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Entrepreneur: Clair Jennifer
Company: Wombat Enterprises
Business type: Retail
Turnover: $10M - $50M
Head office: Warriewood, New South Wales
Contact details: +61 2 9970 7277
The Wombat Enterprises Story
By 2000, Clair Jennifer was only 31. But already she had built a retail chain with 35 stores that turned over $25 million in 1999-2000. She forecast sales of $35 million in 2000-2001.
Jennifer opened her first store, called Wombat, in 1988 when she was only 19 years old. She had $2000 in personal savings, earned by selling fashion accessories at market stalls around Sydney, Canberra, Newcastle and Wollongong. The banks would not lend her a cent.
For the first few months, she worked all day on her own and took the day’s profits into Sydney city in the evening to buy more stock from wholesalers whom she had convinced to stay open. There was a side benefit to the exhausting hours. “Customers kept coming in on a weekly basis to see the new stock. Ever since, I have worked on a philosophy of fresh stock and newness every week.”
Within three months she added a staff member - freeing her to buy stock during the day. After 18 months, she had a turnover of more than $1 million and four stores. She began to document her policies and procedures to ensure that store managers did not deviate from the hard lessons learnt as the retail chain was established.
She says: “I wrote policies for everything from point-of-sale procedures through to lay-by, greeting customers, merchandising, dressing the window and how each coat hanger had to face the right way.” Jennifer also documented a strict staff-selection criteria that included a paid trial day followed by a ten-day induction program. Once on the Wombat staff, employees receive ongoing training.
Jennifer also developed an evaluation system. Staff were paid a commission on sales and held accountable for store presentation. She says: “Area managers would work though a check list on a monthly basis. There were weekly mini-challenges such as achieving a set sales result or decreasing the number of items returned.”
Staff are rewarded with public recognition through the company or shopping centre newsletter and given a small gift or a card. Jennifer says: “Having systems in place means that people can understand what is expected and live up to it.”
Jennifer now has 34 stores in Queensland, Victoria, ACT and NSW. “My dream is to have 100 stores,” she says.
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Key learning points:
- Understanding customers - In retail it is essential to understand the psychology and buying patterns of customers. Jennifer learnt to identify types of buyers, to understand the way they think, the way they want to look, and their lifestyle before even starting her business.
- Niche marketing - Jennifer chose one niche that was not being catered for. She began to sell clothes to middle-aged Australian woman in the middle to upper socio-economic brackets. These women wanted smart but comfortable clothing that was easy to look after and suited waist lines that expanded and fell with pregnancies.
- Maintaining quality - When Jennifer got beyond $1 million in turnover, she implemented systems and policies to ensure that success factors learnt along the way are captured - not lost in the fast growth.
- Franchising pitfalls - Many retail chains franchise once they grow large. But Jennifer says that although it would be tempting, it is necessary to own all the stores so that stock can be moved from one shop to another almost daily. “This way there is always new stock in the store which draws the customer in once a week,” she says. “It also prevents a range of clothes fragmenting.” She uses a merchandise planner and computer system to keep track of stock.
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