INNOVATION PROFILE/Vodafone/James Whelan Butchers:PAT WHELAN'S passion and enthusiasm for his business as well as his commitment to innovation goes a long way to explaining its success. Over the past 10 years James Whelan Butchers has expanded from its original base in Clonmel to having a nationwide online presence and last year opened its first store in Dublin in Avoca's first food court in Monkstown.
“The craft and art of butchering has been in my family for five generations and I’m very proud of that,” he says.
“I don’t see it as inheriting the business from my parents as much as borrowing it from my children. I have two sons who might be only five and seven now but they travel around with me a lot and are already a showing a strong interest in the business and I would hope that at some stage to pass it on to them.”
He too had a strong interest from an early age. “I often get asked when I decided to go into the business and I think I just absorbed it. We lived over the shop in Clonmel when I was a boy and it was part of my DNA. That sense of belonging and sense of purpose was always there. It’s more than just a business, it’s what the family were all about, and it was an integral part of my life.”
Pat took over the business from his parents in 1999. “I took over a very well-grounded business and started to build on that,” he says. “All of the beef and lamb we sell has been produced on our family farm in Clonmel. We’ve been raising Hereford and Aberdeen Angus cattle for five generations and today we couple our traditional methods of raising beef and lamb with contemporary farming advancements.
“Our emphasis on total quality control means our beef is exclusively grass fed, slaughtered in our own licensed on-farm abattoir, and dry-aged using slow, traditional methods to produce excellent beef.”
The process of rebranding and remodelling the business began shortly after he took over. “We did a refit of the Clonmel store in 2001 and we put up a website at the time, although we didn’t know much about it. Having a website was the thing to do.”
This commitment to communication with customers is part of Whelan’s overall business philosophy. “Our business is built around our relationships with people,” he explains. “And this is quite often a weekly relationship. People come in and buy their meat with us once a week. We understand the value of the longevity and the lifetime nature of our relationships with our customers.”
It was this understanding that led him to establish an e-commerce site in 2004.
“Back around that time the Digital computer company had closed its facility in Clonmel and many of the staff moved from here to the mother plant over in Galway. Losing a customer is like losing a friend and we had built up relationships with a lot of those people who relocated to Galway. When they’d come back to Clonmel to visit family and friends they’d come in to us to buy meat to bring home to Galway. They told us they weren’t able to form a relationship like they had with us with a butcher over there. That gave me the idea for a full e-commerce site so that we could serve customers throughout the country.”
The model is based on free overnight delivery of quality meat to anywhere in the country for orders over €100. Customers can order less than that but have to pay a delivery charge. “It’s for customers who, like us, have an interest in rare breeds and quality meats and the type of products we offer,” he points out.
"We launched jameswhelanbutchers.comat the Farmleigh Food Market in September 2004. It was a slow burner at the time because people were only just getting used to buying things on the internet. They were buying things like air tickets but hadn't quite got their heads around delivery. But people have got used to it since then and the online business has grown very well. We got quite a bit of attention from the newspapers at the time and this helped as well."
The online business continues to grow, with social media adding to its reach. “The amount of ‘wows’ we get from customers is amazing but what is more astonishing is the amount of people who share their experiences of the service on Twitter and so on. They are sharing photographs of the products and so on and this has made it even bigger. We now have a database of around 30,000 customers and this is one of the biggest assets of the business. We are able to send them a newsletter every month and work with Groupon and others on special offers for our customer base.”
He went on social media himself back at the beginning of 2010 and this has played a important role in the growth of the business since. “I went on Twitter about 2½ years ago without knowing much about it and I have 4,000 followers now. It has been a very significant catalyst in driving customers to our new store in Monkstown.”
Indeed, his move onto social media helped the business win the All-Ireland Small Business Marketing Award from the Marketing Institute of Ireland last year.
The opening of the Monkstown store in December 2011 marked a major departure for the firm.
“Over the years we had been approached to franchise the business or go into joint ventures with partners on a number of occasions but we were always reluctant because we didn’t want to compromise on quality or our standards.
“When the Pratt family who own Avoca approached us, that was different. They were already customers and we know them. They are interested in the same things as us in terms of businesses being built on people and customer relationships and we went ahead with the new store in Monkstown and it has been a great success.”
Technology and communications have played a key role in the development of the business over the past decade and Whelan is quick to pay tribute to Vodafone for its support during that period.
“Vodafone has been a partner for many, many years,” he says. “When you’re looking for a partner you want one that understands your business and its requirements. That’s what we have in Vodafone. Vodafone appoints a key account manager who works with you and understands the business very well.”
Vodafone has also come up with solutions for particular issues. “The farm where we have the slaughterhouse is in an area of quite variable coverage for mobile phones,” he says. “We have a lot of wireless systems in use on the farm and in the slaughterhouse so coverage was quite important to us. Vodafone came up with a solution in the form of a booster which gave us the signal strength we needed. They knew this was critical to us and delivered the right solution, that’s what helps develop a sustainable relationship between partners. They move the impossible to the possible.”
He points out that he can use his tablet computer to control the business from anywhere. “My input to the business can all be made from my iPad. All the information I need to make key decisions is sent to it. It gives me a great sense of control.”
Vodafone is responsible for all of the company’s communications technology needs. “Having one partner for all communications is great,” Whelan says. “Of course the opportunity is there to go out to other partners looking for lower prices for different aspects of it but this doesn’t allow you to build a proper relationship. With Vodafone we have a key account manager who can look after all of our needs. We have a single point of contact who we can reach at the touch of a button if we have any issues or want to do something like get an additional telephone line. It’s all about developing sustainable partnerships.”
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