Matt Cropp is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Cropps NZ and a Taking Your Business Forward alumni.
This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 25 January 2023, and all figures quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here.
What does a day in the life of Matt look like?
We’re small business owners, so my wife and I get to work as soon as we can. I get up at six, and we will often have coffee together and spend a bit of time getting ourselves ready. I feel that's important – how you come to work is as much as being at work.
There’s always a myriad of things to do; categorising what's most important, customers, suppliers, staff. And there are often different opportunities – looking at where we can get a win, win situation. So that's the day as a whole – spent managing a small business.
Can you explain how Cropps NZ works?
So we have Bees Brilliance, which is a honey-based skincare range, and that's what we started with… We have also launched a range for supermarkets, an FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) body wash range called Factory Road. We're based on Factory Road, and it's where it's made, with local active ingredients.
That's our business, but since Covid, and since doing Taking Your Business Forward (TYBF), in one of our moments of enlightenment we realised that we get quite a thrill out of contract manufacture, and we’re helping another brand do the same. We’re working with others to achieve a product that is quite unique. It's entirely different to what's already out in the marketplace, so that's very rewarding. It's something we do a lot of now, and it’s a bigger part of our business.
How did you first hear about The Icehouse and TYBF?
I heard about The Icehouse from a friend of mine – Andy Hannah, who works in a family business called Spiral Drillers Civil. He did the Owner Manager Programme, and he said it was the best thing he did.
So that was always on my radar – to look into it if I had time and to make the time for it. And then, more recently, our insurance broker, Stephen Doecke of Asset Insurance Partners, an amazing ambassador for The Icehouse (Stephen has sadly passed away), backed me and said I had to do it!
He made it happen, really. You can find excuses to not develop yourself, but your business is who you are and what you do, and so that's why I decided that I had to bite the bullet!
What were your biggest takeaways?
The benefit is that you’re with other business owners that are in the same boat. They are quite often experiencing similar things, and they're not necessarily in your industry.
I was reading some advice recently about looking at other businesses and it suggested finding some local businesses, just to observe, that aren't in your industry. And I find that helpful. [There are] other businesses I can go to that aren't industry related, and I always find it fascinating what they do differently… and better.
Also, really locking down to the purpose of why you're doing something, what you are doing and why you're doing it. And, as I said, also working with the other owners.
We had some discussion groups where we shared a lot of our own experiences. To me that’s just priceless – to hear others in the same boat, what challenges they’ve maybe had, what they've done about it, or things that have worked out well by doing it differently.
What excites you about that future?
We have our own brands that we launched, but we have moved towards contract manufacture, and that's part of that change because we realised that delivering for others is actually as rewarding as having our own brand. And me, being a little bit more technical – it's not often what a brand owner has – we can deliver on that, and there are things that have come from that.
One of those things is taking an idea, or someone's next new product, quickly to market… all those things are in place, and so one of the ways we see it is being able to deliver that quicker and more efficiently. That will serve us in the future well.
What does 2023 hold for Cropps NZ?
Rather than just seeking some new and big opportunities, we’re service-focused for this year. You need to focus on the future and what's ahead, but also doing what you can do and doing it to the best possible standard. That's important for us and that's our challenge to the team. We're living in the best place and doing what we do best.