Nicholas Markovitz, 37, one of the founders of Creative Brands, a South African promotional branding firm, is obsessive about creativity. This attribute has turned the Hospitality Management graduate into a brand lover. In pursuit of his passion, he abandoned a career in hospitality for branding. At the launch of Creative Brands in Lagos, he spoke with Chinyere Elizabeth Okoroafor on how he founded the company, love for creativity and his interest in Nigeria, among others.
At 19, Markovitz was busy studying to learn how hotel management works. At the time, he thought a career in hotel management was the ultimate for him. He spent three years in Hospitality Management diploma studies in South Africa.
As part of his studies, he chose Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai for his first six month internship. But Markovitz made a turnaround to pursue his passion in creativity after his visa expired while working in Dorchester Hotel, London, where he completed his six month internship.
Having worked in the kitchen and as a receptionist during the internships, Nicholas would spend some of his times writing down his plans on how to solve branding needs in South Africa. “After I returned from London, I started thinking about the idea and somehow I met my partner, Richard, and the next day we started, registered the company and the rest is history,” Nicholas said with a broad smile.
But, Markovitz said he followed his passion, rather than what parents or family felt was good for him.
They started small in 2003, in a cottage garage in Gardens, Cape Town, with him and his partner, Richard, doing everything themselves. They were the driver, the sales persons, they answered the phone and did the accounting as well.
“We didn’t have to hire at that point. I think that part of our success was that we were very much operational in the business. We understood exactly how it works and we were never afraid to roll up our sleeves and apply some elbow grease, question everything and do things differently,” he said.
A few months into the business, Markovitz and his partner realised that there was a gap in the market.
As he explained it: “After few months into manufacturing uniforms for schools, hotels and corporate companies, we noticed that companies wanted one place that they could go to for branded products and also get the branding done there too. So, we started offering a total solution about eight or nine years ago.”
A year later, they were contacted by Google and Facebook for their services.
Breaking into the branding space
For Markovitz, Google AdWords gave Creative Brands its first break in promotional gifts business. Through it, they were visible to potential clients anywhere in the world.
He said: “We relied on Google AdWords to get traffic to the website. But word of mouth like referrals, like making sure that you have a good reputation went a long way. You know people talk about business that is doing well which they can actually rely on. We did newsletters; we also had a branded vehicle that was part of the ways we got our name out there,” he said.
But to Markovitz, it was firing a big client in their first year of business that gave them their biggest break. How did it happen? Nicholas said: “We realised that we were doing so much for this client and we were not making money from it. We put in like 80 per cent of our energy into this one client and it was like preventing us from moving forward, so we looked at the client and said we need to change the way we work with you or we part ways. We parted ways eventually with the client. And ever since we parted ways with that client our business actually grew and that was quite an interesting thing.”
A new business man may not be bold to part ways with a big client, but Markovitz disagreed. “Not every single client is right for the business. You know sometimes things don’t work out according to plan, so that was actually quite a turning point for us. So, that made us actually selective on who we work with.”
Nicholas said the reason for firing the client was because they were requesting small quantities of an item, “and we were running around and not making money”. “And at the time we did not have a big team. It was filling up all our time and there was pressure and so we decided to part ways,” he said.
The presence of Creative Brands in Nigeria came shortly after premiering in Kenya and Botswana respectively and it is did not come by chance. According to Markovitz, Creative Brands were getting a lot of requests from Kenya, Nigeria and Botswana and they company was servicing these clients from South Africa, he said “So we realized that we needed to have local branches in these countries. We are also looking at Ghana, Zambia and Tanzania at the moment. We have in all over the branches over 80 to 90 employees and we have a big show room in Victoria Island for our clients to have a look at, while our machines are in Johannesburg.”
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