Joining the ranks of bosses

Stu Jordan successfully launched a new business during the recession after losing his job with an IT firm. Photo / Martin Sykes

In the final part of our series on coping with redundancy, Simon Collins looks at people who have taken the plunge to start their own business.

Redundancy. The very word is enough to strike fear into the soul, at least of anyone old enough to remember the 1990s when redundancy for many meant years on the dole.

"One of the hardest things to do was to tell my mum, even though I'm 34," says one of the people interviewed for this series. "Parents really worry about you."

Even in the best of times, redundancy has a psychological impact that can produce physical illness, as retailer Stu Jordan reports below.

And these are not the best of times. Many redundant workers interviewed by the Herald this year, such as former buildings manager John Foote and online trading manager Richard Smith who both had a month's work under a Waitakere City Council scheme in June, are still looking for jobs.

"Each day I'm looking at the different websites and doing any networking that I can," says Mr Foote, 53.

Mr Smith, 58, is handing out wine samples in supermarkets nine or 10 hours a week, but otherwise "still endlessly scrolling through Seek and Trade Me Jobs and sending off applications".

But even in these hard times, this series has found people who have been made redundant and are now "starting again" in new jobs.

This year has not, in fact, been anywhere near as bad as the worst of the last big recession, when 9.4 per cent of all wage and salary earners lost their jobs in the last half of 1991 alone. In the first half of this year, it was 2.7 per cent.

Our survey found that of 98 workers made redundant at the Irwins saw factory in Wellsford in April who could be traced, 54 have found new jobs.

Lynette Gubb, who led the house union at Irwins and is now doing a computer course, said yesterday: "Most people were quite surprised that so many did find work, and the ones who didn't - we are using the time to further our education."

In Waitakere, Mr Foote says: "I think there has definitely been a lift in confidence in the marketplace."

Statistics bear him out. Seek reported a 4 per cent rise in jobs listed on its site in September. Jobs listed on Trade Me Jobs dropped from 10,700 in August last year to a low of 5600 in May, June and July, but recovered to 6200 a month ago and 6576 yesterday.

New Zealand Herald advertising manager Greg Hornblow says job ads were down 65 per cent from a year before at their lowest in June and July, but recovered dramatically to just 20 per cent down on last year at present.

"We are seeing weeks now that haven't been bettered this year. The last time it was like this was November last year."

Job shock sparks sweet taste of success

Being made redundant was "both the best and the worst" thing that has happened in Stu Jordan's life to date.

Mr Jordan, 36, was almost literally shellshocked when his job as New Zealand retail manager for the Swiss-based computer accessory business Logitech was whisked from under him at the start of this year.

"It was the best job I ever had," he says. He lived for that job, working "80 hours a week, easy". When he went to the office on the morning of January 26, he had his work for the next month planned out.

But the global financial crisis hit and Logitech panicked, laying off 15 per cent of its worldwide staff.

"I turned up to a meeting I thought was about something else and was given my notice. Ten minutes later I was out of the office," he says.

"I had to go and see a doctor, would you believe! It actually made me physically sick. The doctor said it was just extreme stress and shock. I couldn't sleep. It does bad things to your system. It was one of the worst times of my life."

The illness lasted three days. But when he came to, Mr Jordan realised he had been handed an opportunity as well as a shock.

"I had said to my boss in the past: 'You're the last boss I'll ever have,"' he says.

"I was like everyone else: 'I'm going to get my own business.' I just needed a kick in the backside."

Although he had "a good law degree", he had worked part-time as a student in a Cash Converters shop, and took over managing the shop instead of going into law. Later he became a contract shop manager for chain stores, then moved into consumer finance, and from there to Logitech.

Along the way he acquired five investment properties, four still with mortgages when his job evaporated.

Suddenly jobless, he took stock of his options.

"One was to join the job queue," he says. "But after a month I thought, 'If I join the job queue, what's to stop this happening again?'

"So then I thought, 'I just have to go back to what am I good at. What can I do in this environment, in recession, with doom and gloom everywhere, what am I good at and how can I make a living at it? I just started writing a plan."

He looked into buying a business, but couldn't find a good prospect.

Then he hit on the idea of a speciality inner-city chocolate shop selling solely New Zealand-made chocolates. With his accountant's help, he drew up a business plan and started talking about it with friends, going into partnership with one of them.

The next step was the right location. Eventually he found a tiny 32sq m Asian gift shop in the Mid-City arcade which wanted to get out.

He lined up suppliers, but only a handful at first, until he could prove the business worked. Now he buys chocolates from 20 boutique Kiwi chocolate makers.

At 3.30pm on Saturday, June 27 - delayed by a last-minute hitch getting the phone working - the Sweetest Little Chocolate Shop finally opened.

"We did no marketing. We just put a poster in the window: 'Chocolate shop coming soon.' I had nightmares of me standing in an empty shop."

But it worked. "We've been profitable from day one - in the middle of a recession!"

He now has four staff and two or three people ask for a job every day.

"This is actually the best opportunity I've ever had. Would I have done it without being made redundant?

"I would never have done it. It's the best thing that happened to me - the best and the worst. I won't make as much money, but it's working for myself."

THE SERIES

Last Saturday: What happened to the 105 people laid off at Irwins saw factory in Wellsford.
Monday: Selling yourself in 2009.
Tuesday: The new technology of job-hunting.
Wednesday: Volunteering and networking.
Thursday: Using Work and Income.
Yesterday: Changing careers.
Today: Starting your own business.