When I found out about the American Express Qantas Business Rewards Mentoring Competition, I knew I had to enter and I was thrilled when I heard I’d won the chance to learn from renowned business expert and founder of Sales Redfined, Abbie White.
Garlicious Grown was founded in 2014 when my friend Cathy and I heard about black garlic and decided to try and grow it. We did it for fun in the beginning, but we soon realised it tasted too good to keep it to ourselves. We tried our luck at a local market for the first time and it was clear people were intrigued by our product, as we watched it fly off the shelves. Fast forward a few months, black garlic began popping up in local stores.
The company has grown considerably since then and we now have 11 products in our range, including black garlic powder and an aioli. A slightly overdone batch of black garlic resulted in the discovery of black garlic powder, which was hugely well received by customers and chefs and our product range was growing.
We supply to more than 150 stores nationally and supply other businesses, including HelloFresh, a cheese maker, a honey producer and even a beer brewer. We’ve even done a small number of exports!
But our biggest challenge remains educating people about what black garlic is and what they can do with it. When we started it seemed like 95% of people had no idea, now I estimate it’s probably around 70%, so there’s still plenty of work to be done.
Expansion and growth is a key priority for us so the advice I received from Abbie, given her sales expertise, has been crucial. As one of Australia’s most in-demand sales experts, her tips will certainly help us spread the word and grow our customer base.
Taking the business to the next level
We’ve made lots of changes from the early days of the business, including outsourcing some of the garlic growing to help meet demand.
We’re at the stage where we’re keen to learn about scaling and improving sales to generate a greater turnover for the efforts we put in. We know we have a great product, and we know we have good brand awareness, and we believe the right mentor will help us to learn the skills that help us to take the company to the next level.
Invaluable insight
The time I had with Abbie was invaluable. I was very impressed with how much research she’d done on our business and her insights were particularly fresh as she’d never previously heard of black garlic.
She looked at everything from our website to our competitors. We spoke about how we can upscale our offering and the best strategies to get there. I was also able to get some advice about how best to tackle social media. From there we worked on our ‘BHAG’s’ (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) for this year.
Everything Abbie spoke about was completely doable. I got an enormous amount out of the chat and she was kind enough to offer a follow up session to hear about how Cathy and I were going.
Bringing it to life
One of the biggest takeaways from the day was our discussion around the importance of focusing on one particular channel at a time rather than juggling too many plates all at once.
We’re developing an action plan to focus on the most efficient ways to generate income. This will include a top 100 customer focus list and Abbie offered advice about how best to touch those sequentially. Abbie’s reminder about the importance of persistence to seal the deal was also useful.
A memorable experience
I’m really thankful to American Express and Qantas Business Rewards for the opportunity and to Abbie for all her expertise.
It was fabulous to have someone of her skill level look at Garlicious Grown because sometimes you can get a little too close to your own business and it needs an outsider to look in.