Dialling in to what drives customers
SHE’S Australia’s richest female CEO, leading the company she co-founded to revenues of $675 million last year – and Maxine Horne built it all from a single converted toy kiosk in Pacific Fair.
Today ASX-listed Vita Group, formerly Fone Zone, operates more than 100 Telstra-branded retail stores, 21 Telstra Business Centres and one Fone Zone outlet, as well as phone accessories brand Sprout and athleisure brand Sqd Athletica.
The group has more recently expanded into cosmetic procedures, acquiring clinics and also looking to build some of its own.
The Gold Coast is firmly on the group’s radar in 2018.
In 1995, Ms Horne and then-husband David McMahon saw an opportunity to sell mobile phones in shopping centres as they swiftly became consumer items.
At first, centres didn’t want to know about it and they struggled for a tenancy.
Centre managers could not be convinced the stores would survive because “people don’t buy mobile phones in shopping centres”.
“Our response was people don’t because they can’t,” Ms Horne said.
However the misfortune of a Pacific Fair toy store became Fone Zone’s lucky break, with centre managers offering the lease with immediate effect. Two weeks later, Telstra colours covered the castle turret of the previous tenant and they were in business.
Despite massive changes in telecommunications and in retail, Ms Horne said her company had thrived because of its focus on providing a customer experience, not simply a product.
“It’s not about shifting boxes but solving customers’ problems,” she said. “I think that’s even more important today, especially because of the online onslaught – people come into our stores because they get something they can’t get online.”
Ms Horne is one of only five female CEOs of a publicly listed company in Queensland and was Australia’s wealthiest female CEO in the 2015 BRW Rich List.
She holds about 30 million VTG shares, worth about $34.4 million.
Ms Horne will discuss lessons in leadership at the Bond Business Leaders Forum on Wednesday.
“At the start in a small business, out of necessity you do everything yourself,” she said. “But then you get to the point where you’re the person who’s holding up the expansion.”