Pictured above: Dominic Sutton.
Fresh back from the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation’s forum retreat in Cambodia, StockTrim founder Dominic Sutton shares some of the lessons that life and business have taught him over the years.
It has been 12 years since Dominic Sutton first applied to become a member of the New Zealand chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation. Since then, the founder of StockTrim – a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) inventory forecasting business targeting SMBs – has been involved in two of its forums and his enthusiasm for how EO membership can totally rejuvenate an entrepreneur’s business journey now knows no bounds.
EO is not a networking club, he explains. “It’s really an entrepreneurial peer support group. The learnings I’ve had from EO over the years, and through a number of business aspects, has been remarkably important to my overall growth.
“It’s not easy to start and run a business from scratch, but when you’re with a cohort of people and openly sharing about some of the issues you’re facing in business, your personal life, or even relationships, there is a bond and a rapport that gets built up.”
The shared learnings and insights on your own business are invaluable too, he says.
The EO forum retreats suit Dominic’s style of learning, thanks to what he calls “peer analysis” – which refers to the inspirational stories shared and the interaction amongst attendees.
Cambodia, the venue for the latest retreat, was no different. He admits to being a little “burnt-out” prior to boarding the plane to fly there – thanks, in part, to New Zealand’s bleak winter. However, after seeing the past and present struggles of the Cambodians and comparing their daily lives with ours here, he came back with a new appreciation for Kiwi life.
“Also, after spending quality time with seven other entrepreneurs and building some new relationships, my cup definitely feels like it has been filled higher,” he says.
“For me, every interaction I had with those fellow attendees was a learning experience.”
An appetite for risk
Growing up on a farm in Dargaville, number five out of seven siblings, Dominic’s life was profoundly impacted at the age of seven when his father passed away at a relatively young age. With the family surviving largely on a benefit it’s not surprising that, even today, he still admits to never being fearful of having nothing.
In fact, he says the whole experience helped him to develop a life-long appetite for risk.
There’s also no doubting the fact that his upbringing was a major contributor to developing his entrepreneurial streak.
“I had to create my own ways to get ahead in life, which is why I started flogging things from an early age,” explains Dominic. “I remember going door to door selling plastic products like pegs and coat-hangers, which was not easy for an introverted farm-kid like me.
“The first set of new clothes I ever owned I bought myself when I was 16,” he recalls.
That appetite for risk has served Dominic well over the years and is one reason why StockTrim, which he built with software engineer and inventor Paul Simpson, has grown so consistently.
Dominic had already owned and co-owned several businesses before the opportunity for StockTrim came along. He travelled to Silicon Valley in California to investigate the burgeoning SaaS industry and could see its potential.
Fortunately, StockTrim’s journey has not copied the ‘boom and bust’ cycle that many other SaaS companies have experienced. However, while there has been steady growth, Dominic acknowledges that its funding model may have held it back.
“Growing an international SaaS business requires a lot of funding. We raised some capital early on. But with hindsight it probably wasn’t enough,” he says.
“I’ve learnt that you don’t want to raise too much too early because then you’re in danger of giving away too much equity.
“We’re a very capital-efficient business, but having more funds through our next capital raise will be nice because it will mean we can tackle more of the objectives [for growth] we currently have in place.”
Uncle Sam’s calling
In terms of markets, supplying inventory management systems for Australasia was the initial focus, but in 2024 the key generator of business is the United States.
Today around 75 percent of traffic comes from the US, with the balance of business from Australia, New Zealand, the UK and South Africa.
The partnership between Dominic and Paul is a solid one, with Dominic focused on website optimisation and marketing initiatives, and Paul dedicated to the smooth running of operations.
And while the business presents a global look and feel, it’s interesting that they only have seven permanent employees.
2024 has proved to be a challenging year for StockTrim– as it has for many businesses.
Targeting the SMB market has been a major factor in the slow growth this year, explains Dominic, as SMB owners are sensitive to market fluctuations.
“If they feel the market is against them, often they won’t invest further in their business.”
He says for clients the big appeal with StockTrim’s inventory forecasting technology is that it’s “accurate, affordable and easy to use”.
“Before StockTrim there were only two options for inventory forecasting – either a complex ERP which cost thousands to set up, is time consuming to learn and complex to configure, or a custom spreadsheet which is not standardized to industry best practice and can have errors,” Dominic explains
“Also, in the ecosystem of inventory management systems hardly any do any forecasting, only record keeping. So, we developed an elegant solution for an affordable monthly subscription that hides all the complexity of forecasting under the hood and provides seamless, easy to use and accurate software that’s quick to set up.”
Some hard lessons…
Ad agency Pumpt, set up in 2003, was Dominic’s first business. He’s slowly selling down his share of the company now, but says he’ll always be grateful for the core insights on business it has given him, along with the sales skills he picked up.
“I picked up some somewhat risky commission sales skills when I was straight out of university,” he recalls. “That’s what really gave me a robust experience in sales and marketing. Add in a bit of entrepreneurial flair, and I felt I could pretty much do anything. It was just a case of setting my mind to it.”
Initially when Dominic set up StockTrim with Paul, the appeal was to create a business that had the ability to scale, had a global audience, could really help businesses with a core issue, and would ultimately be easy to exit.
“Making money was never my primary focus,” he says, “but a nice exit from the business would simply be a cherry on the top.”
“SaaS businesses are a unique business model and generally much like projects,” Dominic explains. “The focus is often not on bottom-line profit, but cashflow, which usually comes from external sources, customer subscriptions of course, but also capital raising. You’re always raising capital.
“A lot of your costs are borne at the start – you won’t make much money personally until you exit. Acquiring and keeping customers will consume much of your first year’s revenue,” he explains. “And basically, all your money goes on marketing and development. Not on directors’ salaries.”
…and some easy advice
Life and business have given Dominic Sutton a unique view on life. If he had the chance to develop and launch StockTrim all over again, the father of four grown-up boys admits there are a couple of things he would do differently.
“The first is that, because we had a limited margin, my advice to anyone is to always define your ideal customer profile or ICP. There’re millions of businesses out there that could be customers of ours, but we don’t have the marketing budget to go after all of them. So only pick your very best potential customers to pursue.”
In other words, chase too many rabbits and you won’t catch any, he says.
“We connect to other systems that target our core market, and by doing so we acquire customers by osmosis. But early on we had integrations where not all of those customers could use us or were right for us. So again, our integration list is very much zoned in on that ICP – the ‘who, what and where’s.”
This is especially important in markets like the US, he explains, which is much less homogenous than New Zealand or Australia.
What’s next for StockTrim?
With 2025 on the horizon, raising capital is high on Dominic’s list, in order to achieve StockTrim’s growth goals. “I enjoy that aspect of the business because its deal-making,” he says. “But it’s almost a job in itself, requires a different set of skills, and it’s a huge distraction from the day-to-day running of the business.”
Building out the US market is a key focus, and he says deploying their technology anywhere in the world through the cloud means they don’t require people on the ground.
“Our software is easy to use so we try to reduce our reliance on salespeople and rely more on product-led growth,” explains Dominic. “The StockTrim app is so intuitive that a prospect can just sign up and let the app do all the heavy lifting on how to use it. That’s been a core evolution for us.”
Selling the product in US dollars has also protected the brand from currency fluctuations, he says.
Now they’re looking to change the price model again and look at providing a lower entry price point for even smaller businesses, so they can learn how to use the StockTrim SaaS system at no risk and upgrade later if they need to.
What is StockTrim?
StockTrim is an efficiency tool. It conserves cashflow, demonstrates how to reduce over-stocking and under-stocking and saves business owners valuable time while running a leaner business.
The 360° Entrepreneur is proudly brought to you by EO New Zealand. The series will follow Kiwi entrepreneurs and how they are overcoming challenges both professional and personal to grow and scale their businesses.
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