It was the worst of times but she opened anyway
People told Catlyn Calder not to open her organic grocery store after the coronavirus lockdown, with a recession looming, ‘‘but if I waited, someone else was going to do it’’, she says.
Cambridge-based Calder had been driving to Hamilton every few weeks to fill up her containers with whole foods and to buy organic products, and thought about opening her own shop locally.
‘‘It did not make any sense to me that in a place like Cambridge, an affluent, growing town, there was not really anything on offer.
‘‘I just did some research into what it would take and I got lots of feedback that this was really needed in Cambridge, so I just kind of went for it,’’ she said.
One of the biggest surprises after she launched her whole food ‘‘refillery’’, Fill Good, was how many people did not know how it worked.
When she visited similar shops in Auckland, people just knew what to do. ‘‘Here I still get questions daily of ‘How do we do this? What is the best way?’ So it has still been kind of a learning process for everyone.’’
Catlyn is American and met her Cambridge-raised husband, Scott Calder, in Kentucky where they both worked in the horse racing industry.
He was headhunted by Cambridge Stud two years ago.
Unable to find work in her old career as a bloodstock agent, Catlyn went in a different direction. She and Scott own the business 50-50.
She started looking for a place to lease about amonth before the lockdown. The shop, formerly a hair salon, came up for lease a few weeks later. The owners agreed to hold the space for her during lockdown.
‘‘I had five weeks to put a business plan together, to find suppliers, to pretty much do everything. So when I was out of lockdown I just went for it and started construction.’’
At least 70 per cent of her products are from New Zealand.
She is looking to be profitable within a year. ‘‘I have a really good business adviser in Auckland called Wolf & Fox, and we go over things every twomonths to make sure we are tracking in the right direction and what we can improve on.’’
Her business adviser helps with everything from cashflow to marketing.
Catlyn’s advice for anyone considering starting a business was not to wait for things to line up perfectly. ‘‘We started our business in the middle of one of the biggest financial crises we have ever seen, and could it have been better had we not been in a global recession?
‘‘Maybe – I will never know that. But it has really been as successful as I could have seen it go, in the beginning anyway.
‘‘So I would say: Just start somewhere, start talking to people, start writing things down, start making a plan, and then one thing leads to another.
‘‘There are so many naysayers that when we did start said ‘I think you should wait.’ But if I waited someone else was going to do it.
‘‘It is only money at the end of the day. If we fail, we fail – but at least we are doing it for something that we really believe in.’’