Amber Fergusson

Is that something that you’ve had to keep working at as you’re figuring out what these guys want?

We always think about what it was that we wanted when we were customers and we could never get anybody technical to help us. We would never be able to get a warranty claim in fast enough. So we have that all there with real people.

I know one of the next things that you’re looking to do is to bring some consultants in to work with you on the next phase of the business.

We have those in now.

How’s that process going and what are the main things that you’re focusing on?

It’s been an interesting learning curve because we’ve found that intuitively we’re doing what we should have been doing in the first place. We haven’t been doing a bad job. Because we’re not business people, we always doubt our ability and we have found that we’re doing a pretty good job. The consultants have guided us in lots of different areas where they’ve seen weaknesses in the company and helping to employ staff to fill those weaknesses. They’ve also helped us in strategic planning about learning how to forecast and report, getting the information from our staff that we need to run the company. We’re also thinking of ways that we can take our hands off the day-to-day handling of the managers and focusing more on the forecasting, which we are doing now so it’s working really well.

Will that involve bringing in a CEO or some sort of general manager?

We thought it could. There was definitely discussion about having that, but with our team of managers that we do have, they are absolutely invaluable.

And on the solar industry more generally there’s been a big period of growth, where do you think it’s going? What drives the next phase of growth or are we only really scratching the surface?

We are only scratching the surface. Less than 1% of the population have solar power on their house. This will be a very mainstream industry. I believe that this is something that will continue to grow. I believe the rebates that we have in place now will start to fall as electricity rises, so it will become more cost effective without a rebate just to put solar on anyway. And that’s got some time to go.

I mean, we all know that we’re going to have a price on carbon eventually and it is going to be interesting when that comes into play. What happens eventually is anyone’s guess but we all know we all have to be environmentally minded and we’re all making that movement to make it mainstream to be environmentally friendly.

Are you getting any feedback from the installers or your own forecasting as to what the next great green product in the home is?

It will be lighting.

And is that already starting to happen?

We’ve been looking at it for a long time but the technology isn’t quite there. We thought that it was going to be there in LED lighting and we started to see them advertised everywhere. It’s not quite there, but it will be. It won’t take that long.

And I guess that will be the next boom area for you, with all the problems of securing supply and meeting demand.

It’s a terrible thing to have you know, demand. I mean if I’m going to have a problem, I want that one.

Absolutely! Just finally you’ve said a few times that you and Cameron aren’t businesspeople. Has that given you an advantage?

If I knew any better, then I would be too worried about what I should be doing. For example, I’d never done a forecast in my life. The bank asks me to do them, but I have no idea on how to do that. I know that you say that you’re supposed to do your research, but how are you supposed to do your research on an industry that hasn’t even got a history?

We are running the business and we’re running it really well. I mean, we’re not dumb either, we intuitively know what we’re doing and that’s a big deal. Cameron’s really involved in the industry, he’s secretary of one of the solar installer associations and we know the industry really well. We want to do anything we can to help the installers and not so much worry about the corporate end of things, because we know what installers want.