Fiona Cruickshank

Name:

Fiona Cruickshank

Business:

The Specials Laboratory

Web site:

www.specialslab.co.uk

Years in business:

9

Number of businesses:

1

I was doing science A Levels when I picked up one of the Sunday newspapers and saw a table for graduate employment. Right at the top was pharmacists: 99.9 % employment. I thought, that’s the thing for me. I’ll always have a job and I’ll always have enough money to go shopping. After my degree I just started working; I never thought I’d have my own business.

I never felt comfortable in the corporate life though. It was probably inevitable when I look back really because I was working for one of the leading pharmaceutical companies, and I walked away after three years.

I remember it well. I was a graduate with a bit of experience and I was going onto the next level of management. I got an interview with a panel, and there was also a day long assessment centre with team building games like building card towers and that kind of stuff.

It was a big salary and that next stage, but I just remember thinking, no. I was halfway through the interview and I said, I think I’d better stop this now, I don’t want this job. I knew that would be on a record somewhere and I’d never get back in, but I suddenly realised I’d have to comply to their rules for the rest of my career.

If you’re in corporate life you have to be the corporate shape. I knew I would be at someone else’s beck and call all the time. You also have to use a certain language and behave in a certain way. I thought, I don’t need to be earning a living like this. And it’s only going to get worse. I was going to have to behave myself more the longer it went on, I’d have to wear a suit every day and I don’t really want to, I’d have to travel to lots of places that I might want to go to but not at someone else’s behest, I’d be working from half seven in the morning till half seven at night. I just didn’t need or want that.

I took a job which downsized my career a bit, but it was nice not to flog myself to death for a company. It was to develop a small laboratory and I was asked to do the business plan. When it was presented though, they changed their minds. To them it just looked like manufacturing and not an opportunity.

I put in for a management buy out but I was unsuccessful. I got the phone call in the afternoon to say I hadn’t got it so I went home thinking, this is pointless. I can’t possibly carry out the business plan now.

My dad said, ‘Why don’t you just do it yourself?’ I didn’t have a great answer really, I just said, ‘Just because’. He told me that wasn’t good enough.

I went away and started my own company from scratch. I’d done the business plan, I knew it was going to work so it was right place right time really, I just got on with it; it was that easy.

It didn’t feel particularly risky at the time. At the end of the day, its only stuff, an investment in a house or whatever. If it went wrong I could go back to work and pay off my debts. What was there to lose?

My mum had always drilled down my throat that I should never have to rely on a man as she had done, and it’s just gone a bit excessive and somewhat off the scale now! I wish I could say I planned it though, but the truth is I just fell into it. I could see an opportunity was there and I knew the business plan would work. So it was a case of right place right time really.

It was also a bit of a lifestyle thing. I wasn’t thinking I’ll make x amount of money, I just thought I’d be able to pick my son up from school, perhaps be able to leave at a reasonable time, and maybe taking a bit more time off.

I couldn’t see how I could carry on my career in the pharmaceutical company and still have a life. They may say you’ll get 25 days holiday but you’re lucky to get 15, they may say that you don’t have to work late but you know full well you’ve got to be there with the rest of them otherwise they’ll think you’re not trying hard enough. So it was about being flexible, and being in charge of my own life.

When I was setting the business up, everything was happening and there was no one else to do anything. So there wasn’t much time for reflection. The hard bit was done, I’d risked my stuff so the pain’s there already. Besides, no one is going to lend you any money if you don’t feel the pain, and you’re so busy getting customers and sorting out premises that you just get on with it and it all comes together.

In the beginning, with the management buyout, I was buying a contract to supply a large chain of pharmacies. When that plan went bust the investment was considerably less because there was no contract to buy. I just needed to get the equipment and pay the wages which were covered by savings and bank loan. If I’d been more clever and entrepreneurial I’d have done that in the first place, so it was just as well they said no really!

When I did the business plan all those years ago, we were looking predominantly at servicing retail pharmacy businesses, and there was a higher proportion of independently owned pharmacy businesses as opposed to national multiples. Over the years it’s become clear that the national companies like Boots- they’re not going to deal with someone like us because they’ve got their own internal supply chains. So we went after the independent sector. We didn’t need to go mad and target the big boys, we pursued something we knew we could achieve and would be successful.

We marketed ourselves as an independently owned company to people who owned independent businesses, and that’s how we gained momentum. We put together a simple mail shot to a targeted audience saying we’re here and we’re open for business, and we also made a lot of phone calls.

It’s important to take an interest in what everyone else is up to in your sector. I log onto the financial times and check out the drugs and health care centre. Not because I understand all the numbers, but you do pick up trends. For example, we knew probably before a lot of people that the way forward is individualised personal medicines; it’s not going to be blockbuster drugs. Industry gossip helps you make decisions sometimes; it’s just a case of being nosy.

We began to move into the hospitals direct because we had quality of service. The hospitals weren’t fussed about wanting a really big company to supply them, they just wanted a good product.

Also, it wasn’t difficult to see how the sector had lost sight of their customers. We make individual medicines for individual people. So if you’ve waited months for a dermatology appointment at your local teaching hospital because all your conventional medicines have failed, the consultant will often say, yes I know of a unique product that will sort your problems out but I can’t give it to you here you need to go to a high street pharmacy and ask for it.

You turn up, and somebody says you’re going to have to wait a week for that medicine. What we did is say, you can have it within twenty four hours. In the sector at the time a week was good enough. It wasn’t at all because you can do it really quick.

That’s what changed when we entered the market. It wasn’t difficult; it was just a case of catering to customers’ needs and providing a good service. For example, we said we could deliver something by Thursday lunchtime. Our competitors were saying you can have it Thursday week, then they’d deliver it even later than that. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with that because well, you only had one option really.

The biggest challenge for us by far has been recruitment. We need bums on seat to get the output, so I used to think, if we’ve had three months of increased orders, then it’s time to recruit.

In the beginning, we couldn’t train from within. They were specialist skills and so we had to go out and buy them. We advertised locally and just persuaded people to come and work for us. We offered them the opportunity not to have to work in the long hours culture, they didn’t have to work weekends, and so we just enticed people away with a different way of working.

But it’s harder when you get more specialised and more senior. I wanted to restructure earlier than we did, but we couldn’t because we didn’t have the right people in those positions. Recruiting people who weren’t right for the company was probably the biggest mistake we’ve made. We’ve lost a bit of money here and there with naff decisions, but when we made the wrong decision with regards to employment, it nearly messed the whole thing up.

A number of people in the company thought the corporate way was the right way- there’s ladders to be climbed and people to be stabbed in the back. People who’d worked for us for a long time were pretty annoyed and some were thinking about leaving. We weren’t efficient and therefore we weren’t making as much money as we should have been.

I decided that rather than grab the first candidate that came in that ticked all the boxes for experience, we needed to have the right behaviour as well. Up until two or three years ago we were holding our business back until we got the right people in place.

It was absolutely the right thing to do. We also had the luxury of doing it because we’re an owner managed business. If we’d had investment we wouldn’t have had that luxury and we’d have been forced down the route of recruiting the first people who came in. We would then have got payback for that a couple of years down the line when things would have gone very wrong.

We deliver early stage medicines so I can’t afford to compromise on the people who work for me. So we’ll slow the growth if we have to.

It’s also about creating the right culture at work. If I can’t create the right culture, everything will come to a standstill in some way, shape or form. There’s a simple premise; if you have the right product or service for your customer, you do it well. That’s a given. The thing that’s going to make us successful is not reducing costs or anything like that; it’s going to be how we do business, how we deal with clients, and how our people are at work. A high spirited workforce breeds successful business, and I genuinely believe that.

We try to instil positivism and enjoyment, a professional yet friendly place to work. It’s all about having a bit of a laugh, doing the business the way you want to, and treating everybody decently.

I can cite bits of work that we’ve done where the culture of our workforce has swung the decision between someone coming to put their high technology, high risk project with us rather than somebody else. Our people, not only will they do great science for them, but they’re also interested enough to go a little bit further to provide a better service because they’re quite happy at work and they can do it. That’s what makes the customer decide to trade with us.

We’ve got a few things that we do to create a good working environment. We have a birthday party once a month, and anybody’s birthday it is in February for example gets an invitation. The boardroom gets done up like a kids’ party with balloons and jelly and ice cream and it’s all really silly.

It’s about getting people together. Even if they’re moaning about what a load of rubbish it all is, at least they’re talking and having a conversation. We’ve also got a company newsletter with all the latest gossip, we use an informal network, and I try to persuade people to pick up the phone as opposed to sending an email.

We celebrate any successes we have. When we hit a milestone in the financials, we threw a party, a booze cruise on the Tyne. It was a gesture to say thanks for all your hard work, now let’s have a bit of fun.

I have a business partner, Brian. Some people say you shouldn’t go into business with other people, but for us it’s worked fine. We worked together years and years ago and both of us know what the other one’s good at and it fits really well.

We don’t have debates publicly because then it’s a bit like backing a horse: do I back Fiona or do I back Brian? Also, if one of us gets something wrong we don’t go beating the other one up. We can look at recruitment or contacts and say you shouldn’t have done that, but there’s no point dwelling on it because that just builds up resentment. It’s all about moving forward.

We’ve recently diversified the business and got into manufacturing of early stage products for clinical trials. It’s a developing business that will ultimately lead to registration of medicines.

I knew the opportunity was there, knew there was a market, and I wanted to do some more interesting things, and expand what the company was doing.

In terms of investment, the first business had all been done on bank loans. With certain types of investment you’ve got to invite people into your organisation, which means a shorter return rate. The pressure’s on and you can’t do things like having a birthday party every month because it’s time consuming and you have to justify it. With a bank loan, the company was doing very nicely and generating cash.

I made the decision to take every last pound of profit out of the existing business and invest in a new one. We were prepared to shoulder the risk to allow us to have a success.

I’d never have been happy in the corporate environment. It’s the reproduction of the same thing every day, and I’ve realised that I’ve got a very short attention span and I get bored so easily. I’m constantly saying we should do something there, we’ll get that going. I look for opportunities but I don’t like planning and structure, but that’s worked ok so far because there’s people to do that for me. All the things that I used to get told off for when I was little are the reasons I do ok now.

But when I look at other successful business people who’ve gone out of their comfort zone and tried other things- to me that’s far more entrepreneurial than what I’m doing. I’m still in my comfort zone because I’ve stayed within my sector. If I had to go out of it I wouldn’t have a bloody clue!

One of my main motivators is the fact that I don’t have to go and work somewhere else. I’ve worked in London, and I used to do the M6 every day, but now I’ve got this great location in Northumberland that’s providing work for other people so they can stay here too. People who’ve done twenty odd years down South are coming back to the North East to work for us. We’re also trying to get some of the younger graduates who’ve gone away to come back, and give them a really good career option. We can say to them- you don’t have to flog yourself to death on the M25 if you want to have a career.

Also, what gives me huge satisfaction is that I can look at my diary in the morning, and most of the things I’m doing I actually want to do. I can also have a four day week. If this was a Monday I wouldn’t be here.

If you’re thinking of starting your own business, all you need is the ability to believe in it, and to do it. Have a healthy attitude to risk as well. I don’t think you’d get away with much if you’re not prepared to risk some stuff. Other than that though, just get your head down and do it, whatever sector it’s in.

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