
Redmart’s new head of tech spent nights stamping envelopes for his first startup - schakraberty
https://www.techinasia.com/patrick-teo-redmart-profile
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mdip
This is not surprising at all, to me. In fact, I'd speculate that it's
something that _most_ successful "start-up" or "small business" founders end
up doing.

My dad has owned two small businesses in his lifetime (he just retired from
his last). He was a co-owner with two other individuals. There's always those
moments where someone needs to step up and in his case, if he had to ask his
employees to step up, you can bet he was going to be there right along with
them (and in most cases, he was the one who made the biggest sacrifices). I
recall him relaying a story to me about a factory that he was supplying the
parts to. They had a Thursday delivery deadline and were running behind, so my
dad and his staff pulled a few all night shifts to get everything done. They
completed it, but couldn't get all of the parts in the truck so my dad hopped
in with all but two components and drove across three states through the
night, completing the delivery at 4:00 AM the following morning.

On his arrival, the factory manager was annoyed with the missing part and
rolled his eyes. He asked my dad how come they couldn't bring another truck
and lamented at the fact that he, the lowly truck driver had to take the heat.
He explained that it was the only truck he owned and that the other parts
would be coming as soon as he could round-trip it. The shop manager's attitude
changed, immediately, when he realized that my dad _wasn 't_ the driver, but
the owner and that he'd delivered the products by hand and at great personal
expense. Suddenly the urgency of getting those last two parts (selected
because my dad knew they wouldn't be needed immediately) was eliminated.

This story is one of _many_ I've heard and it's the reason my dad's business
was/still is so successful. They supply massive manufacturing companies
(10,000+ employees) who are used to dealing with _other_ large suppliers. The
manager--in this case--was (rightly) surprised that my dad's business was so
small. It's not typical for a company this size to get orders of the size he
regularly received. They (intentionally) didn't usually compete on price, they
competed by consistent, reliable, delivery on commitments and a relentless
pursuit to meet the demands of their customers. That, often, meant the owners
and technical staff (and even the owner's son) assembling parts in the back,
driving the truck for deliveries through the night and, I'd imagine, stamping
envelopes[0].

[0] The closest thing I can think of to that was my dad's desire to save a few
bucks on professional printing by purchasing a Tektronix Phaser printer (it
was a full color, solid ink printer that came with free black ink) and
printing the product catalogs (with images he manually removed the background
of using GIMP) with it. Every time there were catalogue changes, he'd head
back into the office every few hours from 5:00 PM until around 2:00 AM to
change out the paper and ink to keep it printing. It was 2009 and their
customers still expected paper, spiral-bound, catalogs.

