Combined Packaging Solutions

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Combined Packaging Solutions Limited

Coaching helps cardboard box company package up a sale

The company
Combined Packaging Solutions Limited had been in business for more than 20 years. The company was run by husband and wife team, Nic and Linda Rixon. They set the company up from scratch operating, in the early days, from their garage. Twenty years on and they had their own factory, were turning over £3m and employing 35 staff.

Nic was the natural entrepreneur and head of the business while Linda ran the production side of the business. The company manufactured cardboard boxes and packaging solutions and they were known in the market for the creative designs, supplying a wide customer base across multiple sectors. Some of their biggest clients were prestigious brand names in the fashion industry - Cabouchon the fashion jewellery brand and Bourjois the Chanel make-up brand. Another large slice of business came from electrical component manufacturers.

Introduction to Shirlaws
Nic had met coaches from Shirlaws when on a business trip in Australia and was impressed with what they could offer. Hearing that they had now set up in the UK he brought them in to help build his business.

When the Shirlaws coaches came into the business they spent time interviewing Nic and Linda and the key people in the business and carried out a fact find to understand what needed to be done to help the company grow.

The coaching team presented back their findings to Nic and Linda a week or so later. The presentation showed them just how dysfunctional the business was. Linda recalls: "My husband Nic was involved in every part of the business from sorting out the financial aspects, dealing with customers, helping out on the production side too. He was doing all that and managing the sales operations as well. He was stretched too far. And although we instinctively knew this we couldn't see how to change it.

"Shirlaws coaches showed us how to re organise our business so that there were clear roles and responsibilities with everyone clear on what they had to do and what they were responsible for. We realised immediately what a difference the coaching could make and agreed to a coaching programme to give our business a functional structure."

The coaching programme
The coaches from Shirlaws worked with Linda and her production manager primarily as well as other staff who supported the administrative and production sides of the business. Shirlaws introduced a framework that gave the business clarity about the various functions that were needed and coached individuals to understand those functions and their role in delivering them.

The coaches used simple colours - Red, Black and Blue - to show the different aspects of the business so that everyone could understand who was responsible for what. Red was used to identify support functions, like admin and finance roles. Black was for strategic functions in the business and Blue meant revenue or operational functions. Shirlaws also helped the business understand how to manage its capacity, a crucial element in a manufacturing business that has peaks and troughs in its workload.

"The coaching was so effective I remember my accounts person telling Nic off for doing some photocopying telling him that he shouldn't be doing any red functions anymore because his role was black - strategy! That's when I realised how powerful the coaching had been because it was very simple and people at all levels understood how the business functioned and what everybody's role was.

"The coaching made us much more efficient, and streamlined. Within twelve months of coaching we posted our most profitable year ever! And that was amazing because it was getting harder to make money as the big manufacturers were coming in and undercutting us. So it was a great result."

Communication
As well as streamlining the business and making it more efficient, the Shirlaws coaching impacted on the communication within the business. Using the Shirlaws communication framework, Think Feel Know, the coaches identified the communication preferences of the management and staff in the business and a communication strategy for the firm was implemented.

This had a profound impact on the way the company ran its meetings, Linda recalls: "Previously Nic had always led our company meetings and did all of the talking. Now, with this new understanding of people's communication styles everyone suddenly could understand each other better and appreciated each other's input. We made allowances for everyone's communication preferences and meetings became much more fun as a result."

Succession
Once the initial coaching programme was complete Nic and Linda came to a crucial decision that would dictate how they wanted support from Shirlaws going forward. The business was coming up to its 25th anniversary, Linda says: "With the help from Shirlaws, we'd made the business more efficient and profitable but it was still full on and now I wanted to retire from it. So we set out to sell the business."

Linda continues the story: "Nic was looking for the next step in his career and the next business opportunity. He'd tried to leave the business before but hadn't been able to do it successfully because whenever he left, after a while we'd hit a problem and he'd have to come back and help us sort it out. I really wanted to let Nic get out of the business and for it to run itself without him, but we just couldn't seem to manage it."

The decision to sell meant that Linda needed to take more of a leading role in the business and let Nic go off and set up the new business he'd wanted to do for years.

Shirlaws' coaching helped with the preparation for the sale of the business by keeping Linda focussed. There were some key conditions to the sale that Shirlaws helped Linda identify and have them written in to the deal - for example, ensuring the design and sales people had secure jobs with the new owner.

Linda sums up the value the coaching provided: "We got a fair price for the business which we were pleased with and we might not have got it, had it not been for Shirlaws. They helped us keep it all together. I dread to think what we would have done without Shirlaws, I don't think I'd have got passed six months running the business on my own because I was out on a limb and without Shirlaws Nic would never ever have been able to leave the business because he'd tried before but always had to come back and bail us out."