&
ENTREpreneur
CURIOSITY TENACITY Makes this business owner no“roll-over” A willingness to break stereotypes and relentless curiosity are a couple of the key attributes that help to make a business owner successful. This is according to Arnold February, Regional Investment Manager at Business Partners Limited (BUSINESS/PARTNERS) – one of Africa’s leading business loan and equity providers and 2019 Gold winner: SME bank of the year (Africa) – who points to their client, Christine Geldart, as a great example of this.
“A
s the owner of Marven Equipment – a manufacturer of vehicle equipment, accessories, and apparatus – Geldart has held her own in a male-dominated industry, having grown her company to one of South Africa’s top metal vehicle equipment manufacturers. This is mostly due to her insatiable curiosity about science, the world, and how things work; coupled with a restless energy which she claims to have inherited from her father,” says February. Today, the 52-year-old business owner runs a 2 100 square metre factory in Benoni, which employs 46 workers and boasts state-of-the-art metal vehicle equipment. Geldart studied IT at the then Wits Tech and went on to work in the corporate world as a data capturer. She gained experience working at the likes of Toyota SA and Ford, leading many IT teams and specialising in enterprise resource planning and material requirement planning applications – a skill which later proved useful for her own company. It was due to her in-born restlessness that Geldart decided to join her husband’s factory making catering equipment in 2004. “I jumped at the opportunity to do my own thing, and I found the freedom of entrepreneurship exhilarating,” she recalls. Soon, Geldart was running her own bakkie canopy-making business to complement her husband’s business, starting with just one employee and some rudimentary welding and grinding equipment.
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CeO 2020 Vol 20.4
