Taking the hard road to China
Article Date: Aug 08 2005
Flying high
To make gambles like China work, Currie, who is 48, follows a punishing schedule. Each year, he takes two eight-week trips around the world to visit all 17 of Genesis’ locations on four different continents. His challenge, and the reason he willingly spends 72 hours in a plane on each trip, is to create and enforce a standard set of working practices, giving senior managers in America and Asia the confidence to take the business forward themselves.
‘Training, customer service and all those good things take time,’ reflects Currie, ‘especially if you are an international organisation like ourselves which is trying to provide a seamless service. We have to build a team spirit in the global organisation and get a handle on what is happening locally.’
Currie’s approach has always been to put his money on the table, putting his faith in service, not price, and then waiting, for opportunities to arise. When he set up Genesis in 1986 with his partners Ken Howell and Roy Tricker, their takings in the first month were £34.70. It was not until the hurricane of 1987, when forwarders from Heathrow and Gatwick were unable to reach his adopted town of Eastbourne, that Genesis was finally able to persuade local exporters of the merits of an operation based on quality.
In 1993, when he decided to open his first office in the US, his bank manager told him that he would be broke in six months. Again, Currie had to wait for his chance to break into the market. It came on Independence Day in 1995. A cruiser ran aground off Oregon and broke its propeller. To keep a lid on compensation for disgruntled passengers, a new one had to be moved across the US from Virginia. A police escort and a permit had to be arranged for each state during a public holiday. Currie took the job and had the propeller there in time. Ten years later, the US accounts for 40 per cent of sales and Genesis has five offices there.
The company is now also operating out of Beijing as well as Shanghai, and is opening in Hong Kong this year. ‘China is becoming the world’s manufacturing supply centre,’ Currie believes. ‘We want to be able to work for global customers who want to switch production quickly around the world to secure the lowest costs. There are lots of clients out there that are unhappy with the mentality of big forwarders. We are just waiting for our chance to get their products to market on time.’
