Key takeaways

Be open to learning new languages if it will help your business compete and expand.

Choose your general managers well and you will have freedom to start new businesses.

The way entrepreneur Alice Sip explains it, one business seems to lead to another in her experience. But once she has a new idea, she just gets on with it.

Outside her busy work life, Alice has multiple interests which may have contributed to her entrepreneurial success. She is a casual viola player in the NZ Symphony Orchestra, President of the Hawke’s Bay Orchestra and the mother of three children including two year old twins with her American husband, Kris who is her business co-founder.

Helped by her musical talent, Alice has also become a conversational Mandarin speaker in recent years which has been a huge help to her businesses.

“I’ve never done any business courses, I don’t know how I ended up here. Classical music trains you to perform under pressure, my entire life I was very well trained to turn up and play by memory, now I’m doing that in the business world,” she says.

Alice and Kris’s first business in 2016 was a wedding and corporate events company, Flock Events in Hawke’s Bay.

Looking for furniture for Flock’s weddings and events, Alice says she “went through hell” sourcing furniture from China.

Exploring the Chinese manufacturing market for herself

So she learned Mandarin (as you do) and went to China to explore the furniture manufacturing market for herself. She realised she could source furniture there with the help of a Chinese business partner, Jason Feng who she met through a language exchange app.

“As soon as I met Jason, I knew. He was so fussy, I knew he was smart, and he was already working in international trade,” says Alice, who now has a base in Hong Kong with her business partner.

That's seven businesses and counting

To date, Alice has seven plus businesses. As well as Flock Events which is in three locations (Auckland, Hawke’s Bay and Otago), there’s Kindred Road homewares and café plus Canvas co-sharing office space in Hastings.

On top of that are Social Hire, tableware and glassware hire, Festival Opera, a Hawke’s Bay based opera company. and House of Ivor, custom furniture sourcing for commercial clients.

Her latest business, NALA Outdoor, customisable outdoor umbrellas and soft lounging is something Sip is doing with her accountant father, Andrew McIvor.

“Dad’s never asked to be in anything I’ve done,” says the entrepreneur.

Alice came across the umbrellas which can be customised in a factory visit in China.

“A lot of people have this idea for a product and go to China to get it made. I saw a product while I was over there and said: ”I love that, I want to share that.””

Prices range from $999 to $2,000 for the marine fabric umbrellas which have five year warranties and have a high wind rating up to 60 km per hour.

How does she do it?

The entrepreneur says she can only be a serial entrepreneur with the help of good managers running her businesses.

Alice's sister-in-law Morgan McIvor, ex head of Operations of Flock Events runs House of Ivor, custom commercial furniture sourcing for residential, hospitality and corporate customers.

Her GM of Flock, Jessica Brooker, for instance, has gone from an admin job to the top position and is very able.

Her family are also right behind her. “I have a very good village. My Mum (Sue McIvor) works for me - she left her job to help with Flock.”

McIvor is accounts administrator at Flock and the chef at Kindred Road café.

Alice has a nanny two days a week and in her businesses she says she has also used a powerhouse of mothers who don’t want to work full time.

Her husband Kris is incredible, she adds. He oversees warehousing and custom building for Flock.

“He’s a very smart man, he does engineering, building and whatever he needs to do,” says Alice.

Her advice to other entrepreneurs full of business ideas is: “Always make sure you have put the right people in the right place.”

“If I have an idea I love, it’s about learning to then go: “What can I release so I have the capacity for something new?” If I didn’t have my GMs, I couldn’t do it,” she says.

To read the full article go here on Stuff.

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