How we built a business out of recession - chapter 27 - kingmaker
The story of CitNOW*
This is the 27th chapter about CitNOW, the company started from a kitchen table in Winnersh, Berkshire. If you’d like to read from the beginning, here’s a link to chpt 1. Each chapter is a 5-minute read. It’s an early draft of a book.
CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.
We were busy, really busy. Having fought for and lost two businesses before, my feelings after the launch of CitNOW Workshop and the growing response was, it’s finally happening. It was like the BMW breakthrough moment but an even bigger vote of confidence.
After more than three years of hard slog with the industry, mostly saying no thanks, the phone started ringing. Individual dealer enquiries were finally being crowded out by group and manufacturer requests for demonstrations. There was a real demand for our new service because it was easy to prove and technicians followed process a lot more readily than salespeople. More videos were being made and viewed, resulting in a growing positive effect on customer behaviour.
It also gave us two bites of the cherry. Plenty of dealers wanted it in aftersales but were still resistant to using it in sales. If it was a good implementation, the Aftersales Manager (ASM) would often do the selling for us. Positive results didn’t go unnoticed, and the Sales Manager would sign up months later after too many monthly meeting reminders from the Dealer Principal backed up by the ASM with their good news stories.
We might have been pinching ourselves, but Donna and I were still wary that any wrong move might curtail this current wave of opportunity.
We had every right to be cautious after the last business failure and a messy divorce with our old investors. The early joys of finding someone who believed in what we were doing with interactive TV advertising had been replaced a year later with despair when ITV finally said no to carrying our ads after months of stringing us along. Start-ups with game-changing ideas aren’t always welcome. Some were glad to see us fail, including our investor in the end, who we established later had done a side deal with ITV to try and save his punt.
I remembered some of those gut-wrenching painful conversations only too well, on too little sleep, with an empty rolling stomach as you see everything you’ve worked for slowly and inscrutably slip away. We’d been well and truly hung out to dry. The support that should have been there vanished into empty, half-hearted platitudes.
Although I didn’t think so when the knife finally fell, it was a lesson learnt. There are some total shits out there who will pretty much do anything to protect their interests. I see reminders of it in the news every day, but it’s not quite the same as being on the receiving end yourself.
Busy meant lots of changes for the business. We’d outgrown our starter office, so we made the audacious and uncomfortable leap into the whole top floor of a Millars Brook office on the other side of Molly Millar’s Lane in Wokingham. The company is still there today but has spread out, filling the ground floor as well.
We wondered how we would ever fill those offices, but the growing need for support staff was essential if we were to keep on top of our growing order book.
Our first board, which had regular monthly meetings, consisted of Donna, me, Colin and Alistair. Even with the new office, meeting at the Hogarth’s Hotel in Solihull was still easier. Colin got the shortest straw living in Stirling, so he often preferred to fly to Birmingham the night before.
Initially, titles meant very little, but they were helpful for the business and became more relevant later. There was an easy fit for each of us, with plenty more work piling up, waiting to be addressed, as and when we could afford to hire someone to do it.
The board bonhomie was good, and we spent much of the day in helpful discussion. We were always firefighting around two points: resources and cash. Sales were growing, but we now needed those account managers and enough technical support in the Stirling office to deal with software updates and the steady stream of product requests appearing. No one was complaining. It was wonderful to finally have so much attention from so many automotive retailers.
One thing you constantly crave in a start-up is attention because there is nearly always next to none to be had. The phone doesn’t ring. No one cares very much about your version 1 software. There is a lack of use from those trying it because they’re mostly ambivalent, forced into it because the boss said it was a good idea. Instead, your shiny new service has just become another problem piled on top of all the other ones that they’re trying to get rid of.
It was at one of these perfectly fine board meetings that I made my big mistake, although it seemed entirely reasonable then.
When Alistair joined, he was a natural fit for the Sales Director position. When we started, I’d put Managing Director on my cards because I had more exposure to potential customers, and Donna took the title of Operations Director. Everyone sold. In start-up mode, it’s best to waste as little time as possible on something which adds little to no value.
In the meeting, Alistair broached the subject of changing his title and role to Managing Director. Gordon was now in the wings as the new Sales Director, and I had naturally taken on more marketing responsibility which had always been relegated to evenings and weekends since we started.
My first reaction was to agree. BMW wouldn’t have happened without Alistair’s help. He was also always in a hurry with boundless amounts of energy. We regularly spent hours on the phone, often driving, discussing the latest fire or where the product should go next.
It would be good to shake it up a bit. Selfishly, I was happy to see Alistair push himself forward. I wasn’t after a rest, but it would be good to have a chance to focus more on marketing and continue to support the business and Alistair, adding whatever I could where it was needed. I was happy. The business was growing, and it was great to have like-minded people around us who were also taking the strain.
There was also a get-out clause. If we didn’t think it was working, we could review and change again if necessary.
With the proposed change meeting no virement disagreement, Donna added that it made sense that I also adopted the title of Chairman. He immediately looked uncomfortable, but as we were all leaving, it passed without comment. The reaction on reflection would be telling, as we were about to find out.
*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.