How I keep my business on track during substantial growth

Catch of the Day is no doubt Australia’s largest online retailer. The company has transformed from a garage operation into a $100 million powerhouse, scoring an $80 million investment from a consortium of investors backed by James Packer.

But with the business operating a separate group buying division, Scoopon, and moving into non-perishables with its Grocery Run brand, growth has been explosive. After moving into a new warehouse, the company was forced to upgrade only six months afterwards.

Chief executive Gabby Leibovich says while growth is enjoyable, making sure the business stays on track requires careful attention.

How long have you been in the new warehouse?

We’ve been there for a few weeks now. It’s certainly taking shape. We moved the office people first, and then the warehouse people. But everyone is walking around with barcode scanners and all that, we’ve invested all this money to be able to ship items quicker and improve productivity. So it’s all looking really good.

That would have required quite a lot of cash.

Absolutely. But what’s really helped us is the injection of cash from James Packer and co. Right now, we’re good to go out and spend more money on a bigger warehouse and on great new staff. It’s all in the people.

In the last three months we’ve had five different rock stars join the company in the areas of finance, operations and buying. People who know how to do things in a much bigger way than we do now, and we can see the results already. We’re nothing without good people, and good people are jumping ship all the time and we see the potential in them.

Were you put off by the need for a new warehouse so quickly?

We moved into the old place in November last year, and we thought we were going to be there for four years. And now we’re in a place that’s four times that size. There are definitely growing pains, because when you expect to pack 3,000 items per day, all of a sudden you’re doing 10,000.

We’re spending that money on more space, more equipment and certainly better IT systems.

Could you have kept the two businesses together?

It would have been great to have Catch of the Day and Scoopon under the same roof, but just due to localities and warehousing we couldn’t do that.

That having been said, they are very separate businesses and it’s better to keep them that way. They work at different speeds and do things differently. Although I’d love to have them under the one roof, they do different stuff throughout the day and most businesses would operate in that sort of capacity.

Your staff count has no doubt increased as well

I’m assuming that we’ve probably doubled our staff members in the last 12 months as well as moving into Moorabbin. In fact we may have tripled, it’s growing extremely fast.

How do you keep your culture maintained during such high growth?

This is one of the things I’m very sure I want to preserve, and I want to make sure we preserve it. One of the selling points of our company I believe is the family atmosphere, and that everyone puts in 110% and everyone cares about the business.

But there are some concerns. You walk around, and you don’t recognise anyone which is becoming really hard and difficult. But at the same time, we try and counter that by working in smaller groups.

You’ve got our operation groups, you’ve got the financial team which is 10 people, and at the end of the day those groups work independently so everything fits into a puzzle.

Do you have a key management group that makes executive decisions on big moves?

The decision makers are four or five people, the head of their departments, so head of IT, head of marketing. Myself and a few people from buying, and so on. We’re generally in the right frame of mind, we’re relaxed, and very much risk takers.

I’m still there every day and live and breathe the business, and we never stop thinking of new ideas. The point is that we’re very agile and quick and are able to make decisions quickly, which is something that the big buys cannot do.

How often do you meet?

We never meet. We never have formal meetings where we sit around a table. We send emails, go for lunch and make quick decisions. We don’t like formal meetings – we wear shorts and runners in the office to keep things casual.