Being an entrepreneur is about being unique. It is about having the energy, creativity and resourcefulness to recognise and exploit opportunities. It is about focus, control, passion and commitment to promote thought and ideas so that they can become reality.
South Africa has a lower rate of entrepreneurship than Uganda and up to 96% of start-up businesses in South Africa fail. Yet the sometimes dark clouds of South African entrepreneurship have many silver linings. One of our entrepreneurs lighting up the African sky is Jacques Duyver, Founder, owner and CEO of the ITEC Group.
The company whose product brand is Konica Minolta offers total document solutions to the market. The best advice I can give any aspiring entrepreneur is to remember to nurture and celebrate individualism, network constantly and as widely as possibly, and to always believe in yourself and your dream.
"Our focus is on providing total document solutions and not merely the supply of document output machines," Duyver explains that the secret to business success is based on people. To make a success of your business you need to surround yourself with the right caliber individuals who not only have the ability to do the job, but also share your passion and vision, "It is critical to be open about your vision and show employees the direction that you want the company to take," he says. "This way it gives every person some insight into where you warn to be and what needs to be done to get there. Shared passion, shared enthusiasm and shared ideas are how you achieve success - not on your own. Great companies are made up of great people and success is shared. That is the difference between a group like Richard Branson's Virgin and other market also-rans."
Duyver has a lot of respect for the Virgin Group and how it conducts business. The reasons for this respect lie in Richard Branson's pioneering of the concept of the brand also being the product, which has been so instrumental in Virgin's success. Other characteristics that are admired and that Itec encourages in all their operations are the spirit of adventure and fun that is instilled in everything Virgin does.
"While it is important to look after people financially, creating a dynamic environment to work in provides the opportunity for special performance and ideas from your people," says Duyver.
"Combine that with entrepreneurial drive and shared vision between every person in the company and the ability to take the right option, not the easy one and do it the right way. Even if it is the long way - and you have what makes this company successful."
ITEC's continuous investment in information technology and Enterprise Systems, in particular, has allowed the company to develop a business model that combines the best of both dealer and branch structure. ITEC clients receive the best of both worlds in terms of service because of the entrepreneurial spirit of its 65 branches, and the centralised management of service delivery, administration and stock from its regional headquarters.
Another stand-out feature has been the company's commitment to, and success with. Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). "We are a young company that has made our success in South Africa in the last six years of our great democracy, so obviously we believe in this country and we see no future without equal representation," says Duyver.
"We are an entrepreneurial company and as such, reluctant to sell our shares to just anyone, whether for BEE or any other purpose. However, we arc not opposed to this as a matter of principle and keep an open mind to the possibilities of finding the right partners,"
The company has taken a very unique and entrepreneurial approach, which Duyver believes goes to the true spirit of BEE, "Our heart-end core of our business is vested in our dealerships (65) around South Africa," says Duyver. "Today, 21 of those are 100% BEE franchises (30% of total), and each is a business that we helped develop from the very beginning. This we believe constitutes true entrepreneurship, some tiling we believe SA needs more than anything else." ITEC plans on having its BEE percentages around the 50% mark by mid-2006.
The company has enjoyed phenomenal successes since its inception six years ago and has gone from 0% to 10% market share, with current turnover a shade under million annually. Not too shabby for a first-year university drop-out whose first pay cheque was a mere R900 as a salesman, is it?
Duyver started ITEC as a one-man operation, a dealership for an office automation importer in Johannesburg. "The office automation dealership that we started in Jo'burg was a great success, prompting the desire to be our own importer of the goods and start a national dealership Operation. Tills led to us buying out the rights for Konica six years ago. With the merging of Konica and Minolta in Japan, our product brand is now called Konica Minolta."
"While it is important to look after people financially, creating a dynamic environment to work in provides the opportunity for special performance and ideas from your people"
"The best advice I can give any aspiring entrepreneur is to remember to nurture and celebrate individualism, network constantly and as widely as possibly, and to always believe in yourself and your dream. Our corporate colour is orange not only because it reflects the energy and vitality of our culture, but because no other word even dares to try to sound like it."
Orange is unique - and that is what it lakes to be an entrepreneur. That, and a spirit for adventure.
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