Funnily enough, one member of the board had been a sales agent for a brief period at the end of the 1980′s. His 18 months on the road saw a considerable drop in turnover, this at a time when the British economy was booming, and frankly you had to try really hard to not increase sales. It was more difficult to not get an order than it was to take one. But somehow he managed it!

About 8 years ago a so-called “marketing expert” was brought into the company, having previously worked for a much larger business. Initially contracted as a consultant to oversee a change of premises, he managed to persuade the owner of the business to let him run the company and he finished up as Chairman. Some 6 years ago I had a meeting with him; he told me he had great empathy with self-employed people because he had twice tried to run his own business, and twice failed!

I wanted to ask the question “So how does twice failing at running your own business qualify you to run somebody else’s?” but thought better of it. Unfortunately he of course wasn’t qualified to run that or probably any other business – he didn’t know a hell of a lot about even marketing basics, never mind managing a medium sized company. Unless you call turning a medium sized company into a small company in less than 5 years a success!

The incompetence, the petty jealousy by an ignoramus Board of Directors, the stupid unnecessary politics and posturing by various failed sales managers, and a jobsworth marketing department who didn’t even comprehend the simple basics of marketing were bad enough. That is not unusual in today’s corporate Britain – success is ridiculed, failure is rewarded along the usual socialist principles of dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator, sadly endemic in this once great nation. Sadly we can see the results of this all around us with the economy in its worst condition for over 100 years.

But when I found out that I had been fed a pack of lies about Kasp, which I then passed on to my customers, I knew I could no longer continue. Most of my customers had become friends. My integrity was, and is, everything. If people cannot believe what I am saying then I have nothing. It is for this same reason that I use my real name on this site and that is actually (sadly!) a picture of me in the web site header. There is enough information in these posts for any intrepid investigator to check out my business history; I am pretty well known within the trade where I was working.

So where to next? In the summer of 2007 I decided that with the Kasp revelation I could no longer continue with this business. The idea of being asked to lie to the market place was the final straw. From the beginning of 2007 I had suspected there was something “dirty” about Kasp and I was already looking for an alternative business to run.

I was attracted to running a business on the internet for the simple reason that this business is mobile, or portable. This was briefly touched on in my introductory post “Welcome to this Blog” – if you have a laptop and an internet connection then you have a business, regardless of your geographical location. With my wife being Turkish, we had had the long term aim of relocating to Turkey anyway.

My research on running a business on the internet had been quite comprehensive. I had tried out a few things, learnt new skills and I enjoyed it. 12 months ago I knew nothing of such things as web hosting, FTP software, creating web sites, creating graphics, etc. Today these are simple tasks I can do virtually with my eyes closed.

In September I made 3 decisions at the same time about the future direction of my life:

1. I would sell the family business
2. We would emigrate to Turkey
3. I would run a full time internet business from Turkey

Bold or stupid? Time will tell….

Sep 2005 – we were officially informed by our Managing Director that Abus had decided after 40 years to end our sole supply agreement, and would now also supply 2 of our competitors. This had “come out of the blue” and was “completely the fault of Abus”.

Jan 2006 – our company launched Kasp as an alternative, in a public presentation our Chairman and Managing Director announced that our Marketing Department had done a “wonderful job” in putting this range together in only 3 months. Our task as sales people was to sell Kasp alongside Abus, tell the market place how badly we had been “shafted” by Abus and over time persuade retailers to switch from Abus to Kasp. Major TV advertising campaign throughout 2006 and 2007 for Kasp.

I even remember when our “esteemed” Chairman was giving his Powerpoint presentation – a man who would have been right at home with the “snouts in the trough” bankers and Westminster politicians. In amongst his “Children’s Bed Time Stories” presentation he produced a slide of a tank with the immortal words “We have decided to fight Abus for what they have done”.

Laughable looking back – how this despicable snake oil salesman managed to keep a straight face throughout all the lies I really don’t know. Anyway….this is what happened

• Nov 2006 – company dropped Abus completely to concentrate solely on Kasp
• 2006 and 2007 – sales of Kasp consistently below very modest sales targets, by and large not acceptable in the market

Unfortunately the company in the form of the Chairman and Managing Director told……a pack of lies.

Around the middle of 2007 I was able to piece together what really happened. It is an intriguing tale of corporate greed, arrogance and lies. Here we go:

2004 – our national turnover on Abus at this time was around $10m. About 10% of this turnover involved more specialist security products for the more specialist security retail outlets – around $1m of annual turnover. With a complete disregard to contractual obligations to sales agents, our MD approached Abus, and offered to “sell” this “specialist” part of our security business back to them.

So, what do you think would be a fair price to pay for $1m of turnover (NOT profit remember but turnover)? That is even putting to one side the other implications, such as “how committed are this company to selling our products when they are looking to get rid of the most prestigious part of that business”. By the way, I would estimate the gross profit on that business to be no more than $200,000 per annum.

So I ask again, how much do you think Abus were asked to pay to buy back $1m worth of turnover? $250,000? $400,000?

The answer dear reader is the sum of $4,000,000!!!

You won’t be surprised that Abus did not take our MD up on his kind offer. So at this time the idea of Kasp was born – around the middle of 2004. What proof do I have, I hear you ask?

On 11th July 2005, between the hours of 12.08pm and 12.14pm a total of 86 files were uploaded into 2 directories into the company’s internal FTP site. Every single one of those files, as part of the file name, contains a reference number for a Kasp product. Apart from 2 or 3 items this is the full range of Kasp launched to great fanfare 6 months later. The files are actually image files of the display cards to be used on Kasp products, even including the exact dimensions down to the last millimetre!

All this information was legitimately available to me and everyone else within the sales force, I did not “hack” into system to get this. It required a very minor amount of digging in a part of the FTP system open to me to find the directories. Such is the arrogance of this company they did not even think to “password protect” these files as they have other parts of the system. If they had done so I doubt I would have discovered the truth behind the deceit of the Kasp brand.

Don’t believe me? Then click the link below – I recorded all of it onto video. (You’ll have to wait to let it load, also turn up your speakers or better still use headphones. Unfortunately this was the first time I used that software so the audio quality isn’t the best!)

The Truth Behind The Kasp Security Lies

(link opens in a new window)

So, the question arises…………

• if our MD officially informed us that he had been told on 6th September 2005 by Abus that we were to lose our sole supplier status
• if the same MD stated that this news was a “shock” and “completely out of the blue”
• and if the Chairman and MD told us publicly that Kasp had been put together between September 2005 and January 2006

…….then why the hell were 86 files on the computer system complete with correct product codes, complete with image files and complete with dimensions 6 MONTHS before this range officially existed??!!!!

The answer my friend is that this previously well-respected, long-established (over 200 years), honourable family business publicly and openly and in a premeditated and pre-planned manner told its staff, its sales agents, its customers and its suppliers…

………a complete pack of lies.

More tomorrow…

For as long as I was running that business, about 33.33% of my own, and the company’s turnover was from a range of security products. This range was actually made by another German company, but our hand tool company had enjoyed the sole and exclusive agency for this brand since the 1960′s. You may well know this brand – it’s called Abus.

Obviously with every $1 out of $3 turnover coming from sales of Abus products it was pretty important for my own business and that of the company I was selling for. In 2004 nationally Abus was the market leader in the UK with around 38% market share – and this believe it or not, without supplying any of the large chains here such B&Q, Tesco, Screwfix, Jewsons etc etc. All sold into independent individual shops – a fantastic effort. Something that any sane business would fight very hard to maintain….or so you would think.

Towards the end of 2005 disaster struck. We were told that we no longer had exclusivity on Abus. Abus had decided to also supply 2 of our largest competitors in order to gain “an even larger market share”. I still have a letter from the Managing Director informing us of this, also stating that this announcement had come out of the blue and how terrible it was for us after all these years of faithfully selling Abus they had “done the dirty on us”. Anyway, it was promised that our Board of Directors would have a solution for us.

Fast forward to January 2006. At a sales conference more akin to the Nuremberg Rallies of the 1930′s we were told, with great pomp and ceremony, that our wonderful Board of Directors and our even more talented Marketing Department had put together an “equivalent” range of security products. This range they had decided to call “Kasp”. Our Managing Director and our Chairman put together a big presentation – the gist of it was “well we were shafted by Abus after faithfully selling it for so many years, but let’s have a big congratulations for our marketing team who have put together “the Kasp range” in only a few weeks.”

So, in January 2006 we had the birth of Kasp – or so we thought at the time. We were supposed to change our customers over from Abus to Kasp and would be supported by a big marketing campaign. Anyone living in the UK through 2006 and 2007 and who watches TV will have seen Kasp very heavily advertised during commercial breaks on both satellite and terrestial TV.

Anyway, to cut a long story a bit shorter, sales of Kasp never reached even the modest levels expected. Throughout 2006 we sold Abus to those who wanted it, and a little bit of Kasp to those happy to change. Despite the lack of success, at the end of 2006 the company decided to ditch Abus and only sell Kasp. My sales and those of the company continued to nosedive throughout 2007 as a result, leading to the ultimate unprofitability of my business.

So what I hear you say? Tough breaks happen all the time in the commercial world, and the company “did its best to fight back against a problem not of its own making”. The only thing is….almost nothing we were told by our Managing Director and Chairman in regard to this episode was true! 6 months later I discovered the real story.

I suggest you read the next post to discover the real story behind the now infamous Kasp brand

1. Find out what people what
2. Sell it to them

Many so-called marketing specialists will at this point say, no that’s too simple you need to factor in this and that, etc. I guarantee you that those so-called marketers are enjoying a comfortable salaried position and do not have a single penny of their own invested in that project. Quite frankly by claiming that it is more complicated than that all they are doing is creating unnecessary work for themselves and justifying to their employer why they are needed. If a project fails they have lost nothing personally. I have seen such people in action and believe me it is not a pretty sight to see so much money and time squandered. Talk to the successful self-employed entrepreneurs and they will tell you a different story.
The formula is as simple as that. I ran what was effectively a one man business on those principles, which only a few years ago had an annual turnover of close to $4m – that is surely sufficient proof.
But then we stopped giving the market what it wanted. Because the board of directors got greedy and thought the golden goose would never stop laying golden eggs, they increased the prices way way beyond levels people were willing to pay. Products were discontinued on a whim, often for no other reason than “they no longer fit into our strategic marketing plan”! Great products that customers had been buying for 30 years, key parts of our range, just gone.

Little by little we lost our credibility and our turnover. Customers (i.e. the most important part of any selling process) were telling us we were on the wrong track. As a sales agent I, and other agents, fed this back to the company and we were threatened with all sorts of dire consequences if we didn’t “toe the line”. This was no empty threat, at the end of 2005 one of the most successful agents of 27 years standing was fired without warning. He was replaced by 2 salaried sales people, less than 6 months later turnover in that area had dropped by over 50% but the company had twice the costs! But that was acceptable because the new sales people did “toe the line” and didn’t report back on anything that was perceived as negative!

However as bad as that was, tales of managerial incompetence, power games and ignoring and ripping off customers are hardly unusual in today’s corporate Britain. Much much worse was to follow in 2006 which finally convinced me I could no longer sell on behalf of these kind of people. That will be covered in Part 3 of this mini-series, so make sure you read that tomorrow.

In Part 1 I’ll give you a few more details about what I was doing until a few weeks ago. In the context of what this blog is all about it’s probably not so relevant, except that I would like to establish some credentials and give you a bit more idea of where I am coming from. As of today’s date (February 16th 2008) I am unknown in the world of internet marketing; I am hoping to change that over the next few months of course (:-)), but just because I am an online newbie doesn’t mean I don’t have my own area of expertise outside the internet!

Just over a year ago, I took the decision to sell my existing family business which had produced a good income for our family for 50 years. My father started the business back in 1957, he became a self-employed sales agent on behalf of a German manufacturing company. He sold hand tools and security products into retail markets, such as hardware stores, builders and engineers merchants. For those of you who know the UK, the geographical area was the North West of England between Manchester and the Scottish border. From being a completely unknown company a few years before, by the mid 1960′s we had become the brand leader in our sector in that part of the UK.

That remained the case for the next 40 years, this was also the German manufacturer’s most successful area worldwide - by a huge margin. In 1985 I joined my father in the business and sales continued to expand until 2000. At the height of the business I also employed 2 staff, a salesman and a secretary. Looking back now, what is interesting is that we used the exact same principles 20 years ago to build and market this business that today are being successfully used by the top internet marketers. For example, in the last 2 years “Viral Marketing” has become the buzz phrase and it is presented as if it is something new. I was using “Viral Marketing” 20 years ago to build a business selling physical products into retail stores only I didn’t call it that! As the French say plus ça change…….

About 7-8 years ago there was a change of management within the company. You know what’s coming next don’t you! Yep, these “gurus” managed to dismantle, piece by piece, what had been a hugely successful business. Every one of our “unique selling points”, those features and benefits of our operation that differentiated us from our competitors was removed. Whole ranges of products that were both selling well and profitable were discontinued. The worst example was a range of security products under a different brand name that were discontinued almost overnight. These products represented 33% of company turnover!! Nope, I don’t have a logical explanation for it either. Experienced staff, and other agents, were either fired or pushed out. The result was that my own sales in 2007 were barely 25% of what they had been in 2001! So the writing was on the wall and at the age of 44 I realised that the business I thought would sustain me until my retirement in another 20 years time, was over.

I’m sorely tempted at this stage to “name and shame” the company who are remarkably still trading, although one wonders for how much longer. In a later post I probably will go into more detail, but frankly these are not the nicest of people, and I will leave posting more juicy details for when I am in Turkey. Bear with me, all will become clear later.

Tomorrow in Part 2 I’ll put a bit more meat on the bones…..