Case Study
GS Pacific - bringing spice to your life
Phil Richards
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