Dorry Kordahi

It’s been a big few months for Dorry Kordahi, the 35-year-old founder of merchandising and marketing company DKM. Just eight years after founding his business, which now turns over more than $10 million, Kordhai joined the Young Rich list with a fortune estimated at $19 million.

He’s also followed in the footsteps on one of his favourite entrepreneurs, Richard Branson, by releasing a book called Power to Act. The book charts his journey from hairdresser to professional basketball player to business owner, and contains a few home truths about family business and the marketing profession. Today he talks to us about starting from your backyard, why he’s expanding in the UK and why he once sacked his little brother.

The first question is what prompted you to write a book?

I guess for me I’ve always thought I’ve had a very interesting story to tell from my end, so it’s about trying to inspire people to have a go at business and test their abilities and not to be scared. If people are going to have a look at my book and see what I’ve done and where I’ve come from, hopefully I give them a bit of inspiration by saying well if he can do it, I can do it.

One of the strong themes in the book is family business, although having read some of the stories I am not sure whether you would actually recommend going into business with your family or not!

The thing about working in a family business is it’s always tough. You’ve always got the emotional attachment to the business, but you can go far with it if everyone is on the same page and everyone respects each other and has the flexibility to grow within the business.

I guess every business you’re in you need to have one leader and one direction and me being the youngest out of the family I sort of felt that the things that business was involved in I just didn’t necessarily agree with it and I felt like I was going backwards. Working within the family can make you grow quicker and it can also hinder your growth. It’s a catch 22, it all depends on your situation and what you’re going to get out of it.

One thing I noticed when you started your own business and employed your younger brother David, you had quite a rigorous interview process with him. Is it important that even though there are family members involved, you do keep professional and business-like about it?

I’d say it’s very important. Even when I first started working from my backyard shed, for me that was my office and my brother came from five years working in retail and wanted an opportunity to crack into a new industry. I knew how to differ between family and business but I think that’s something my brother didn’t understand at the start. He thought, we’re brothers, so give me an opportunity. But to me you get an opportunity but you’re not going to land on a mountain, you need to climb it. And I never had anything given to me, I had to work for it and you have to appreciate the business and you have to respect it because if you don’t respect your business, it’s not going to respect you.

It got to a point where I fired him and made him work for my other brother so he could sort of get out of the family home and realise that even though you work in your backyard, you need to apply the principles to business. You’ve got wake up early, shower, get into work dressed and look professional. And a lot of us don’t have that mental approach to business and that’s the difference between companies that take it to that next level and companies that sort of stay a backyard operation when they start in a backyard.

Obviously your industry is all about projecting the right image but that’s something that you obviously worked very, very hard on. Did you see merchandising and marketing as a bit of a cottage industry?

I worked in an industry for five years before I went out on my own and did my own thing and one thing I found, when I started in this industry at 21, we were wholesaling to our competitors. And being 21, I was very raw and I was a sponge from back then, so I used to go to our suppliers and just really picked their brains and looked at what they were doing. And then at 26, before I started my own company, I just saw a big gap in the market in a sense where the merchandise aspect of the marketing industry was sort of the last fiddle of any marketing person’s budget.

I mean, they’ll spend millions of dollars on media campaigns and advertising campaigns and when it comes to the merchandise component, it’s just say, oh let’s throw this shit in there and sort of whack it together, this last minute thing. They’re not realising that when you put your brand onto a product, it lasts a lot longer than any media campaign or on any advertising in a newspaper. Yet it was the last minute slap on and the bottom end of the barrel. I knew this was the way a lot of the marketing managers were thinking and judging the way our industry was projecting itself, didn’t help. We had a lot of backyard operators, small one-and-two man operations walking around with big bags in their hands and 50 catalogues and saying, what do you want?

So our business or our industry wasn’t projecting itself as a professional marketing organisation and that’s something that when I looked at my business, I decided I’m not going to sell products, I’m going to sell a service. When I got out and met the clients I was talking more about how I could streamline their business, manage the merchandise requirements and give them ideas and suggestions – like an agency but without charging them the fee. And people were saying wow, well you can just manage that part, I’m saving hours of searching through catalogues and you’re making me look good, take my business. So if you are a little bit dearer, they wouldn’t care because you’re saving them hours of headaches.

So my aim was when I started my business was to lift the profile of the industry and if I’m going to be up their then either you’re going to follow my lead or you’re going to be left behind. And the last probably six or seven years our industry has taken leaps and bounds forward because our suppliers are now coming up with retail finished catalogues and selling lifestyle and image products compared to just basic catalogues with basic slap-bang products in there.

So that’s where I found my niche, to be different to your competitors and not push product and push a service and a management solution business. That’s something I’ve been offering since day one and that’s given me that edge.

Another thing I noticed is that you appear to have stayed ahead by looking to overseas trends. There was a period you spent in Europe and you’ve also harnessed the power of sourcing from China. Is that something you continue to do?

I was in London for a month last month, I was there working out of our UK office. But before I started the business I went to Europe for a six month holiday. My initial thoughts were it was going to be a 10 week break to clear my head and come back, but it ended up being a six month trip because I didn’t want to come back until I worked out how I was going to start my business. It was an eye opener. And San Tropez was another eye opener for me, just seeing the wealth, the glitz and the glam and just the way the people presented themselves in the streets.

That trip for me was more getting clarity in my head with how I was going to structure my business and getting visions and ideas. It took me six months to get it together, mentally get it right and I wasn’t going to come back until I knew I was going to get it right. For me, I looked at all the negatives in the business before I look at the positives. Because if I can overcome the negatives subconsciously, when I do get to those hurdles in real life, I’ve already sequentially worked it out in my head. So it’s me given that opportunity where I haven’t had any major hurdles that I’ve had to come across.

So Europe did give me a good eye opener from that point of view, now we’ve got an office in London as well, and I’ve always been a firm believer in China. If you can really get China right, you can make good profits obviously because you’re doubling your margins because you’re not going through a local importer. So I did spend a lot of time in China and I do go there once a year to catch up with our office and look at a few factories and see how the production team over there are going.

You merged with your brother’s business in 2009, but when you look around the market, what’s the best growth option? Are there other businesses that you’d like to acquire or will you grow more organically?

There are a few strategies in place. For me it’s always been an organic growth for the business as a first rule of thumb. You do have a lot companies that go out there on a big purchasing spree and spend millions of dollars buying companies. I think that’s a bit risky. I think one company has done that, but now its share market has dropped by at least 30 to 40% because you can buy businesses to a degree but you’ve got to be able to sustain it.

I think now we’ve grown it organically and yet there’s still a lot more growth we can do with a lot of our existing clients.

But I’m starting to look at acquisitions from within the industry. There are a lot of small players that are finding it a little bit tough. We just purchased one of our competitors in the UK market which have been running for 17 years. When I was in the UK, we pretty much did that acquisition while I was there and I picked them up at a bargain basement price. So the outlay was very minimal to what the returns are going to be. Pretty much one order will give us the return on that investment.