BUSINESS BUDDIES CASE STUDY
Sue Boreham, Greg's Supercheap Furniture

Merv and Sue Boreham are a husband and wife team who run a new and secondhand furniture retail business, Greg's Supercheap Furniture, in Logan City, Queensland. They took over the family business in 1999 when Merv's parents retired and run it as a partnership, employing two casual sales staff. 

A drop in sales and turnover led Sue to approach Business Buddies for assistance, particularly in the areas of financial management and understanding the impact of inventory.

Sue located Business Buddies via the internet and much of her communication with her Business Buddy, Sam, was done via email.  Sam had a wealth of previous retail experience which proved to be an invaluable source of advice.

'Sam helped us to understand and identify bottlenecks in our stock and taught us how to analyse our inventory. I learned to identify profitable stock - which was not necessarily the stock with the highest profit margin. We completely revamped our inventory and reintroduced what our customer wanted, not what we thought they wanted.'

Sales and turnover increased as a result, much to Sue's delight. She also found that working with Sam rekindled her excitement about running a small business and allowed her to identify both the problems and the potential growth areas within the business.

'It was great just knowing that there was someone there with a wealth of knowledge, who didn't think our questions were silly and who truly understood the business we were in. Sam forced me to look at issues and assisted in pointing out some of the gold mines that I had overlooked because I was too busy letting my business run me instead of me running my business.'

Since 2000 Greg's Supercheap Furniture has won several business awards for customer service, marketing and retailing. Sue sees Business Buddies as a valuable resource for future growth of the business, particularly in the areas of marketing and customer service.

'I would absolutely recommend Business Buddies to other small businesses. It is fantastic to have someone to tap into with relevant experience that is so relatable.  It's like having a lifeline thrown to you as you are sinking.'

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