You obviously still love working in the business and there's
32:48
Speaker 2: plenty of life left. But will you sell it when
32:51
Speaker 2: you've had enough? Ah, you have the majority shareholder? Yeah,
32:58
Speaker 2: look taking it over?
33:01
Speaker 3: No. Look, Look, look, I probably need to contemplate a
33:05
Speaker 3: sell down of some description of some of the some
33:12
Speaker 3: of the stock because the end of the day we're
33:15
Speaker 3: in the inside X top two hundred, the top two
33:20
Speaker 3: hundred companies in this country. And then you've got to
33:24
Speaker 3: You've got a shareholder of thir own seventy five percent
33:27
Speaker 3: of the shares. That's silly, really, you know, I could
33:31
Speaker 3: have exactly the same control if I want to control
33:34
Speaker 3: at fifty one percent. So look, I have a lot
33:39
Speaker 3: of shareholders, and a lot of institutions, and a lot
33:42
Speaker 3: of people who want who want to share in this business.
33:46
Speaker 3: And so probably sooner rather than later, I will I
33:51
Speaker 3: will probably elect to sell down a modest number of shares.
33:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, when it comes to so you boy taking me over.
34:01
Speaker 2: You didn't want him and to take over dad's company.
34:06
Speaker 3: Look for me. I find it very, very hard to
34:08
Speaker 3: believe that an offspring of mine would be identical. Okay,
34:16
Speaker 3: in desire trade. Look, I've said it to it, I've
34:24
Speaker 3: said it to a lot of people. If he wants
34:26
Speaker 3: to go in the retar business, fantastic. I'd love him
34:30
Speaker 3: to be in the retap business like and I could help. Okay,
34:34
Speaker 3: but he's going to get into a twenty first century
34:36
Speaker 3: retarp business, you know, not one that was started in
34:40
Speaker 3: seventeen seventy something and eighteen sixty one in this country.
34:44
Speaker 3: You know, get into a twenty first century business. I'll
34:47
Speaker 3: fund you into it. I'll help you in, okay, but
34:50
Speaker 3: you're not coming into mine.
34:54
Speaker 2: What is something that you can't say no to? It
34:56
Speaker 2: a Brisco sale?
35:01
Speaker 3: Oh? Probably a big discount off titless golf balls.
35:08
Speaker 2: Looking back now, what advice would you give to a
35:10
Speaker 2: young person starting out in business?
35:13
Speaker 3: Find an occupation that you love.
35:18
Speaker 2: What's a mistake you've made you will never make again?
35:23
Speaker 3: Oh? Um, that one.
35:33
Speaker 2: What's the most extravagant thing you've spent money on? For
35:35
Speaker 2: somebody who's pretty sensible? What would be the most extravagant.
35:44
Speaker 3: About three years ago, I bought a ordered a brand
35:50
Speaker 3: new Lamborghini finally a rus which is a suvy way away,
36:00
Speaker 3: and got it okay, And so I picked it up
36:04
Speaker 3: and then drove it up down the street and made
36:06
Speaker 3: a lot of noise. So then I park it somewhere
36:09
Speaker 3: and people will be looking at me. And then about
36:12
Speaker 3: six months later, I took it back to the dealership.
36:14
Speaker 3: See you sell it. I don't want it. So why
36:18
Speaker 3: It's a beautiful car, so I know, but it's just
36:21
Speaker 3: too ostentatious for me. So I said, here, you sell it. It'
36:26
Speaker 3: so I got real it. So I only had it
36:27
Speaker 3: for about six months.
36:29
Speaker 2: What color was it?
36:30
Speaker 3: I was a really bright electric blue.
36:34
Speaker 2: It was.
36:34
Speaker 3: It was gorgeous, but it was just too ostentatious for me.
36:40
Speaker 3: I don't buy I don't buy boats or planes or
36:43
Speaker 3: helicopters or I don't. I don't buy any of that stuff.
36:47
Speaker 2: You just travel class and business class.
36:51
Speaker 3: Well I don't. I don't went on my business, but
36:53
Speaker 3: I do when I when I fly personally.
36:56
Speaker 2: So you don't fly business?
36:57
Speaker 3: I do, yes, I do, I know, not not business? No, No,
37:02
Speaker 3: I don't ask the company to pay business class, sorry,
37:05
Speaker 3: first class, they pay business okay, but that's only because
37:11
Speaker 3: and all my buyers when they travel overseas always travel
37:14
Speaker 3: business class because you don't get your rest days at
37:18
Speaker 3: brisk goes. So you try from here to Frankfurt, okay,
37:21
Speaker 3: and you're working at seven o'clock. The next morning, you're
37:24
Speaker 3: working okay. Then you get back on, then you fly,
37:29
Speaker 3: you get off, then you're back in the office, you know.
37:32
Speaker 3: So that's my trade off, you know. And most of
37:36
Speaker 3: the business class these days, you can sleep comfortably on
37:40
Speaker 3: those very very very long flights. You can sleep very comfortably.
37:44
Speaker 2: And what would be your proudest moment.
37:52
Speaker 3: Commercially, I think personally personally, probably the birth of my son,
38:00
Speaker 3: you know, one son. Lots of wives, one son, and
38:06
Speaker 3: it was it was great, fantastic, love.
38:09
Speaker 2: Him, and then your next life. Will you be a
38:13
Speaker 2: professional golfer?
38:14
Speaker 3: No, it's too hard. It's easy being a retailer. It's
38:19
Speaker 3: way way, way, way way too hard being a professional golfer,
38:23
Speaker 3: way too hard. I've seen plenty of very very very
38:28
Speaker 3: very good golfers and lots of want to be pros,
38:32
Speaker 3: and they're good. These bells are real good. But it's
38:34
Speaker 3: too hard, it's too difficult. There's too many there's too
38:38
Speaker 3: many better golfers out there. I know five guys in
38:46
Speaker 3: this country who I played golf with who could have
38:48
Speaker 3: easy been professional golfers. They're that good, but they're not
38:54
Speaker 3: quite good enough to make a living.
38:57
Speaker 2: But there aren't many better retailers than Roger.
39:01
Speaker 3: Look. I try very very very hard, and I work
39:04
Speaker 3: at it.
39:06
Speaker 2: And that was Rod Duke, managing director of the Brisco Group.
39:09
Speaker 2: If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more
39:11
Speaker 2: stories about what it's really like to run a business,
39:14
Speaker 2: follow Bosses Unfiltered on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
39:20
Speaker 2: Next time, we're with Lisa King, founder of af Drinks,
39:23
Speaker 2: who tells me how she's built a global drinks company
39:26
Speaker 2: from lockdown and why she loves being underestimated. See you soon,