How I… started an international business with $100

Andrew Gorecki emigrated from Poland to Australia in 1981 with $100 in his pocket. Now he is the managing director of Retail Directions, a company supplying point-of-sale software to over 50 retail companies with 70 brands, including Just Jeans, the Body Shop, Cotton On and Kikki K.

The company, which Gorecki says he started with absolutely no start-up capital, now has 50 staff and has opened a branch in Britain. He says entrepreneurs need to be prepared to put some hard hours into making their ideas work.

How did you come to start a business after leaving Poland?

I came here in 1981.So I’ve been here for nearly 30 years and arrived with literally $100 in my pocket – it was a good start. I managed, did work for other people throughout the 1980s and in 1993 I started Retail Directions with a few other guys, and we’ve been doing it ever since. We now have 50 people working for us, and have opened a small branch in Britain.

I’d been working in retail since 1985 and was an IT manager for Bi-Lo, and a hardware store chain which is now Bunnings. I thought I could consult with retail because I knew quite a lot about it, and wanted to pursue that avenue.

What niche did you see for your product? Why point-of-sale?

Very clearly there was nothing to take off the shelf in this regard, there was clearly a gap and I had seen the demand for such a product after working in retail outlets for a while. There was demand, an opportunity, so I thought “why not do it? I worked on the product and pitched it to the Body Shop, and it’s really gone on from there.

Now you came with $100 and you managed to make a pretty good life for yourself. Did you go about that differently when starting your business?

No, we had no capital at all. We just had a few guys helping out. They put extra private time in that they were not paid for. I was putting extra time as well… and I think that’s what you have to do. It was hard but when you have an idea like that you have to do whatever you can when you don’t have the money behind the business. So yes, we were putting in lots of time after hours to develop the product.

It really helped us out and I think that’s because we all had a sense of the product and what it could be… there was really nothing of the sort in terms of IT going around at that time.

Are there any mistakes you wish you could correct?

Like most people who start businesses you think you know it all, and then once you start you realise how little you actually do know. You go through a learning curve with clients and suppliers and those lessons are painful. It’s not difficult to be self-employed like we were but to have a business run properly you need to know what you’re doing, and we really had to learn that.

What advice do you have for people looking to start companies without much capital, as you did?

They need to find someone who is like-minded, who understands the vision of what they want to do and then partner with them. They need to be willing to give a chunk of the business over to that person, or persons, as well.

The alternative is to try and do it on your own, but that’s a long haul. You might have a good idea and waste 10 years doing it yourself. But if you bring people on board and give chunks of the business away, you’ve jump-started that good idea with extra help and you can get it done faster. So find like-minded people and start doing things, is my advice.

Are there any steps entrepreneurs need to avoid when starting without much help?

No, because there’s always a risk factor and you just need a degree of luck. I can’t give a recipe to success because honestly it just depends on the time and place you are put in.

I suppose some of that has to do with timing, and if you feel you are in the right time with the right product then you need to jump on that and go for it. Use your judgement, because if your product is right for the market at a particular time and it passes then you will have wasted your chance.