5 minute read
Embracing generational innovation in business
In a rapidly evolving business landscape, adaptability and innovation are paramount to sustaining growth and relevance. As we celebrate Youth Month in June, we shine a spotlight on young managers who are both navigating and driving change to ensure their businesses thrive.
Based in KwaZulu-Natal, Topline Tools is a company driven by its global quest to seek out new products that will add value to the South African market. The company’s instinctive nature allows it to service the immediate and long-term requirements of its customers. Regardless of the scale of their business, Topline Tools believes that each customer is equally important. The Broughton brothers, Warren, and Ryan, take us through their roles and responsibilities in this successful family business that has embraced generational innovation.
1. Topline Tools is a family business, can tell us more about the history of the business from its inception until now?
• Topline Tools started in 1988 when our father, Derek, started importing products from China. Topline Tools was one of the first branded ranges of hand tools in South Africa to supply the hardware industry and is still one of South Africa’s most trusted ‘Proudly South African’ brands.
• Over the past 36 years that we have been in business, we have been agents for many top international brands as well as importers of white label brands for specific customers across the tools, garden, and safety categories.
2. Can you describe the transition journey at Topline Tools, including when you joined and in what role, when you transitioned from employee to manager, when you assumed leadership from your father, and how you currently collaborate to sustain the company’s success?
• Warren joined Topline from the finance Industry in 2001 and started off as a sales agent in Johannesburg and its surroundings and grew the customer base substantially in five years. Then when Derek bought out his initial partners, Warren moved to the head office in Durban to run the financial side of the business.
• Ryan joined Topline in 2007 from the creative advertising industry to assist with the marketing and sales side of the newly acquired business.
3. Reflecting on your experience, what foundational elements have contributed most to your success as young leaders within the business?
• While we feel we still have so much to learn in an ever-changing landscape, the foundational elements that have made Topline Tools a success over the years revolve around creating solid relationships/ partnerships based on honesty and consistent quality and pricing. For those who know us, we like to work hard and play hard and have surrounded ourselves with a team cherry-picked for their passion and drive to be a success in all facets of life and business.
• In addition, as brothers, we have an unbreakable bond and respect for each other which allows us to work closely day in and day out without much fuss, always for the good of our company and our loyal customers.
4. Please elaborate on your key roles and responsibilities you hold in your respective positions.
• Our key responsibilities have not changed since we joined Topline finance and marketing respectively, but as a small-medium family business, we are integrally involved in nearly every facet of the business including buying, sales, human resourcing, and sourcing.
• We have a very consultative top management structure where all the important decisions are made by consensus after robust discussion.
5. Innovative change and adaptability are crucial in today’s business environment. Please expand on new approaches and managerial styles that you have introduced to propel the company forward.
• Innovation is always at the heart of our business whether it be internal or external, sales, marketing, sourcing, or buying. We have a compact management team, so we are always flexible and able to move quickly when necessary.
• Since the onset of Covid where we had an incredible growth year, Topline, like most other businesses in the industry and beyond has been under pressure due to many factors, some in and some out of our control. This adaptability and flexibility allowed us to make quick, ruthless, and sometimes painful decisions, which has dramatically improved the health of the business.
• Most importantly, we feel that coming through these tough, trying times taught us a lot about business and made us a stronger unit with a more focused mindset.
6. Looking ahead, what are your strategic projections and aspirations for the business over the next five years?
• We have big plans for the next five years from new projects to new categories to new customers to new territories.
• We want to consolidate and grow in our core categories and introduce new and innovative concepts to the industry. But most importantly, and this is our driving force, we just want to continue to provide our customers with the best value for money products and ranges on the market.
7. Is there anything else you would like to share?
Yes, in closing I would just like to say that none of our success would have been possible without our loyal customers and fantastic staff and management that live and breathe the Topline way every single day. From our father and founder Derek, to Thembi, to Ravi, to Damien, all our sales agents and our brother and buyer Andrew, we certainly have the young, dynamic, and hungry team to take us into the future.
