Pictured above: Sam and Teresa Colthurst.
Whangārei couple Sam and Teresa Colthurst, owners of Colthurst Flooring, have revolutionised traditional flooring introducing advanced tech and offshore quantifiers to boost their productivity. Sam, recent alumni of the Icehouse Owner Manager Programme, shared with Kate de Lautour how these changes have transformed their business.
What’s the history of the business?
We started five years ago with three people. Now we have 36 in the team including installers and contractors with nine people instore. We’ve hired mainly from outside the sector and trained them.
We are now a wraparound service which is quite different from traditional models. So, we do residential and commercial, insurance and new builds. We stock carpet, timber, laminate tiles, vinyl and polished concrete.
Teresa has stepped up in the business hugely in the last 12 months. She has taken over the staff management and allowed me to develop my growth while holding down the fort, not only in the business but also at home with the family.
What are some examples of technology you’re adopting?
We weren’t getting the best bang for buck out of our older CRM systems in terms of efficiencies, so we’ve introduced new tech that speeds up our processes.
We’ve created an online quoting system so customers can make decisions before stepping into the store. They can view itemised quotes and understand where the costs are.
Our new systems allow us to create tight plans, so we are pre-cutting carpet before it leaves the warehouse. It speeds up the process by a few hours, making installations faster.
For the commercial side of the business, our plans are being quantified overseas so when we are quoting 10,000 sqm jobs for example, we can do that at reasonable rates and much faster than we can do it here. We use our in-house team to double check the accuracy of the quantifications and then we are learning from that process as well. It’s been massively productive and given us entry into the commercial market and we’re doing it well.
Why did you choose the Owner Manager Programme?
I would say I’ve been winging business for the past five years with no formal training. Peter Roberts from Tile Space (Heritage Tiles), one of our valued suppliers, first put me onto The Icehouse. Peter did the Owner Manager Programme (OMP) 20 years ago and he’s supported me to get into it. I can say now that it’s been revolutionary for my growth as an individual and as a business owner.
You had support from the BNZ – tell us how that came about?
We moved to BNZ not that long ago. We had wasted weeks with other banks trying to get funding when we were looking to buy a commercial building. A contact put us onto Tracey at BNZ Whangarei – she did everything in three days that had taken other banks six weeks! I approached Tracey about the possibility of a scholarship towards the cost of The Icehouse and she said yes. It just shows that if you’re not dealing with the right people then you’re not going to get results.
What changes have you seen from the Programme?
OMP has allowed me to get out of my own way – after the second session we hired three new people. We decided we’re going to go hard or go home!
I needed to give away 40-60 percent of my role so that’s been huge – getting me to look from the outside in. Now I’m realising what we need to do in terms of structure because we can’t move forward if we don’t have the right structure in place.
What I’ve gained around knowing the numbers has been impactful. It just blows my mind how much there is to understand and what we can do better.
I’ve been in touch with one of the OMP panellists, an accountant, to drill down into our numbers. We’re adopting more robust reporting systems so we can plan more effectively.
The networking side of the Programme was so valuable on its own. We were looking at buying a second business. I asked our OMP group for advice on acquisitions and within 24 hours I had multiple replies – lists of things I needed to know and to consider. It’s cool to have these kinds of people around you, to give you the “the goods and the bads” because that sort of information is invaluable – the network I’ve got now is incredible.
This article was originally published in the September 2024 issue of NZBusiness magazine. To read the issue, click here.
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