Key to the Door

Happy 21st Birthday

Sydney Commercial Kitchens turns 21

"I'm twenty-one today! Twenty-one today! I've got the key of the door! Never been twenty-one before!" Birthday Song lyrics This is our story so far. On the 28th September 1998 I took the plunge by going in to Fair Tradings offices in Sydney to register my business name. According to their documentation at the time they suggested bringing in up to 10 different names as a back up plan in case your main name was not available. So, armed with my 10 names I queued up and when finally it was my turn at the counter the clerk started entering my chosen names. No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No and No. Yep, every one of my well thought out names was either taken or too similar to other business names to be usable. "Do you have any other names?" asked the clerk. "How about Sydney Commercial Kitchens" I respond. "Yep, that is okay,"" And with that simple statement, SCK was born. I originally obtained leads by visiting councils and requesting to view the DA and BA registers to find potential customers. However that was short lived as the Privacy Act was already in place and by the end of 1999 it was no longer possible to find out information through the local council registers. Time to find a new lead source

What is this internet thing and would it work for my business?

It was pretty much a level playing field in those days, and by that I mean that no one knew anything. The were limited numbers of online shops and no experts whose knowledge you could draw upon. Anyway I decided to take a chance that the internet would become an accepted method and paid someone $10,000 to build my online shop platform and in April 2000 we went live. Originally I was like "show me the money" but clearly something had to change with that level of thinking ... and fortunately or perhaps unfortunately it was me! The first online sale occurred in September that year, 5 months after launching which doesn't sound that great but it really gave me hope. My goal at that point was to get one sale a month. Subsequent goals were one sale per week, then one sale per day. Now if we are not making multiple sales per day I start to wonder why!

Humble beginnings

Initially I worked from my home but by mid 2004 I realised that I could no longer keep up with business demand on my own. So I employed my first staff member and with that also moved the business out of home and into rented space in a local industrial park. Suddenly the internet was becoming an accepted avenue for businesses and we had 2 massive years of growth, 250% increase the first year then a further 130% in the second. During this period the business grew from one staff member to three and shortly after to four. Two of these staff are still with the business today and one of the others has become a longtime customer, as he went back into the industry.

Operating Remotely

In May 2009, my wife and I relocated to live in California, where we were caring for her Mom, and during our time there we had the opportunity to adopt our son. The SCK team ran the day to day operations from Cromer and I logged in remotely from Santa Monica to do my share. The adoption process in full took almost 2½ years. The good news during this time was that living in California was a great place to better understand the internet and marketing strategies to grow the business. I worked on many strategies that could impact on my business and ultimately decided on the top 4. Once I returned to the office in August 2011, and despite the fact that 2 new large players had entered our space during my abscence, we implemented these strategies into our marketing, and allowed us to basically double our business revenue again.

Re-locating Offices

Once I returned to Australia it was also clear that we had outgrown the small space we were renting in Cromer as offices and my team presented me with a list of buildings available for sale on the Northern Beaches. After choosing a property we negotiated a sale price and moved in to our new offices in Warriewood, in March 2012. Our main office space The extended office space View from the outside Tranquil view

Into the future

Moving forward as a business we have retained the essence of the hospitality industry which revolves around excellence in customer service. Our Google & TrustPilot reviews are testament to this fact.

Make your business our next satisfied client

Let us do the hard work and source the right equipment for your Restaurant or Commercial Kitchen Our goal at SCK is to sell you products that add value to your business. We power your kitchen!