John and I first visited Billson’s Brewery in Beechworth just after Christmas in 2018. We were on a day trip to Beechworth with family from Albury. The sign to the brewery caught our eye, we left the main street and a couple of blocks away we found the brewery
We took a walk around the grounds and were immediately impressed with the renovations the new owners had undertaken. We were particularly interested in the production process that we could see from an elevated viewing area. To be honest, I was slightly envious, as I’ve always wanted to own a boutique brewery. It was a really nice environment and we were welcomed by the owners, a young couple from Melbourne. They’d not long opened their café and new bar area and we had a snack and some drinks.
They told us their story….
During the years since, I had become aware that their products were available at various shops and I would occasionally buy a bottle of cordial. Like many, I was saddened this week to hear that they put the business into voluntary administration and that the administrators would be looking for a buyer.
I was quite surprised to read that they had turned over $120 million last year, so they’d started from next to nothing and grew to this size within less than 7 years! That’s an extraordinary effort.
You may not be able to fathom how a business with $120M in turnover could fail. Whist I have no personal knowledge of what went wrong at Billson’s I have seen this happen before, and there can be a number of factors. The reality is that Fast growth can be as dangerous for a business as slow decline is. In both of these scenarios a business is being slowly eroded and this can escape immediate attention.
There are numerous factors that challenge expanding small businesses and these include:
rising production costs, high staff numbers, decreasing in demand, being over responsive or not responsive enough to customers, over extension of product lines, unfavourable contracts, increasing supply costs and fixed or elastic sale prices.
Companies that experience growth at this rate can often be overwhelmed on the personnel side as experienced staff are further stretched and additional equally skilled staff cannot be recruited quickly or efficiently enough. In these situations it is difficult to effectively address the numerous challenges facing the business.
I certainly feel for the Billson owners, seeing a dream build so well and then come apart. Whilst I only had an early stage one off encounter with them, I was taken by their genuineness, enthusiasm and commitment. I felt happy about their success when I saw their products in more stores. As difficult as this period will be, I feel confident that they will rebound and be alright and I genuinely hope for that outcome.
