Case Studies

Walker SEP Surveyors & Planners

Bruce Walker founded Walker SEP Surveyors & Planners 30 years ago. Since then, the company has been a key player in a number of New Zealand and international projects. From 18 years of expansion and terminal building projects at Auckland International Airport, roading and airport in American Samoa, the Marshall Islands and Tonga. Plus heavy industrial projects like New Zealand Steel at Glenbrook and most of Auckland’s key landmarks including the Aotea Centre, Sky City Casino Botany and Sylvia Park Shopping Centre.

“While we have been established for 30 years, the last 5 years of the global financial crisis and our link in the chain of the building industry has put pressure on our debtors ledger. Our bank – the ASB put us on to Lock Finance and we’re very glad they did. The transition has been seamless. The Lock team has been brilliant to deal with and being able to continue to deal with our own creditors has been great. We have had and continue to have very positive relationship with Sean, Shanil and the rest of the team at Lock.We won’t need their services forever but we couldn’t have found a better fit to meet our current needs.”

 

FOB Direct
Warren Bird

Warren Bird has been in the apparel business for over 25 years. His first company, originally known as PSI Ltd and now renamed FOB Direct, was the first company to import garments into New Zealand and also the first company to import apparel to New Zealand from China.

Warren explains:
`I have accumulated a vast amount of experience working in China and have a fully registered import/export company based in Beijing. My Beijing company exports garments ranging from swim wear, denim, fleece, knitwear, woven pants and shorts to the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.’

It was the move of much of FOB’s production to Bangladesh, which started the company’s relationship with Lock Finance. Warren says: `We have opened an office in Dhaka, Bangladesh to manage our production there. We started working with Lock Finance in the second half of 2010 when we needed to open up letters of credit with Bangladesh. The amount we required for our growing business was substantial and although we had good security but it wasn’t big enough for the banks to be able to help us with the finance tools they had available. The bank referred us to Lock Finance, which was in much better position to assist with its Trade Finance package.

`We went through the normal process of providing them with our forecasts and financial details and after studying the details, Lock Finance came back to us with a proposal which was sufficient for what we needed. The business escalated very quickly and we had to go back another two times within six months. From 2011 to 2012 we grew 300% which brings its own difficulties but our relationship with Lock Finance has helped see us through.’

 

GS Pacific - bringing spice to your life

GS stands for Global Solutions and it imports and distributes Indian food products. It is the second business I’ve been able to develop with support from Lock Finance (the other being www.Smartpayroll.co.nz – NZ’s #1 Cloud Payroll Company). I bought GS Pacific at the end of 2008 just before the global financial crisis kicked in and life got pretty tough. Because we were buying goods in advance in India and we had to pay for them before shipping, we had a very bad cash flow cycle. It could take up to six months before we were paid and I needed the cash back so that we could reinvest in more stock if we were to grow the business. By selling the debtors to Lock Finance through their factoring service I was able to get the cash back quickly. The cost of the service was negligible compared to the money I could make by reinvesting in the business. I was able to get a whole bunch of products into the New Zealand supermarket chains and over the space of three years we tripled the turnover from $1 million to $3 million and drove the profit from $150,000 a year to more than $750,000. At the end of the day we were only successful in the business because of the assistance we got from Lock Finance in factoring our debtors. GS Pacific is currently associated with India, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Dubai, USA, UK, Germany, and Australia. It was set up to bring authentic Indian Food made in India onto the dining tables of every Aussie and Kiwi down under that was healthier too than the takeaway versions.

GS Pacific was successfully sold in November 2011 for a very healthy profit and my latest project is building a chain of accounting practices specifically for business owners who want to grow their businesses.
www.smartbusinesscentre.co.nz
Phil Richards