Case Study: Sam Colthurst from Colthurst Flooring

We were floored when we met Whangarei’s Sam Colthurst on Owner Manager Programme 64. Sam and his wife Teresa have taken flooring into a new dimension, implementing high-tech systems, online quoting, using offshore quantifiers to simplify the process for commercial customers, hiring new staff and knocking their productivity levels off the charts!

| What’s the history of the business?

We started five years ago with three people. Now we have a total of 36 in the team including installers and contractors and nine people instore. We’ve hired most of our people from outside the sector and trained them. We’ve been innovative with technology to be more productive, more accurate and less wasteful.

We are now a wraparound service which is quite different from traditional models. So, we do residential and commercial, insurance and new builds. We stock carpet, timber, laminate tiles, vinyl and polished concrete. The new Northland District Council building has been a massive job for us recently, and we have been tackling a lot of the big infrastructure jobs here in the region.

Teresa has stepped up in the business hugely in the last 12 months. She has taken over the staff management and allowed me to go away and develop my growth while holding down the fort, not only in the business but also at home with the family.

| What are some of the examples of technology you’re using?

We weren’t getting the best bang for buck out of our older CRM systems in terms of efficiencies, so we have been introducing new tech that works for us and speeds up our processes.

We have created an online quoting system on our website putting power back into the customer’s hands so they can make decisions before they step into the store. Customers can see itemised quotes and understand where the costs are - we’ve been getting great feedback on that.

Our new systems allow us to create tight plans, so we are pre-cutting carpet before it leaves the warehouse. It speeds up the process by a few hours making installations faster.

For the commercial side of the business, our plans are being quantified overseas so when we are quoting 10,000 sqm jobs for example, we can do that at really reasonable rates and much faster than we can do it here. We use our in-house team to double-check the accuracy of the quantifications and then we are learning from that process as well. It’s been massively productive and given us entry into the commercial market and we’re doing it well.

| Why did you choose to enrol in the Owner Manager Programme?

I’d been looking for a few years to further educate myself – I would say I’ve been winging business for the past five years. I wasn’t educated at all as far as running a business goes and had just been learning the whole way through. Peter Roberts from Tile Space(Heritage Tiles), one of our valued suppliers, first put me onto The Icehouse. Peter did the Owner Manager Programme 20 years ago and he has supported me to get into it. The more I spoke to people about The Icehouse, the more it aligned with what I was looking for and I can say now that it’s been revolutionary for my growth as an individual and as a business owner.

| You had support from the BNZ – tell us how that came about?

We actually moved to BNZ not that long ago. We had wasted weeks with other banks trying to get funding when we were looking to buy a commercial building. A contact put us onto Tracey at BNZ Whangarei – she did everything in three days that had taken other bank six weeks! We were so impressed with BNZ and switched our banking to them. I approached Tracey about the possibility of a scholarship towards the cost of the Owner Manager Programme and she said yes. It just shows that if you’re not dealing with the right people then you’re not going to get results.

| What have been some of the big changes you have experienced from the Owner Manager Programme?

OMP has allowed me to get out of my own way – after the second session we hired three new people. We decided we’re going to go hard or go home!

I needed to give away 40-60% per cent of my role and so that’s been huge – getting me to look from the outside in. Now I’m realizing what we need to do in terms of structure because we can’t move forward if we don’t have the right structure in place. I can see now that I don’t need to be involved in the everyday business but there’s a lot of work to do to get it right.

What I’ve gained around knowing the numbers has been impactful. It just blows my mind how much there is to understand and what I need to do better.

I’ve been in touch with one of the OMP panellists, an accountant, to drill down into the numbers. We’re adopting more robust reporting systems to get our numbers correct so we understand them on a monthly and quarterly business and can really grasp where we sit on the balance sheet and can plan more effectively.

The networking side of the Programme was so valuable on its own. For example, we were looking at buying a second business. I asked our OMP group if anyone had any advice on acquisitions and 24 hours later I had multiple replies, sending me lists of things I needed to know and things to consider. It’s so cool to have these kinds of people around you, to give you the “the goods and the bads” because that sort of information is invaluable and the network I’ve got around me now is incredible.