{"id":43831,"date":"2023-10-20T15:31:28","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/australian-fresh-leaf-herbs-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:31:28","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:31:28","slug":"australian-fresh-leaf-herbs-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/australian-fresh-leaf-herbs-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Fresh Leaf Herbs – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Australian<\/div>\n

Producing almost 100,000 bunches of fresh herbs every week is no mean feat in a nutrient-starved nation like Australia, but Jan Vydra and William Pham make it work. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vydra and Pham are the founders of Australian Fresh Leaf Herbs, established in 2008 with the aim of modernising the farming industry, namely the highly fragmented fresh herb market.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With three sites across Queensland and Victoria, the business now delivers to some 400 retailers and 1,000 caf\u00e9s and restaurants. Vydra, a former sales executive, talks to StartupSmart about finding his way in farming.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What prompted you to start the business?<\/h2>\n


<\/b><\/p>\n

I saw an opportunity in a highly fragmented market where I would apply my business skills, and also try new ideas and make mistakes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I first made the transition, I was like a duck out of water. I was used to the weekly pay cheque, everything like that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was a scary process and it was high pressure but I find that in a high pressure situation, you can really generate learning and growth, and create something completely different.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How did William come on board?<\/h2>\n


<\/b><\/p>\n

I was in procurement and saw a gap with a lot of retailers not getting their herbs, so I found a few growers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

William was one of them and I started delivering to him in a wholesale capacity, and started doing research into the actual production of herbs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I sat down with William one day and I said, why don\u2019t we just join forces? We\u2019ll create the company together.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We were very aligned in the way we operated in the business, and we were very lucky because he picked up the operations side and I picked up the sales, corporate and marketing side.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How did you fund the business?<\/h2>\n


<\/b><\/p>\n

The start-up costs we funded ourselves. It was on a sliding scale of probably $800,000-$900,000, and probably $2.2 million in organic funding.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How did you build awareness of your business?<\/h2>\n


<\/b><\/p>\n

We\u2019re really just starting to touch the consumers now. We were really focused on the entire supply chain, so we focused on the core national markets within Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We started going in there with a different approach to everyone else. The original market mentality was to send your stock in as a grower and you\u2019ll get what you want for it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I thought, what if we approach it in a consistent manner where we look at all the crops and we\u2019ll supply it on an annual basis, very stably, and support the supply chain?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then we took it one step further and we actually went to the retailer and reversed the model and said, the retailer orders directly off us and we\u2019ll assign them a market agent so we\u2019re actually owning that end supply chain customer and we\u2019re really making sure that they\u2019re getting the stock that they want.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That\u2019s how we started building that retail awareness \u2013 through that change in the market \u2013 and it took us two years because everyone thought, who are these guys?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s an extremely traditional industry; it\u2019s all generational so people have been doing this for 100 years but it\u2019s time to change.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Farming in general is so fragmented. The biggest problem we face is the farmers disappearing because no one else is taking up farming. It\u2019s a good position for us because we just keep growing \u2013 we\u2019re selling the demand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What\u2019s the biggest risk you face?<\/h2>\n


<\/b><\/p>\n

The biggest risk we face in farming is the lack of succession planning and the demise of the farmer. Also, corporatisation hasn\u2019t kicked in successfully in the industry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a generational business, so there hasn\u2019t been that much need for innovation at this stage, but I also see that as an opportunity. We\u2019re positioning ourselves to consolidate the herb and also the salad industry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The biggest risk for us is understanding how the market\u2019s moving because we have to make major capital investments.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If the market moves on us too aggressively, we can sort of be misaligned with the market development. When we\u2019re launching new products, making sure the research is done there [is important].<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The other thing is labour \u2013 the labour fluctuates so much. We have to be very innovative about our staff engagement programs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We have a lot of students that come on board through the summertime because we\u2019re very seasonal, depending on where we are. Staff is a major challenge and risk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How many staff do you have?<\/h2>\n


<\/b><\/p>\n

We have three national sites \u2013 Clyde in Victoria, Bundaberg in Queensland, and Mareeba in Queensland. There are currently 60 fulltime and casual employees across these locations, but it fluctuates from 30 to over 70.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How long did it take to build up that workforce?<\/h2>\n


<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an ongoing thing. Initially, Will and I aggressively had to recruit; we used contractors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You don\u2019t get to 60 staff straight away. As we watch the working hours that people are putting in, we just keep redoing the organisational structure and just keep redoing the staff pool.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About a year ago, we started taking some higher level management on board, which has freed us up a bit more to actually grow the business.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What are your revenue projections for 2011\/12?<\/h2>\n


<\/b><\/p>\n

This year, I think we\u2019re rounding off $4 million. Next year, I\u2019d love to be rounding off $7 million or $8 million, but I\u2019m being conservative and say we\u2019ll probably round off $6 million.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/b><\/p>\n

You designed and developed an IT system, Freshweb. What was that process like?<\/h2>\n


<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always had a business process background so for me, I had to do all the mapping out of how all the processes would work and then work out the user impact; the user experience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I then had to translate the user experience I\u2019m trying to deliver, make sure it\u2019s efficient so it actually works and then work with key programmers to actually deliver that, and make sure it works from a database perspective.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I designed Freshweb to effectively eliminate issues with the management and delivery of raw, highly perishable products that are affected by seasonal trends and the supply chain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Freshweb supports the supply chain and key stakeholders including growers, distributors, agents, distribution centres and retailers. Retailers have the ability to place an order online or via fax, the order is then allocated to a distributor and dispatched accordingly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That was the biggest challenge and my biggest learning curve in the whole process. I knew what I wanted to achieve but it\u2019s a matter of putting the mechanisms in place and making sure it\u2019s cost effective and it gets delivered on budget because these things can blow out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Programmers are expensive and if you don\u2019t think to do it first and map it out, you\u2019ll triple your investment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Producing almost 100,000 bunches of fresh herbs every week is no mean feat in a nutrient-starved nation like Australia, but Jan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,13,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}