Lance Forman’s professional career can certainly be called varied before he took the helm of his family’s smoked salmon business, H.Forman & Son

Real Business interviewed pro-Brexit salmon entrepreneur, Lance Forman

UNITED KINGDOM
Wednesday, May 27, 2020, 04:00 (GMT + 9)

In an interesting article published today by Real Business, Lance's show his vision and attitude to face the so-called "crisis". In very unusual moments like this, it is interesting to see how some people apply a balance of positivism and development capacity

We will publish a portion of the article and suggest that you read the full version:

QUOTE

RB: When did you join the family business? What early teething problems did you experience?

LF: After setting up a real estate related consultancy and development business in Kiev with a British architect, the business grew to the stage that we’d have to be there permanently and flying back and forth was not practical, especially for home life as my family were not, understandably interested in emigrating to Ukraine! So I decided to join our 90 year old family business, H.Forman & Son – a decision, my parents had been hanging on for.

Photo: H.Forman & Son

We expanded and enlarged our premises, but then we were hit by catastrophe as our salmon-smoking kilns decided they wanted to make smoked factory rather than smoked salmon, and we lost three-quarters of our premises. In the following few years after rebuilding, the local river overflowed and our newly refurbished premises was flooded one-metre deep with polluted river water, not an ideal place to produce fine food.

We then spent two years securing and building a new facility and within a year of moving in was advised that we’d need to relocate yet again as we were now on the site where London wished to build the Olympic stadium. This was followed by a five year nightmare period of negotiation with Ken Livingstone’s London Development Agency. We are no strangers to crises and I have lectured at London Business School on Managing Change. How we got through these problems is the subject of my book “Forman’s Games”. It’s simply too long to explain in a profile piece, but having a sense of humour helps.

Photo: H.Forman & Son

RB: Are you worried about the impact of Brexit on your business?

LF: Not at all. I was a Brexit Party MEP, before switching to the Conservatives. The EU is no longer fit for purpose and change is needed. Entrepreneurs welcome change. It creates opportunity.

RB: How are you pivoting your business to cope with COVID-19?

LF: Half our business is supplying restaurants, hotels and caterers and that trade has fallen off a cliff. Even post lockdown, I believe it’s going to take some time before people engage in that environment in the way they’ve been used to. Our export business has also been affected and we have had to close our own restaurant and venue. Whilst we lost over half our business overnight we turned our attention to our online home-delivery arm, an operation I started 20 years ago.

Photo: H.Forman & Son

That way we could keep our staff gainfully employed, whilst also having to change shift patterns to maintain social distancing at work. Unlike, say Ocado, which is so efficient and runs at near capacity which makes it hard to cope with a spike in demand, we found ourselves in a different position. One of the challenges for Forman & Field is that it is too heavily dependent on Christmas.

On a typical day in the lead up to Christmas, we would do fifty times the turnover that we do the rest of the year. But that created an opportunity. We knew we could gear up to service fifty times more orders now than we typically do at this time of year. We created “The Ultimate Care Package” which people are sending to housebound families and elderly relatives all over the UK. As people cannot dine out in smart restaurants, they are ordering restaurant-quality food direct from us – all chef made, with great fresh, natural, British ingredients too.

Photo: H.Forman & Son

RB: What businesses will survive the coronavirus pandemic, and what types of businesses won’t?

LF: The survivors will be businesses which weren’t operating on a shoestring, those that had saved for rainy days and were well capitalised. You can never be complacent in business; the scenery is always changing but with Covid it has changed overnight. You need to be flexible and think outside the box. You need good people with a positive spirit to help you through.

Furloughing staff encourages the economy to cease. Offering loans is crazy when a borrower has no idea when turnover will be returning to help fund the loan repayment. What the Government should have done is treat this as an insurance event, like a flood or fire, but with the benefit of there being no physical damage to a property. They should have acted as insurer of last resort, insuring business interruptions. This would have prevented a chain of bankruptcies and large-scale unemployment. Businesses could have received funds immediately to stay afloat and then submitted loss claims later, which could have been audited once the panic is over, and with a duty upon each business to mitigate the loss. (continue...)

UNQUOTE

Author: Annie May Noonan /Real Business | Read full story here

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www.seafood.media

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