Your Interviews - August 2010

Ten minutes with… Mark Kingsley-Williams (MBA 1994)

What is your current position / occupation?
I spend most of my time working on Trade Mark Direct (www.trademarkdirect.co.uk) a company I co-founded and funded with Richard Contreras who was also on the Cass MBA. After several years of technical development we've been providing comprehensive trade mark advice and registration services online for nearly two years. It’s still early days but we are in the top 3 UK firms by applications filed, and with smarter technology than any other worldwide we’re the leader online.

Why did you study at Cass?
I knew I knew some stuff, but not how much or little. The MBA helped give a framework and understanding of areas of competence.

What is your most treasured memory of your time at Cass?
I got a lot out of Shiv Mathur's marketing strategy course, I liked his rigorous approach. But probably most memorable was the summer party on a boat on the Thames. Fireworks were being let off from Tower Bridge as we passed underneath, a fantastic spectacle and good way to finish the year. 

How has your career developed since you left Cass?
Somewhat erratically. Whilst always wanting to do start-ups, which have involved online games, gaming, nanotechnology, natural drinks and now trade marks, also did other things along the way for interest sake and to help keep funds coming in. These included consulting on marketing, economical and political risk analysis, advising on PFI, and working with Adam Smith International on public sector and economic reform in places like Botswana and Libya. So lots of variety which I enjoy.

What would you consider to be your greatest achievement?
Avoiding having a proper job with set career path, and being able to do most work from my office at home. This has made a big difference to quality of life.

If had to pick a landmark from one of the ventures, I helped turn around a small internet company in under a year which we sold at the end of 1999.  We were lucky and made lots of mistakes, but had enough nouse to see what was key to getting a good valuation and executed well on that. I realised after that luck plays a much bigger part in business than most acknowledge, so to look for ways to increase exposure to serendipity.

How do you differentiate your company Naturally Divine in the crowded fruit drinks market?
Our drinks taste as good or better than any other fruit drinks in the UK, they've won lots of taste awards, and are natural and healthy. However conveying that through packaging in an enticing and compelling way is very difficult given competition on the shelf.  So in store tastings, staff recommendations and customers telling friends are all important.

What are your thoughts on Innocent selling a stake to Coca-Cola? Have they gone against their much-publicised ethical stance?
The potential difficulties for the Innocent brand seem to have been well managed, and would anyway have been dwarfed by the benefits of Coke's investment. With competition in the smoothie sector having greatly intensified from Pepsi Co owned Tropicana and supermarket private label products, even as sales in the segment dropped by more than 20% from their peak, the European wide distribution Coke brought was valuable, the cash even more so.

You’ve also started Trade Mark Direct, why do that when there are a lot of well established trade marks firms?
A chance meeting made me realise that if trade mark clearance searches could be automated with software, rather than made laboriously by legal staff, this could change the economics of trade mark registration services. So we could offer clients a much more attractive pricing structure without the upfront fees charged by all other firms.

Clearance searches check aural, visual, and conceptual similarity of a wanted trade marks with those already on a register as too similar and the application will fail. We are the only firm to offer them free. Our clients pay only if the searches and 23 separate legal checks show the application will succeed. If not the client can walk away and pay nothing. With a success rate of 94% we also offer a unique, but rarely used, money back guarantee on our fee. 
 
What are your expansion plans for Trade Mark Direct?
We’re now reasonably well established in the UK as the place for SMEs and larger corporates to go to in these times of austerity. However not all business owners understand the financial and reputational risks they run by not having secure rights to their brand names through registration. Others can file and prevent use, and registering a company name or owning a domain gives no protection at all, so we’re looking to expand the market through further PR activities. We also plan to start marketing our services in other EU countries.

What does the future hold for you?
Hopefully more of the same, although perhaps less hands on. I've been helping two Dutch floriculture experts raise up to $30m for a project with great economics to grow roses on a large scale in closely controlled conditions in Mexico for export to the US , and if this first phase works would like to raise a fund to back similar ventures there and elsewhere.

What advice would you give someone wanting to start their own business?
Steer clear of fruit drinks in the UK, too crowded!

If its launching a new product or service then best single thing can suggest is to aim to 'fail fast', because more likely than not will fail and failing fast is almost always less costly than failing slowly.
So (1) get a version to market that is good enough to test the key features / benefits and no better, and as quickly as possible. Don't develop the best possible as this likely to double or treble budgets and time spent. (2) Price it realistically against competitors, it may not be profitable now, in fact each unit may be selling at a loss, but if you have done your homework profitability will come with volume efficiencies and (3) sell it as hard as you can.  Making sales is hard, don't under-estimate it. (4) If you don't have a business or can see a clear route to developing one after 4-6 months odds are you never will.  But (5) you will have learned a huge amount, more than if it had been a quick and easy success, so you'll be much better placed next time around.

What’s your favourite thing to do in London?
Visiting the art galleries.