How Lara Morgan formed business

For Lara Morgan, the founder of Pacific Direct, her business success was partly due to respect and sense of belonging she gave her staff, because early enough, she made sincere promise to her staff that if the firm’s profit ever reached ONE MILLION POUND, she would take them all on holiday to Barbados to enjoy themselves. So the staffs put in their best to meet up even more than the profit expectation in 2005. To deliver on her promise, Lara and her dedicated 26 staff flew to the Caribbean for an all-expenses paid week-long holiday to make them happy indeed.

Incentive, incentive and incentive form part of her company overall success, frankly speaking. Can you imagine that there was a year when Morgan performed what I called ‘Permutation gift’ really. She taped FIFTY POUNDS notes to the bottom of their chairs for them to find. Funny gift, isn’t it? On the other occasion, she sent them all a huge bouquet of flowers after they exceeded their monthly sales figures, beating several months records ever. No wonder the staff gave their all through.

According to her, we have a lot of good people out there. Read her speech: ‘It is just a laugh. There are a lot more good people in this world than there are bad, and if you give people a chance then it generally produces motivation, team-work and momentum. It is very important to me that we have fun in the workplace. I am here so many hours of the day that if I am not enjoying it, then what’s the point?’ Lara Morgan was born in Germany, 16th December, 1967, where her father was serving as an officer in the British army, but brought up in Hong Kung after her father was relocated there, so from the age of 11 she was sent to boarding school in Scotland. Apparently speaking, she left school at the age of 18 to get a job in Hong Kong selling business gifts to banks and airlines, the job only lasted for three years, so to say.

On the expiration of the three years, she went to live in the Middle East with her fiancé, there, she sold advertising space for Yellow Pages. The career lasted ending her up as national accounts manager overseeing 128 people under her. She said: ‘I was in completely over my head, it was sink or swim. But I like having a challenge.’

Unfortunately, the Gulf war that started in 1991 forced Lara and fiancé to move to New Zealand where she ran triathlons instead of working until both of them returned to UK so that her fiancé could study for an MBA there. They stopped at Hong Kong on their way home to see her parents. There, Lara was approached by her employer where she was selling business gifts to see if she could help them sell them in the UK as they get there.

She accepted the offer. That appeared to be where and when Lara got her business idea from. When she got to UK, she started ringing round hotels across the area. Then she got her first order for a pre-threaded needle sewing kit, from Dorchester Hotel in London. She said that: ‘As I left their office they reminded me that they would only take a few at a time, invoiced as and when delivered, delivered within 24 hours, and I was expected to hold stock, did I have a warehouse and would the items be customised-to which I said yes that was all fine. Which was utter rubbish-the warehouse was underneath my fax machine at home.’

Lara depended on her talent to deliver, because earlier on, she had on the end of her first year of working alone, she managed to rack up sales of ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT TGHOUSAND POUNDS, having imported all the products from Asia long before now. Lara now affirmed to say: ‘I used to get up at six and drive to London, do five or six appointments and bee back in the office by about four in the afternoon. Then I used to do everything else-the rubbish bin, the phone, the fax, quotes, typing, the accounts, all my bookkeeping.’

She consider the process as trial and error thing: ‘I was continually asking people what to do. It is of huge value if you have no pride and no shame and are willing to say: ‘Look I don’t know what I am doing, could you help?’ There was no planning involved.’

Consequently, Sales mounted and so much so that business outgrew her relationship with her fiancé to the extend that she moved to live in a one-bedroom flat that doubled as an office space. She then started working from home for complete four year at a stretch until her new boyfriend insisted that the office be moved elsewhere for proper coordination.

Unfortunately, in 1996 the European cosmetic regulations changed making the importing of products more difficult. Hence, she decided it was time for her company started making its own products directly. To start, she spent TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS to open a factory in China then spent another THIRY NINE THOUSAND POUNDS to take care of the one in Czech Republic as the way of expansion. Lara confessed that:

‘We did them at the same time, rather stupidly. It was not planned. I bought the factory in China and then our Czech supplier said they’d run out of cash and could I find some. I said: ‘Yes-in return for 51 per cent of your company.’

It was an outright gamble that paid off, after all. The business continued to grow rapidly, thanks to Lara enthusiasm for encouraging her staff to stay focused on the business. Her personal tradition or habit of going wherever she went with business books with her to read especially when she had to travel abroad for work, such that each time she made that journey, she would come back with brainstorming and brimming new ideas to share. Lara said: ‘My first three employees used to shake in their boots because I had turned over the corner of the pages and scribbled all over them. The first thing I would do after trips was photocopy pages of these books and put them in their in-trays with a not saying: ‘You might be interested in this, do have a look at this, read this.’

Lara had two favourite books written by Bob Nelson titled 1001 Ways to Energize Employees, and 1001 Ways to reward Employees that inspired her so much, so she said: ‘I have got a business library in the office and whenever one of my employees does a good job I go down there and read a page. What is really exciting is that I turn over the top right hand corner if it is a great idea. So I even have a structure. If I really like a book I have got two copies of i.’

She further admitted that: ‘My staff take piss out of me relentlessly. Some of the titles are so naff and yet there is something that attracts me to them. I think a lot of entrepreneurs constantly strive to improve their business but I just look for the simplest, fastest ways.’ In the year 1999, the business has grown so fast such that Lara realised that it was time to work out where it was actually heading after all said and done. As a result, she booked herself onto a four-month business growth development course at Cranfield Business School in order to write a business plan . It was when there that she up with idea to incentivised her staff with the promise of a free holiday to Barbados for relaxation.

Morgan said: ‘When I wrote my business plan I decided to come up with something which meant that not only was I demanding a huge amount. I was also reward it with a similar amount. When you are making profits of TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS it seems pretty arrogant to say we are going to make ONE MILLION POUNDS profits and so I felt it was a good idea to give people a significant return.’

However, before her incentive could materialised, the business hit a major huddles of its kind ever. A circumstances that forced to make 30 percent of her staff redundant with no other credible option left for her.

It was a had decision for her to make, as she said: ‘I almost lost everything. The combination of the buildings coming down in America, foot and mouth. Sars, chicken flu, the run up to the Iraq war and then general devastation of global travel meant that we weren’t seeing the same growth, It was pretty serious.’

It was going back to the drawing . So she was able to survive through the staying determinately upmarket through the selling to only the best hotels at her company disposal. Precisely, the Pacific Direct supplies hotels in 103 countries including the Waldorf Astoria in New York and Sandy Lane in Barbados and was set tp have a turnover of SEVENTEEN MILLION AND FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS in the year 2006. So Lara Morgan sold her business in the year 2008 for TWENTY MILLION POUNDS.

Qualification: Three A levels

Personal Philosophy: ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get’