Setting a new course for growth

A DECADE ago when Georgiana Lenzo bought a small commercial laundry service, she never envisaged that the state’s mining boom would cause her so much distress while simultaneously bringing business success.

In 1999 Mrs Lenzo and her husband, Basil (a qualified engineer who has since retrained as a lawyer), bought Atlas Linen Service, a family-owned laundry service predominantly catering to airlines and a few mine sites, for $1.2 million with a desire to develop the company.

But Mrs Lenzo, a WA Business News 40under40 winner, admits to underestimating the exponential growth of the company on the back of Western Australia’s booming mining and resources sector, as well as the increased demands from mine site clients.

“It (laundry) never finishes, it never ends,” she said.

“And laundry services are very much an undervalued industry, until you have a gas crisis.”

Atlas’s considerable growth since 1999 in terms of staff, output and turnover necessitated an upgrade of the original East Perth headquarters, with the business moving in 2004 to the old CHEP factory in Belmont.

The new facility, about three times larger than the East Perth site, was able to meet the increasing demand for Atlas’s services and accommodate the 80 staff currently employed, growing from 24 employees 10 years ago.

“My turnover last financial year was $6.2 million,” Mrs Lenzo told WA Business News.

“It was $1.3 million 10 years ago, so I’ve learned a lot, but I was behind the eight-ball early on.”

Mrs Lenzo said her retail background, working in sales and as a buyer for Table Eight (a chain of women’s fashion stores), helped maintain high levels of customer satisfaction, while her husband’s involvement in Atlas was valuable both technically and strategically.

But neither of the couple’s skills or experience could help conquer the raft of challenges she faced, especially in the early days.

“I think I was traumatised coming into this from retail,” she said.

“It was quite overwhelming and I was driven by, on a personal level, stress.

“I was suffering what they call the ‘busy fool syndrome’; I’d get nowhere.

“Like most people, you need a roadmap, you need someone to chop it up into bite-size pieces.”

As the boom continued, Mrs Lenzo said she required more staff, increased production and improved management processes across the company.

“It was more people, more staff, more problems, more issues and then your clients getting more demanding,” she said.

“When you get to a point and go ‘Huh? What do I do? I can’t keep going like this’.”

Realising her weaknesses, Mrs Lenzo did some research and found a growth management program at Curtin University specifically designed for owner-managers of small to medium enterprises.

Run under the auspices of the Curtin Business School, it’s called the Curtin Growth Owner program.

“It was really good, they went through everything: your strategy, have you ever thought about your company profile? What are you selling? Things you don’t even stop and ask yourself,” Mrs Lenzo said.

She said the course was invaluable in terms of her personal development and ability to manage the growth of the business.

The 12-month course cost $10,000 with an entire day spent at the university’s Centre for Entrepreneurship every five weeks.

“It also provided a mentor who would come out and help you assess and look at your business with different eyes, and you need that,” Mrs Lenzo said.

“I’m on my own and sometimes you need someone else to bounce off, and look at something and go ‘why are you doing it like that?’”

Mrs Lenzo specifically pointed to the tools she gained for managing the business’s growth and finances, plus tips on value-adding and streamlining core processes.

She said these tools provided a framework for future growth and helped her secure the lucrative laundry services contract for Barrow Island in July, as part of the $43 billion Gorgon project, on behalf of facilities services outfit Compass Group.