Kuchel has always believed in the power of good people to drive a business.
“I know that sounds cliché, but I always believed that people were our biggest asset. I spent a lot of time choosing those immediate people and we still do today. We’ve adopted a culture in the business where if the people don’t fit, they’ll move on,” he says.
“We invest a lot of money in training our salespeople and we believe in the integrity of the business and our products. I see a lot of people in the industry and it’s like they’ve just happened into their business.”
Based in South Australia, the business has six different product lines and Kuchel aims to eventually have all Australian Outdoor Living stores selling the complete range which includes outdoor blinds, pergolas, swimming pools and more.
Kuchel has also been developing gas fire pits, which he’s looking at launching in the next 18 months.
When it comes to selling the products, Kuchel has trained his sales team to be “quality communicators” rather than “high pressure salespeople”.
To establish a strong workplace culture and company vision, Kuchel and his leadership team under took a program to help them be good leaders.
“At the session we determined our values and goals in our mission statement. We have our next session next Thursday,” he says.
“Openness and honesty is very important. We’re very proud our people aren’t afraid to put their hand up and make an admission or to remind a co-worker they’re not doing something correctly, it takes a lot of trust for people to do that.”
Kuchel also believes in honest communication with his customers.
“We have automated questionnaires where we invite people to give us negative feedback. If we don’t know what we’re doing wrong, we can’t fix it.”
Equally, Kuchel doesn’t mind receiving the occasional piece of negative feedback via social media.
“We want to be accessible to the public. They may not pick up the phone if there’s an issue, but we want to be aware of problems so we can fix them,” he says.
“We believe we’re ahead of the game on social media. We have two people dedicated to our social sites. We also have our jingle – we’re a bit of a household name.”
While Australian Outdoor Living is active on social media now, five years ago Kuchel was against the idea of joining.
“To be honest, when my national marketing manager said we should be on social media, I straight out told him ‘don’t put my company on Facebook’. It’s made me realise I’ve got more to learn and we need to do whatever we need to be ahead of the game.”
When Kuchel first started work, it was a 24/7 job.
“When we first started I’d think ‘that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’, that was our first 21 months and I’d actually hum it on my way to work. I was working seven days a week through to whatever time I’d finish.”
Now, Kuchel aims to leave the office each day by 4pm.
“It’s been one of the best things I’ve done. I feed the animals, I don’t get mobile coverage, and I just watch the cows in the middle of my 100 acres. Then I have dinner with the family.
“I try to create that balance between work and personal time both for me personally and my people.”
Kuchel’s six kids are between the ages of five and 23, so he spends his weekends with his family.
“Most weekends I’m fishing with my five and 11-year-old, or riding motorbikes. We’ve also always enjoyed outdoor entertaining and our home is a pretty good example of an Australian Outdoor Living display,” he says.
Looking forward, Kuchel aims to have established a presence in all Australian capital cities.
“We have Canberra due to open in March 2014 and Darwin by June 2014, then we’ll have a presence in all capitals.”
Despite considering overseas expansion, Kuchel says his experience working there deterred him.
“The administration of a business overseas is very difficult and we have plenty of opportunities in Australia to keep growing,” he says.
Despite the years of hard work and anxiety, when asked if he’d do it all again Kuchel has one response: “absolutely”.
