Barry Scholes, the founder of a disability product firm, on the steep learning curve he experienced when attempting to negotiate the inevitable cultural differences that exporting brings
Evac+Chair is a £5.7m revenue Birmingham-based
business, which makes chairs that transport mobility-impaired people
down stairs in an emergency. Its founder Barry Scholes risked it all to
establish the company and is now running a global business. However, not
everything went smoothly when he took his first tentative steps into
exporting.
The product was originally conceived as a way to help
people leave a building during an evacuation. Its American inventor came
up with the idea after he had to carry his wife down a flight of stairs
during a fire alert at a hotel. Scholes took on the concept and bet his
house that he could create a business around it. That was 1989, but
today the business trades in 32 countries and exports are worth about
£1.2m per year.
“I remortgaged my house to bring the money together
to set up the business,” he says. “We founded the firm with five staff
when interest rates were 15%. It took 15 years to pay it off. But
opportunities to run your own business don’t come along very often, and I
have no regrets.”
The chair is used in a variety of ways by
different clients depending on their location. In the UK and Northern
Europe, for instance, it’s main function is to ensure that private
buildings, such as hotels, comply with health and safety standards. In
other countries, it’s used by health professionals or emergency
services.
The legislative environment sometimes dictates the chair’s
use. Scholes spotted that Japan had the potential to be an excellent
market, since the country has both strict health and safety laws, and
it’s prone to earthquakes, which means that lifts can't be used in an
evacuation. However, he had to learn the hard way about the differences
between UK and Japanese cultures.
“It took me the best part of seven
years before we could make a sale,” says Scholes. “We set up with a
partner, but after three to four years it still wasn’t making any
headway.” Scholes realised the business he was dealing with was not at
the right point in the supply chain, and that the product was being
resold several times before it reached the end user.
“The chair had
to go through so many hands before it reached the end user that it was
selling at about 10 times the amount that it was in the UK,” he says.
“You could have made it out of gold and it still wouldn’t have cost that
much in the UK .”
However, as much as he wanted to pull out and sell
to someone else, he had to be careful not to offend anyone. In Japan, a
loss of face is unacceptable and Scholes could have been blacklisted.
“I had to take out all of the middle people, but the hardest part for
the customer was the loss of face. They have a lot of sensitivities over
the rights and wrongs of doing business. They all talk and get to know
what is happening,” he says. “Eventually, we found a partner, but there
was a two-year gap before we could start selling. They had to know that,
technically, we could meet the standards required, and there was a
great deal to go through. But now our Japanese supplier is one of the
best we’ve had.”
Despite such steep learning curves, Evac+Chair has
continued to grow, bucking the trend for both UK manufacturing and
businesses in general recently. The company now has about 70 staff and
headcount has been growing for two years. It recently acquired a
business that produces straps and harnesses, which means that it has
absolute control over its manufacturing process.
“We produce about 7,500
units a year and have the capacity to produce as many as 10,000 without
altering our infrastructure,” says Scholes.