If you are selling a product, whether that is face to face as I was for 22 years, or from a web site, a newpaper advert, etc the most important thing that you as a seller have is your integrity. Yes the product needs to be a quality one, the price needs to be acceptable, but if your potential buyer doesn’t trust you, then you don’t have a business. You may get the odd sale here and there, but this is not a formula for a successful long term business.
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