Ethics Before Bigger Profits In The Business Of Chinese Paper Lanterns.
A Scottish business owner based in Thailand selling paper candle bag lanterns amongst other things, trying to do the right thing.
In today’s world where
everything is about profits, margins, ROI, cost cutting and cheap labour, you
may well assume that in order to run a successful business all of the above
must be the pillars of that success.
“Not necessarily” says
Oliie Brodie of UK Paper Bag Lanterns Ltd, a Scotsman who moved his head office
to Thailand from where he runs his UK and Australian online wedding and party
supplies stores. “It all depends how you define successful”.
Having shipped over
40,000 orders in the few short years since the website The Australian Paper Bag Lantern Store was launched, Ollie does not believe that the primary focus
should be on ‘the numbers game’.
He explains. “I’m not
saying you can ignore the costs and the margins etc., of course not. I do
however believe that if you focus on ethics, your staff and doing the right
thing, then you have the building blocks in place to be a success right from
the get-go”.
In 2009 the Australian
government banned the sale and supply of Chinese Floating Lanterns, which had
surged in popularity thanks to movies like The Beach with Leonardo Di Caprio. ‘We were selling and shipping thousands of
these every month from our warehouse in Thailand and the profit was excellent
but when I heard about the Australian ban and looked into the ecological
reasons for it, we stopped selling them immediately. We could have continued
because it was only Australia who banned them but I just felt it was the right
thing to do. We still have a few thousand of them turning to dust somewhere at
the back of the warehouse’.
So what do you do when
you lose a major product line like that overnight? ‘We moved sideways with what
we already knew and stocked up on the round hanging rice paper Chinese lanterns
and especially the wedding heart design candle bag lanterns’. “These now fly off
the shelf so maybe everything really does happen for a reason”.
Thankfully at the time
Ollie already sold many other products so business continued as normal. However
some items like the chair sashes used to tie bows around chair covers make no
profit at all. But there’s a good reason for this explains Ollie. ‘Above a
certain price point these just don’t sell at all. Where they do sell is
bang on our true cost price’. Then why
bother selling them? “The first reason is that we buy the fabric from a tiny
little shop in a local village so it helps the local economy. The second and
more rewarding one is that we employ a local seamstress, who is a young mother
and widow, to sew all the hems on the chair sashes”. “We might not make any profit
but it puts food on her family table every day and she does a wonderful job”.
Ollie has two small
warehouses and 7 permanent staff in Thailand. Some of them and their families
live in the specially built accommodation on the premises. He says this serves
two purposes. ‘We had the space and to be able to give staff free accommodation
as part of their employment so it’s a bonus for them and also provides some
security for the stock. “I could hire a security guard and charge the staff
rent or I can let them live there for free and they make sure the inventory is
secure”. It costs the company a little more but the good karma is worth the
expense.
Success is not
something that has a definitive level or something can be measured while
standing on its own. Ollie see’s it like this. ‘I could run the business in a
ruthless manner focusing only on maximizing profit and growth at the expense of
all else. Selling lanterns that float up and come down and cause fires or the
wiring in them get’s into bales of cattle feed and the digestive systems of our
farm animals causing pain and suffering and much more, and maybe I could
achieve 25% growth per year’.
“Or I can settle for a
lesser, say 10%, growth where everyone gets a fair wage”. ‘The staff are happy and
will do the right thing by us and the team and I sleep well at night knowing
I’m doing the right thing by the environment. I’m also providing jobs and
housing in a poor part of the world to good people’.
“There will be good
years and there will be tough years but when I look back I want to look back
and say, I did the right things.”
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