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B2B Business Support – Harvey Nichols Style

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I spent a great 90 minutes with Brian Handley, General Manager of Harvey Nichols in Leeds, and Lee Hicken from online marketing outfit Hebemedia to find out  a little more about their work in supporting enterprise across Yorkshire and to explore the possibility of helping to develop their role in supporting emerging artists and crafts people.

Now I am no ‘fashion and retail’ guru and struggle to understand why anyone would want to pay £3000 or more for an Italian Leather handbag, but apparently they do, and Harvey Nichols helps to serve that want.  (Not everything in Harvey Nichols has such a price tag.  Apparently a coffee in their restaurant costs the same as in Starbucks, some items in the Food Hall match Morrison for price and some of their makeup too matches the High  St retailers on price.)

But why are those expensive handbags Italian?  Why not British? Or Yorkshire?

  • Are we lacking the skills and talent required to craft leather to this standard?
  • Are we poor at the marketing and brand building work required to compliment fine craft skills to command this top end of the market?  We are simply unable to break the consumers taste for ‘Italian Leather’. Perhaps the Italian High Streets are full of top quality British Leather handbags – I suspect not….
  • Does the Italian craft leather industry receive support from its own Government that allows it to perform at this level?
  • Perhaps the Harvey Nichols buyers have not found the great British products that are out there, preferring instead to go with established Italian brands that they know will sell?

I suspect that it is some combination of the first three that leads to the failure of British manufacturers to compete at the top end of the  luxury leather handbag market.  A conversation with Brian convinces me that they do all they can to source locally wherever possible without compromising on quality.

And I suspect that the absence of high quality business support to help with the development of craft and marketing skills is a large part of the problem.  I can’t recall seeing a single UK regional economic strategy that emphasises the importance of the craft sector.  They tend to focus on ‘high-tech, bio-tech, creative and digital’ but hardly mention the support of traditional craft skills which tend to live of the crumbs from the ‘high growth’ table.

Which is perhaps why Harvey Nichols in Leeds have been able to do so much work with 11 textile mills across Yorkshire, helping to raise their profile.  Absolutely nothing wrong with their product.  They provide felts and baize for Steinway pianos and the worlds best snooker tables.  They provide the fabric for Barack Obama’s curtains in the Oval Office of the White House, and the world’s most expensive suit.  Each of the mills was characterised with an obsessive passion for the quality of the product which had allowed them to move up market and hang on as most textile manufacturing headed east.  But their marketing and branding was weak, and when they came together at Harvey Nichols to see how an association with the store might raise awareness of their product, Brian said it was the first time that all of them had shared a room to explore the way forward.   They had learned a little about how to compete with each other – but very little about how to collaborate.  (Perhaps there is a clue here to the prominence of Italian artisan on British High Streets?).

Why does Harvey Nichols get involved in this kind of work?

Well I don’t think it is pure altruism.  It is self interest properly understood – a thriving local economic ecosystem  is essential for the maintenance and development of the customer base.   A good story is essential for brand building and getting people through the doors.  This is good business combined with a genuine passion for, and commitment to, high quality manufacturing in the region.

This kind of ‘business to business’ business support was once widespread.  In some parts of the world it still is.  But in the UK business support has turned into a government funded industry not primarily focussed on responding to local indigenous businesses but on focussing support on strategic priorities (high tech/biotech/creative and digital).

Perhaps in these straitened times we could afford to let this government backed Business Support industry to just fade away and encourage more employers like Harvey Nichols to play a full part in supporting local enterprise.  The engagement of businesses in this sort of civic society, using their expertise to develop a viable and sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem will surely create much more value for society than so many corporate social responsibility projects that end up with Lawyers painting community centres….

…and if you are looking to spend £300 rather than £3000 pounds on a Leather Handbag that is ‘Made in England’ you might try Liz Cox.

Where is Your Enterprise Service At….?

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I love 2×2 matrices.  But there are worse crimes I suppose. Of course they oversimplify things, deny shades of grey, limit ‘nuancing’ and so on.

But they work for me.

They help to clarify where we are, where we need to be and can generate ideas about how we get there.  Take this 2×2 for example which maps the credibility/utility of the service we offer versus its visibility/accessibility.

Visibility versus Credibility

High/High – ‘The Real Deal’ or ‘The Hen’s Teeth’

This is the goal.  Credible services that work and are visible and accessible to the people they are intended to serve.  Likely to have  a low marketing overhead as word of mouth and the power of attraction will keep the clients coming.  Well evidenced, high value for money services mean that funders cannot afford to withdraw from it.

High Accessibility/Visibility but Low Credibility – ‘All Mouth and No Trousers’ or ‘The Emperor…has no clothes’

This is the norm.  Sadly.  PR companies on large retainers to buy square inches in the local press.  Social media strategies, web sites, leaflets, posters and inspirational strap lines and branding guidelines abound.  Every one knows it’s there – but most of us know it doesn’t do ‘what it says on the tin’…The service relies on heavy self promotion to find a continual source of new referrals.  Word of mouth strategies including introductions and referrals don’t work.  They often have to rely on ‘inducements’ such as soft loans, grants and free lunches to get people to ‘sort of’ engage.  They can have plenty of clients on the books but few of them do anything very interesting.  Failure rates are high.  Many new entrepreneurs soon fall out of love with their ‘dream’ businesses and loan default rates are high.  Often have lots of front line staff on the ground all looking for ‘good’ clients.  Added value is low.  Management strategies involve efforts to ‘bluster our way through’ until the funding stream ends.

High Credibility/Utility but Low Visibility – ‘The Hidden Gem’

So we have a great product and service that does the job – but people don’t know we are here.  Don’t worry about it – this situation won’t last for long – perhaps 6 months?   If you have a product/service that reliably and consistently does what it says it will do – transforms lives, starts dream businesses and contributes to economic and community development the word will get out.  In fact you will soon be winning prizes and if you are smart making serious money.  Perhaps give a little thought to promoting a word of mouth strategy – learn how to ask for referrals, and introductions and you will soon have them beating a path to your door.  Make sure you can evidence your effectiveness and trademark/copyright your service.  It is worth a bomb.  This is a great place to be….

Low Credibility and Low Visibility – ‘No Style – No Substance’

Actually not as bad as it sounds.  Perhaps most new enterprise services should recognise that this is the starting point and where we might spend most of the first year or two of a new project.  Learning about what works in a particular community, about which partners are the ‘real deal’ and which are ‘all mouth but no trousers’.  Sniffing out the hidden gems to work with.  By deliberately keeping a low profile, but working on the long term impact of our products and services with a modest volume of clients we can gradually build a great service.  Once we have moved into the ‘hidden gem’ category we can then make the transition to become the ‘real deal’.

Working with Stakeholders

Of course when we use this in our own services we tend to have a bias towards the ‘real deal’ and ‘hidden gem’ quadrants.  But if we ask our clients, our funders, our experienced advisers, or an informed outsider to place us in the matrix then the results can be enlightening and provide powerful clues about the way forward – if we are smart enough and honest enough to listen.

  • Is this matrix useful?
  • Are you in the quadrant that you want to be in?
  • Do you have a clear strategy for getting to be the real deal?


Working on the Press Gang..?

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The work of the enterprise coach is, for me, about providing a relationship that people can use to explore how they might transform their lives and whether or not this is a journey they want to undertake.   It is a relationship characterised by trust, confidentiality, skill and often the long-term. It is not directive; the coach has no ulterior goal that they are steering the person towards.   The only goal of the coach is to help their client to become the kind of person that they really want to be.

The relationship provides a chance for them to really transform their life. Of course this doesn’t always happen – but there is a chance. The transformation may come about through starting a business. Or through getting better housing, becoming a better parent, tackling an addiction or pursuing an ambition. The job of the enterprise coach is to enable people to take more control of their futures. To find their power in shaping their own lives. It is a truly valuable, challenging and privileged role.

It seems to me that much of the Enterprise Coaching world sees things a little differently. For them the enterprise coach is part of a smiling press-gang, working ‘in the community’, promoting the benefits of enterprise (narrowly defined around self employment, employment, business start-up or expansion) and encouraging people to grow their ‘dream business’. Clients are usually recruited to workshops after a limited amount of 121 work, given a crash course in business literacy and referred to the mainstream – where they take their chances. It is a directive process where the only positive outcome is a referral into the business support industry. It is about skimming talent and potential rather than a longer term engagement to change attitudes, habits, beliefs and decisions.  The whole process is lubricated with the judicious use of free lunches, celebrity speakers, community transport and the potential of getting some cash.   This is traditional pre-start up business support.  We have been doing it for a long time in various communities.  It feels safe, and it does produce start ups.  But I have yet to see it transform communities.

Sometimes  it even damages the very communities that it is intended to help.  I would suggest three mechanisms by which this unfortunate and unintended consequence sometimes occurs.

  • Firstly the service helps to skim off the most able and talented in the community: those that already have the confidence and self belief to start a business and helps them up and sometimes out of the community.  Those that succeed do so, not because of the support of their community, but often in spite of it.  Enterprise is seen primarily as a process for personal progress rather than community building.
  • Secondly we engage large numbers of people on the enterprise journey that we are unable to work with in sufficient depth or for sufficient time before they are referred into a mainstream that is not resourced to work with them.  Failure, disappointment and frustration are commonplace.  Word spreads and the reputation of the service provider drops.  Numbers engaging with the project fall away and the community becomes even more suspicious of the enterprise agenda.
  • Thirdly is the mechanism of reactance.  The more we persuade people to look at enterprise as something that is potentially good for them the more likely they are to resist our persuasion.   Flood a community with pro-enterprise messages and perversely you may decrease enthusiasm for it.

But back to the two visions of Enterprise Coaching that I opened with.  At the moment we are losing the chance of realising the first because of the funding that is being pumped into the second.  I meet and often work with great coaches who are trying to deliver the first vision for enterprise coaching, while being performance managed by a system that is demanding the second.  The consequences are inevitable.  As I have written before, enterprise coaching is being broken.

The question is – what are we going to do about it?  Join our LinkedIn group to find out…

So You Wannabe…An Entrepreneur?

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Timothy Spall last night told a story recounted to him by that great British legend of the stage and small screen Richard Briers.

Briers’ daughter had said something like, ‘Dad, I have made up my mind.  I want to be an actress.’

Briers replied ‘Want?  Want?  Want is not enough!  To succeed you must HAVE to become an actress.  If you have to become an actress then I will roll up my sleeves and help. If you just want to be an actress then forget it.’

The story made me smile as I use almost the identical line when I am working with people who tell me they want to start a business, or they want to become an entrepreneur.  I often ask ‘Is this something that you HAVE to do?  Are there no other alternatives that you could pursue?  Is there NOTHING more important than this in your foreseeable future?

In fact I will often go further, telling them all I can about the life of the entrepreneur.  How it can take you away from family and friends, lead you into debt, consume your life and damage your health.  Of course we explore the upsides as well but those downsides are the things that will derail the process if not considered, if the desire is not sufficient.

And then I will move the focus away from ‘becoming an entrepreneur’ which is such a vague concept as to be practically meaningless and will focus on what it will be like when they have their business up and running.  What it is like to be sole trading as a furniture upholsterer, or a plasterer.  What the transition will be like going from being a professor in the Biochemistry Department to being a part owner of a biosciences company working with venture capitalists to commercialise their intellectual property.  Because being an entrepreneur is all about managing transitions.  Starting with one lifestyle and ending up with another which is very different – and hopefully better.

Enterprise really IS about the emergence of identity.  About shaping lives.

Getting to the Nub of Things

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Many coaches consistently fail to get to the point where their client is really going to tell them anything worth listening too.   They rarely get to the nub of things.

The conversation is often a pretence where both parties say the things they need to say in order to satisfy their respective bureaucracies with little or no real intention of any transformation taking place.   They play the game and keep the scores.

Many ‘enterprise coaches’ are little more than glorified sales people for the enterprise fairytale and act as modern day pressgangs to fill workshops and provide a ‘continual source of referrals to the mainstream’ which is neither resourced nor trained to deal with them properly.

So much talent and potential is lost because we rush its development and plug it into systems designed to provide management with outputs rather than provide people with a real chance of transforming their lives.  We put people into systems instead of into potentially transformational relationships.

Getting to the point where we can have really powerful, transformational conversations takes time, real skill and a lot of trust.  This is the work of the enterprise coach.

So what is at the nub of things?  What are the kinds of conversations that transform lives?  In my opinion they are conversations about identity, about being someone that you can face in the mirror every morning.  About developing passi0n, commitment, resilience and perseverance