Find out how footy tipping played a key part in the growth of electrical wholesaler Lecky’s.

Since being founded in 1990 in Coburg, Victoria, Lecky’s Electrical & Data has gone from strength to strength. And it’s a business most definitely built on relationships.

When you read stories of how businesses have evolved and developed over the years, footy tipping doesn’t tend to feature too heavily.

But, in the case of Lecky’s Electrical & Data, a routine conversation about the weekend’s round of games one Friday in 1999 played a pretty significant role in how the business has progressed.

The Lecky’s story, however, began a few years earlier – 1990 to be precise – when Rod Harvey and Geoff Bishop started the business in the backstreets of Coburg, Victoria.

Both Rod – who’s still a director of Lecky’s today – and Geoff had worked for multinational wholesalers and were familiar faces in the sector, and stores in Sunbury and Collingwood followed in the mid-90s.

At the same time Lecky’s opened their doors in Coburg, Craig McBride who was working for an electrical contractor as a contracts administrator, lost his job, and fell into electrical wholesale with another wholesaler.

“I’d just got married, needed a job, and thought I’d get out of the electrical wholesale industry as quickly as I could,” he laughs.

Relationships are fundamental in this market, and while Craig was working for another electrical wholesaler, a discussion over a four year period ensued with Rod and Geoff about joining Lecky’s.

“It was 1999, they had another conversation with me and I’d had enough of working for a multinational, so I decided to make the jump – and it was the best thing I ever did.”

Why one conversation can make a big difference

So, where does footy tipping come into the story?

In 1999, Craig – working for Lecky’s – was still part of his former workplace’s footy tipping comp in Albury.  One Friday, making the routine call to put his weekend tips in, an opportunity emerged.

“I was speaking to the manager up there to put my tips in, and he said, ‘I’ve had enough’. I flippantly said, ‘Well, I’ll be up on Monday to have a chat,’ and never thought anything of it.

“Monday comes, the phone rings, and he says, ‘Where are you?’ I said, ‘I’m sitting in my office in Collingwood’, and he said, ‘I thought you were going to come up to talk about opening a branch.’

“Geoff and I went up there on the Thursday and soon after, after a few discussions we opened our next branch in Albury.”

Craig says the opportunity that arose to open the Albury business perfectly demonstrated the differences he himself had found to be only too true when swapping multinational wholesale life for an independent.

“It just showed the importance of people dealing with people,” he says.

“Promises made by the multinational hadn’t been kept and the staff had had enough – that’s why they decided to move on and join the Lecky’s family.”

Inside Lecky’s today

The move marked an expansion into NSW, and today, Lecky’s Electrical & Data comprises six wholesale stores – Coburg, Northcote, Sunshine, Hallam, Dromana and Albury, as well as a projects department in Thomastown, employing more than 45 staff – one of whom has been with the company for 29 years and six others who have been with the company over 20 years.

The locations of the ‘newer’ branches – Sunshine, Hallam and Dromana – were chosen because of people, too. Finding the right people to run branches – people who have existing relationships in the area – has been the deciding factor for those locations, once again emphasising the importance of connection.

Today, those relationships are more important – and stronger – than ever.

While each branch has its own customer base, meaning areas of focus changes depending on the type of work that customer base does, contractors can be certain of a consistency in approach and customer service.

“Each branch, every staff member, every branch manager, even Rod and I – we all have personal friendships with our customer base,” says Craig.

Communication is key with staff, customers and suppliers. Our business depends on the success of your business, so establishing and maintaining really strong relationships is hugely important. We have a passion for teamwork and personal service.

“They become part of the business, and you develop that relationship and that bond.

“We’ll go to the races, football, cricket etc with some customers, I play hockey with a couple of customers, it is just one big community.”

Businesses rely on the right people – and the job market is tough!

Supplying quality products with exceptional customer service is a fundamental part of being an independent electrical wholesaler – however, the job’s made more challenging by the current job market.

“Over the past few years it’s been really difficult to find good people and keep them – or even getting them to work more than one day in some cases,” Craig says.

“We had one young lad come in, work until lunchtime, went to get something to eat and never came back.

“We were obviously worried about him – we have a duty of care – and made phone calls to the recruitment agency and no one could find him. We’ve still never heard what happened to him!

“We’ve had three or four others who turn up and work for a day and decide it’s not for them, which I can’t understand, but that’s the job market at the moment.”

Looking ahead, online sales presents an opportunity, however, it’s one that Lecky’s is considering with caution.

“Some of our international suppliers are trying to push us more quickly into online sales because they see it working in Europe, but we have a bit of a different philosophy here in Australia – Australians deal with people, and our business has been built on people, built on service, so the challenge for us is how we take that online.”

Other than that, the focus is firmly on steady business growth with the stores they already have and maintaining our strong customer and supplier relationships that are currently held.

Unless an unexpected opportunity crops up when putting in some footy tips, that is.