The solid formula for success

I grew up on the south coast of the UK with my Mum and sister, close to my maternal grandparents. As a small family, we were very close and I grew up appreciating family life and the support that we provided one another. We spent many happy times near the water and as a result, I developed a love and passion for coastal life and the benefits it brings.

I left school after completing my GCSEs aged 16 and was determined to continue learning whilst in employment so that I could apply my knowledge to the real world.  My first role, many years ago, was as a Parts Assistant in a VW/Audi dealership. It was a wonderful experience that provided a great breadth of knowledge and experience including; stock control, product knowledge, procurement, and managing multiple customers such as the; body shop team, trade partners and customers. I gained the confidence of the management within a short period of time and was promoted to Parts Manager within two years.

I then became responsible for running a smaller satellite dealership, this is where I began to really notice the sales team and their role and my career began to escalate from this point onwards. I enjoyed managing relationships and the challenge of contributing positively to the business. After many years of development and learning both onsite and with VW/Audi in Milton Keynes, I decided to move into a commercial sales role in a different industry.

In addition to the experience that I gained from working in the car industry, I also spent seven years at VBO, an AIM-listed video rental solution provider in the UK convenience sector. This enabled me to understand numerous aspects of the retail proposition and helped to propel me into a sales career. I distinctly remember a recruiter who really encouraged me to consider a contribution for a National Accounts role. He was very instrumental in steering me towards National Accounts roles and on a career path that lead me to the commercial evaluations required to review, support and run a company's national and key accounts. This was a great learning platform and a key career step in interpreting the requirements of business and the customer and this also led me to a broader perspective and enabled me to develop my communication and collaboration skills.

I have always enjoyed the combination of commercial B2B, logistics and B2C commercials and logistics utilizing the above. The attraction of the role at Entertainment Distribution Company (EDC) was in its history as a manufacturing and distribution business in Hannover and daily manufacturing of CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray for Universal Music Group the largest Music Label in the world and the opportunity to join, develop and work with a scaled and historic business was a great one. I was introduced to serial manufacturing, ISO compliance, demanding service levels, sourcing, EU-wide distribution and many wonderful partners, team members and heritage of success in manufacturing including the first team and plant making the world's first Gramophone, first CD and all starting in 1898.  It also gave me a greater understanding of market conditions and changes in the digital landscape and of developing strategies to pivot when markets shift and consumer habits change. Many of these industry players were the very first to encounter the rapid change with digital adoption and the new markets that grew from the entertainment sector.

Firstly, I would advise others to strive to; learn, read, drive personal development and ensure that you remain open to the views of others and to feedback.

Secondly, to accept that you won’t always get it right and that’s ok. People often learn the most from their mistakes. I would also recommend that you focus on building relationships, and trust, and viewing this as an integral part of your role. All too often this can be overlooked, when in fact getting this right means that, everything becomes more efficient: trust enables the speed of process and costs to fall from both the individual perspective and the business perspective. 

My advice from my time operating in a global tech environment would be to ensure you listen to your customers, especially when they are challenging you to perform better because sometimes you have situations where that doesn’t happen and that is really then a problem, as you can lose market share as a result. I was fortunate enough to gain exposure to Apple, Amazon, ITV, SKY and many highly successful global brands operating in many different countries. This really helped my team to deliver continuous improvements to the service and product. I know it's been said before but every day really is an opportunity to develop, learn and drive improvements in many ways. 

A little backstory is required here. I have always loved Jersey and been very lucky throughout my career to have had customers, clients, and consequently, reasons to visit since 1998. In 2006 I relocated to Jersey to join BlahDVD based in St Peter as MD and so my experience of leading a Jersey business began, understanding the network and lifestyle began and it's one that I really treasured throughout my career. I have loved the Island, the people, the lifestyle and the business environment ever since.

During my time at Blah I developed a working relationship with Morten Alexanderson – who went on to found Onogo in 2008. I was delighted when he invited me to join Onogo as a Non-Executive in 2018. This quickly grew into an opportunity to join as CEO in 2019.

Onogo was developed from Mortens shed in 2008 and scaled over time to operate on 19 marketplace platforms, including 6500 products that produce around 60,000 listings. Our driving purpose is our love of technology and making products perform in highly competitive markets. 

From the beginning the three key elements in the business have been; our team, our tech and our logistics. We have placed a huge amount of value on these, and have invested and developed extensively by developing a system of continuous improvement. We wrap this together with our culture and core values of Owning it, Kaizen, Meritocracy and Collaboration. 

Our rewards come from seeing our high-volume performance and speed of change day in and day out. It’s a unique blend of a Jersey team and business operating with Global competition on the most sophisticated retail Marketplace brand on the planet. 

Teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped. My personal view is that many things can be copied from a product, the tech, and even the service, but the team, people and the culture are much harder to replicate and it’s a rare thing to create and develop.

My values, teamwork, people and the way we work together are a solid formula for success and what we do individually and collectively really helps to drive impact and reward for us all. This also requires additional elements much like a pyramid and yet certainly sets the right environment for success, change, and resilience as a business and a team. 

Thank you, truly delighted to have the recognition amongst so many great leaders and Directors in Jersey. My three:

1.     Vision – we have a one-page plan for all the team. A great source to ensure we have understanding and alignment for us all and that we regularly revisit this together. Our north star and the rails on which we operate daily and for the future are defined. 

2.     Transparency – communication, integrity, openness, and willingness to share often with the whole team are very important at all times and with consistency. We all want access to knowledge and to be engaged and valued and my aim is to enable that for everyone. 

3.     Accountability – taking ownership of the team, our performance, our failures, and our successes are important as is being accountable to all the members of the team.

In the short term, we have positioned our business to ensure that we have a greater internal focus on Optimisation, Supply chain and Sourcing to create positive results for the team and their focus but also for the business as we operate in a complex environment, and it often requires change. We plan to grow and develop this new format with tech, and process adoption and we will drive more new lines into the business. 

In the longer term, we will seek more marketplaces, and more products that trade well for us and will develop our partners and supplier relations further. Marketplace growth is significant for the future and consumers get significant value from using this method of purchase, our challenge is setting the pace and developing new solutions. We consider ourselves elite operators and amongst 3.5m operators, we sit in the top 1%. Looking forward I fully expect to see the growth of sales, brands, suppliers and retailers demanding methods of making the complex ecosystem of global marketplaces worthwhile and we intend to support this more in the future. 

It is your journey and yours alone. Enjoy it, love every step, continue to learn and set the internal benchmark for yourself and not let it be set by others. Be confident that by doing this, you will achieve many things that you will love. Know that building teams takes time and investing that time will pay dividends for many years to come but be sure to start by changing yourself before others.