CHAPTER 2Working together
Once we had ‘merged’ our operations, we decided to take a risk and find an office/warehouse to have some space from where to operate our small business. Feeling very grown up, we signed a lease on a 180 m2 warehouse at Roberna St in Moorabbin, just 13 minutes from home.
The business was still quite small, but it was moving in the right direction, getting more customers and making more money. Our first specialist ‘hires’ were two new immigrants with a background in e‐commerce. Vijay, newly arrived from Malaysia, was brilliant at all things tech and IT; and Ferry, from Indonesia, was our computer programmer. We also hired some other guys to staff the warehouse, photograph the products, do the buying and manage customer service.
Looking back, we can see why we gravitated towards these guys. They were intelligent, hardworking allrounders with a passion to succeed, just like us. And the team just clicked. Our workplace was very egalitarian, more by chance than design. None of us knew what we were doing, none of us were experts at anything and none of us had better jobs than the other; we all just pitched in and did what needed to be done.
- If a container landed from China, we all unloaded it together.
- If the warehouse had more orders than we could handle, someone would stop ...
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