Dean and Ivan van Vuren have always wanted to start a business. After working in the corporate world for a few years, the pair started making biltong in their garage. Now they have seven outlets across the Western Cape and are planning to grow even bigger.
Hailing from George in the Western Cape, the Van Vuren brothers had the entrepreneurial urge early on. Both Ivan and Dean studied business at university, with Dean specialising in logistics and Ivan in human resources.
Always very close, Ivan says the brothers would spend time talking about their desire to start their own venture. Ivan went on to do a postgraduate qualification, while at the same time, he gained sales experience working as a telemarketer.
“I was busy doing business school and working [in] telemarketing. That was quite tough. I did about four, five hours of telemarketing in the day, and then I went to class. [Looking back], doing the telemarketing with the targets and stuff like that, helped me a lot in my current business.”
After he graduated, Ivan went on to work in the insurance industry for a few years. Dean was working in logistics at the time.
“In 2018, about August, I just told my brother, ‘Listen, man, we need to start doing something. I don’t like my job; I don’t like selling insurance.’ It was rewarding salary-wise, but it wasn’t my passion.”
He says this was when he pitched the idea to sell biltong to his brother.
“I said, ‘Let’s start making biltong. Let’s sell something that moves fast and just keep our sales up because everybody loves biltong and dry wors’.”
The birth of Biltong Craft SA
With stands in Cape Town city, Sea Point, and Durbanville, among others, Biltong Craft SA has moved far from its humble beginnings. The brothers started the business in 2018 from their garage in Kuils River.
“During the week, [my brother] would come to my place and would make biltong into the night and over weekends. At the time, we were selling packets wherever we can. And then, at the beginning of 2019. I resigned from my job. He resigned from his job the next year.”
The choice to sell biltong and dry wors, was because the product was popular. He admits they knew very little about it when they started. “We just had a passion for doing our own thing.”
Since starting Biltong Craft SA, the brothers have branched out into other sections of the meat industry. They opened a 300-square metre factory in Somerset West, called “Vuren’s Vleis Produkte”.
“First, we moved into a smaller warehouse at the beginning of 2019, which was about 100 square meters. Then we did well, and we soon ran out of space. We got the bigger factory, and we are still there today, not to full capacity yet but we’ve got plans to fill it up as soon as possible.”
The pair currently employs nine people. “We incentivise them, so they work on commission. Some of our workers earn R13 000 to R14 000 a month working in a biltong shop. It’s not a crazy amount of money, but working in a biltong shop, it’s not a bad salary.”
When it comes to challenges, Ivan explains that their journey has been pretty standard. “There will always be challenges in a business. Meat that’s not delivered on schedule, stock issues, load shedding, etc.”
Still, he says that to be successful, you need to motivate yourself through those challenges.
“You can do what you love, but if you’re not motivated by making money, I don’t think you will succeed. Because there are always tough times. There are always hard times.”
Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs
Van Vuren has the following tips for those interested starting a business:
Don’t draw a salary
You can’t start a business from the ground [up] and think you can take a salary out of it. There would be no working capital to make your business grow if you take a salary out of it. When my brother and I started, we saved up money and a salary for us. We did not take money out of the business. Do not bleed your business with salaries. At the end of the day, if that happens, you don’t have the working capital to go bigger or to buy bigger machines, for example.
Put your profit back into your business every time
If you think you make [enough] money so you can pay yourself a salary, don’t. Having that discipline is probably the most important thing. I think a lot of people that build a business from the ground up get that extra cash coming in and they live it up. But you won’t be able to build the company you want to build by doing that.
There will be tough days
There are going to be tough days. People won’t understand and it’s going to be tough, but you must make that shift in your mind where you say, ‘I’m going to do this and I’ll never give up.’ Don’t doubt yourself. If you have a passion for something and you believe you can make it, do it, just go for it.”
Your business will not run always smoothly
If you are someone that is very analytical and a perfectionist, business sometimes will happen like [you expect]. Different things happen all the time. You can’t plan for some stuff. Things break and you will also need to have the capital for that. So just know that it’s not a mathematical equation. To make a business work, there is no recipe. You have to find your own recipe.
No need to innovate
A lot of the younger generation think they have to innovate and start something new that hasn’t been done before. I think your chances of getting struck by lightning are better. I’ve seen a lot of people thinking they’re going to make this app and create this website, etc, but there’s no idea that you have that hasn’t been thought of already. There’s a big world out there. So I’m a firm believer in [taking] something that works and doing it better. It takes a bit longer, but it’s safer.
I’ve seen people going and spending silly amounts of money on businesses that haven’t made one cent or haven’t sold anything. The most important part of any business is sales. You have to have sales, you have to have cash flow. If you don’t have sales, you don’t have a business. You can have every single thing you need for your business but if you don’t have sales, it’s not a business, it’s basically just an idea.
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