Entrepreneur's aim: to strive for excellence

By ELLEN READ

Getting the basics right means Michael Parker now spends his days on the farm, not in the office.

Twenty years ago Parker started Best Bars - a Manurewa-based manufacturer and fitter of towbars, roof racks, bike racks and more. Back then the company consisted of him and him alone.

He made the tow bars, fitted them, sent out the bills and banked the money.

Now Best Bars has about 80 staff and market share of more than 85 per cent, and Parker is handing the reins on to his senior management team.

The process began several years ago when he got outside contractors to help him devise and document a human-resources procedure for the business.

"It's taken eight years but if everyone knows their job and does it then the company doesn't need me," Parker said.

Creating a culture at work where old staff teach the new, things are done "right, first time on time" and the staff enjoy working there was also important.

"It's really just looking after the basics."

That groundwork gave him the space and confidence to enrol - with BNZ sponsorship - in a business course run by the University of Auckland incubator The Icehouse.

"The groundwork enabled me to go on the course and the course gave me the confidence to step back from the firm."

True to form, he now rarely visits the factory/office, instead keeping in touch, when he needs to, from a home office.

"I had to remember how to tie my tie this morning," he joked. Parker said the part-time, five-month course suited him as the format brought in a lot of outside speakers and let participants take what they wanted from each. Rather than a how-to course, it was a how-we-did-it one.

Each participant kept a notebook in which he or she jotted down "things to do", and a year on from the course Parker said he had done them all.

The course exposed him to some of the basics of business and reinforced many decisions and choices he had already made, the main one being that businesses revolve around their top management too much.

"The other guys on the course, their [cell] phones rang all the time and they kept having to pop out to return calls. Mine didn't ring at all and I took that as a good sign," Parker said.

Parker realised that with the company set up strongly, he could leave other people to run it.

Another area the course addressed was networking, something Parker thinks small business owners don't indulge in enough.

While nothing is formal at this stage, he is interested in the idea of setting up some sort of small manufacturers' networking group.

He may have stepped back from Best Bars but Parker still has plenty of ideas and goals for the firm.

Sustainable growth, export possibilities and spreading the base of work are high on the agenda.

"Strive for excellence - that's my aim. I want to maintain a company that's the best, not only in terms of what we do, but in terms of companies."