Listen to the segment from 3 April 2024, featuring Grant Menzies from Adina Watches.
Listen to our segment with Catherine Sayer, FBA CEO here: https://familybusinessassociation.org/article/hear-from-catherine-sayer-on-3aw-australia-overnight-with-tony-mcmanus
Listen to our segment with Michael Stillwell from Stillwell Group and special guest, David Mann here: https://familybusinessassociation.org/article/hear-from-michael-stillwell-from-stillwell-group--and-special-guest-david-mann-on-3aw-australia-overnight-with-tony-mcmanus
Listen to our segment with Emily Hammon from Scenic World here: https://familybusinessassociation.org/article/hear-from-emily-hammon-from-scenic-world-on-3aw-australia-overnight-with-tony-mcmanus
Listen to our segment with Ray Borda from Macro Group Australia here: https://familybusinessassociation.org/article/hear-from-ray-borda-from-macro-group-australia-on-3aw-australia-overnight-with-tony-mcmanus
View the transcript here:
Tony McManus
For a long time, I've been saying, some of the best businesses in Australia, are wonderful family businesses. Many of which have extraordinary history, so over the past months, and we’ll continue to do that, we'll look at some of the amazing work, extraordinary contributions that family businesses make. This one, in particular, is really special. Our special guest is Grant Menzies. Grant’s father, Bob, started this business now over 50 years ago. It's Adina Watches. Now, this business has grown from just the one dedicated person in father Bob to a team of about 16, and building, by the way. Currently in charge is Grant Menzies from Adina Watches. Good morning, Grant.
Grant Menzies
Hi, good morning, mate. I'd like to think I'm in charge with my dad at 82 years of age. He’s still here. He's just coming back a little bit these days for 6 1/2 days a week, so I get to be in charge that 1/2 a day a week that he's not here, and that's usually on a Sunday afternoon. So, to say I'm running this show is probably not the whole truth but I'm very firmly entrenched here after being with Dad now for almost 30 years.
Tony McManus
It's a great joy. So you reckon he's still doing at least 6 1/2 day week?
Grant Menzies
At least Tony. He gets in at about 9:30 to 9:45 in the morning, just in time for morning tea. Often, he'll swing by the Brumby’s and pick up a cheeky little apple slice or something for the team, and make sure his coffee’s on the table when he blows in at about 10:00. Then, he's in there amongst all the production team for the rest of the day, making sure each and every watch that comes out of our workshops is up to his very, very high standards. Due to him starting our business in 1971, he knows exactly what he's looking for.
Tony McManus
Let's go back, start at the very beginning with what father was doing, late 60s, early 70s? What prompted this at a time when clearly, at that time, Japan, in particular, and Seiko would probably be one, pretty much dominated what people were wearing and buying at that time almost over and above what was coming out of Switzerland?
Grant Menzies
Dad finished his schooling at grade 10, so he did junior, and then my grandfather happened to work for a public company called Wilson Sons. In those days, there is a lot of distributors of loads of different brands, and one of those brands that my grandfather's business, the business that he worked for, was distributing Rolex, Tudor, their home brand was Unicorn. They had ergos clocks, thermal clocks, and a range of different timepieces but my grandfather was able to secure an apprenticeship for my dad at a watchmaking business called Langfords here in Brisbane, who were just outside the headquarters of Willis' and they were handling any of the under-warranty gear that came through Willis', as well as off the street repairs of watches and clocks. You have to think, in those days, it was all mechanical. We're pre-Quartz 100%. So, when Dad got into watches and clocks, it was still a very mechanical driven side to the trade.
After being with Jack Langford for about 10 years, he couldn't see that he could progress any further with Jack's business, so went out and thought, I've gotta try something else. And one of his mates at a party said, why don't you, as a watchmaker, go over Switzerland, you buy some watches, you can get your name stamped on it, that's called private label, bring them back to Australia and I can help you import them and you can sell them and repair them. Dad, at 26 years of age, he's never been out of Australia, and he thought that was quite a good idea. So, it was a bit of a rush of blood and on his way to the world fair in Switzerland in 1970, he stopped off in Bangkok on the way because he wanted to buy a presentation box, and if you're gonna buy the watch, you gotta have the box for it to go in. So, on his way to Switzerland, he'd heard about, Yellow Pages style, this box factory, and he stopped off in Bangkok. That would have been pretty eye opening in 1970, and bear in mind that the Vietnam War is going on right next door, in the next door country, so there were all sorts of restrictions to get in there.
He ended up in this factory and he was greeted by a Swiss guy. And this Swiss guy is looking at him, do you know what are you doing? I'm going over to Switzerland, I'm looking to get some private labour watches, mainly just want to buy some boxes off here. And this fellow said, Bob, you are very entrepreneurial. He was really laying it on to poor old dad, and he said, look, we can help you further. We make cases here, we make bracelets, we make dials. I can introduce you to all these different people in Switzerland. He said, look, let me write you out a number of letters of introduction and old style letters of introduction, Tony, as you can picture, this is my mate Bob. He's a great guy, you sell him some stuff, you'll get paid, all that sort of carry on, and sure enough, they went over and introduced himself to all these different friends of Ralph Snyder, and they agreed to sell him things on a handshake, which is obviously the way things were done back then. It's not like now, 30% deposit up front and all the rest of it. So, it was all done in real gentlemen's terms. Handshake stuff. So, Dad went around and met all these different factories, and some which we're still working with today, and we were lucky that Ralph had the connections with the best factories.
Anyway, Dad ended up buying a few watches, and agreed to having, the name of our brand in those days was Rolma. He came back to Bangkok and he met up with this fellow again. He said, let's do it. How many do I have to buy? The MAQ was 100, and 100 in those days' terms would be like 5 or 6000 now. So, it sort of blew Dad's mind but he thought you know what? I can do it. I've got the connections now in Switzerland for the movements, the crowns, the hands, any of the periphery, the glasses, the seals, the pendants. Any of those periphery pieces of the watch, he now had the connections for. So, went to this factory, ordered some cases, ordered some dials, and they were reds and greens. It was the 70s, the 70s got a lot to answer for. So, all these wild colours came through because he wanted to be different but what he wanted from the get-go was to use steel cases. And Tony, this is a really important sort of thing that he recognised during his apprenticeship when he was doing all that trade work.
Tony McManus
That was steel as opposed to precious metal or brass.
Grant Menzies
Or gold. Most of the Swiss branded watches were using brass cases back in those days with a steel back. And so, they had these beautiful Swiss movements in them. They were really reliable out of the case but what happened was, when you tighten the back case off, you get these small slivers of brass that would fall into the movement and then give the movement trouble. It wasn't the movement giving trouble, it was the brass. So, he insisted on making all of, from day dot, his cases, especially for our waterproof gear, out of stainless steel, which is what the Japanese were doing. You alluded to, probably our strong competitors in Seiko, in Citizen, that were really impacting the market in those early 70s with very affordable, very reliable hand wind and automatic watches, which was really giving the Swiss a bit of a run for their money off the back of this brass and steel idea.
Tony McManus
Grant, what's the joyous part of what you've said so far, for me, and I reckon there’ll be a lot of people listening right now that were in business, have been in business or know family businesses where a lot of those things were done on that great handshake at the front end.
Grant Menzies
It's still what we live by, still today. I'll give you an example of that, and I don't need a rush of people blowing in through our front door asking me to give them watches on tick but this young fellow was buying a watch for his girlfriend, and he said look my budget is $300, and I said yep, this is what I want. He said, I'm $50 short. I said, I'm sure you're good for it, and I gave him my card. I said, this is our BSB, just drop the money in it when you get home, when you transfer some money. Sure enough, the money was there tonight. So, you gotta trust people, Tony. It generally works out well but if you don't trust people, I think there's no hope for any of us, but we’re still an old school handshake business and we like to trust our customers and we like our trusted customers to trust us.
Tony McManus
Grant, you stay there. We'll come back more in just a moment. Grant Menzies, Adina Watches. It's all part of Family Business Association.
Special guest, Grant Menzies from Adina Watches, part of Family Business Association. I'm just thinking, the name Adina, how did that come around, Grant?
Grant Menzies
As I indicated earlier, Tony, the original name for our watches were Rolma, and about three years into our history, a brand in Switzerland called Alma got in contact with Dad via telex and they said to him, look, your brand is a little bit close to ours but for a licensing agreement of x thousand per year, we'll let you have it. That was just way beyond what we had as working capital but it was also not what dad really wanted, so he went about trying to find a new name. We only had one employee in those days and her name was Joan. Joan was reading the Reader's Digest and there was a story about Australian First Nations people, and one of the dialect words that was there was Adina. Dad said, that's perfect. It's short. It's balanced. And away we went. So adina, it was from about 1974 onwards and still is today.
Tony McManus
So, the idea of them producing a watch in Australia from woe to go, were the Australian competitors, clearly we've talked about what's coming out of Japan and certainly Switzerland, but were there other Australian competitors at that time?
Grant Menzies
There were a couple of private label guys that if you owned your own shop, Tony's Jewellers, you could ask these guys to make or case up watches that had Tony's Jewellers on the dials, whereas what we were doing was pretty unique to the trade. There was another couple of Australian brands but they weren't doing all that casework and building and repairs all here in Australia.
The idea was for us, we would outsource to specialist component makers, following the same steps that the really big global brands, so they use a specialist dial maker, a specialist case maker, bracelet maker, glass maker, seal maker, crown maker, hand maker, and I think you get the picture. Then what we would do is, then bring all those components into our factory here in Brisbane, combine it with a Swiss movement. We're using a lot of Rondas these days, but we've always been a long-term supporter of ETA, and then, we've always used Swiss made because we love the repairability aspect of it and the reliability. The Japanese love to change their calibres pretty regularly, whereas the Swiss stick to the calibres for long periods of time, which gives an added repairability factor, Tony, to their, obviously any Swiss brand watches, but to our watches because we want our watches to go on generationally. So, if you get it for your 21st, you can give it to your son for his 21st.
Tony McManus
Yeah, which you and I have talked about, where how important that becomes as part of, almost the hobby of watches, I suppose, in 2024.
Grant Menzies
Young people are coming to us quite regularly now with their grandfathers’ watches and I found this, it's my grandfather. They somehow want to know what it's worth. But more often than not, these young people, they want to get it fixed as a real tangible memory to their grandmother or their grandfather, and they wanna wear it every day to remind them of them. It's fantastic and I love it that our watches are up to that very task. I actually just had a message come through to me at work just now, from a client in Mildura, who's got one of our original Adina’s. It had this different logo, and this fella has worn it for the thick end of 50 years. He got it for his 21st, still going now. Fantastic.
Tony McManus
Just going back to those movements now, the movements that you're using because presumably, to do those movements at the front end, the technology and the technicians are not necessarily readily available in Australia.
Grant Menzies
When it comes to watchmakers, we train our own. So, we've put through, over our business’ lifespan, just over 50 apprentices. We've currently got four. We work in an apprenticeship system where you have to have a master watchmaker, and the apprentice has to sit with, and then each of the apprentices have to go to college, which is in Sydney. That's the only watchmaking school left here in Australia. So, our team, depending on what year they are, they go down for four days every six weeks. So, it is a bit of an improv to business, but that's the way the system works. If we want to keep producing our own watchmakers, we have to just work within that system, but it's been a tried and true methodology for us.
Our watchmakers are all over the world now, and they all started as obviously as a Dean of people, but we've got 2 fellas working for Breitling in the States, one working for Rolex in England, another fellow working down in Switzerland. It's been really nice to see our people go far and wide, but it's also nice that the ones that stay with us really long periods of time. Our longest watchmaker that's been with us, Jace runs our workshop, and he's been with me for 23 years, and we've just been rejoined by an apprentice. Actually, I was still at school when he joined him, and Paul and I are the same age, and Paul joined us when he was 15, and he spent about 8 years with us, and went out to the retail space, which often happens, Tony, the retailers try and poach off our watchmakers, and he didn't have the heart to ask for his job back. So, it was up to me 20 years later, to coax him back into the fold, so it's good to have him back with us.
Tony McManus
Grant, whether you're producing as you do, beautiful watches, Adina watches, or whether you're manufacturing paint or for a company like Betts, and Betts, for example, producing shoes and selling shoes, the marketing is a very separate division. Did father intuitively understand how important that was or how was that developed over the 50+ years?
Grant Menzies
The marketing side of it, probably the real understanding of brand, only for my dad, the penny dropped for him perhaps 20 odd years ago. He always built his business on hard work, value and service, and in the 70s, 80s and 90s, you could probably get away with that, and because we activate only or generally in the independent retailer channel, we would develop strong relationships with all of our retailers, and then, the retailer became the really strong advocate for our brand, and then, we push the Adina watch towards a customer when they came in the shop based on that value, service and Australian made proposition.
As we entered the 2000s, with my sort of continual nudging, we started to really try, and as we were moving our brand more into a more premium space, we had to activate in different sports and be seen in different ways, but still maintain that authentically Australian way that we are.
Tony McManus
Yeah, the connection.
Grant Menzies
Yeah, we didn't want to lose track of who we were, and it was important to both Dad and myself to work with sports, and work with athletes, and work with companies that sort of had the same values and ethos that we do.
Tony McManus
The amazing thing about the watch world seems to be about endorsements, and I don't know how you call it, personalities of wearing a piece, and we see that all over magazines, fine magazines. Is that something you've explored? Are those relationships important?
Grant Menzies
I certainly think if you could get the right one and you have the long term to get that right person that resonates your brand and is authentically with you, and it's not just a commercial arrangement, I think ambassadors, in my mind, and I could be completely off the mark so I'm open to criticism on it, I think that the brand ethos has to resonate with the ambassador and vice versa. They've gotta love the brand themselves, and I don't need to speak out of turn and think of different ambassadors that wear gear, just commercially, but others that wear it authentically, and it resonates through with the branding.
Tony McManus
Grant, you happy to take a couple of calls while we've got you on the program?
Grant Menzies
Yeah, absolutely.
Tony McManus
Molly's at Manangatang. Hello, Molly.
Caller - Molly
Hello. I was just a bit late at night and anyway, I've got a bundle of watches here. Maybe mostly Ladies' watches that go back to perhaps 1950 and 1940s, but they're all Swiss, inside, if you know what I mean?
Tony McManus
Yeah, movements.
Caller - Molly
I have written down all the numbers of them and sometimes I can't quite make out the makers of them. But if you can give me an address where I can write a letter to Mr. Menzies, and I can send that information down and he can tell me what they're worth and if he would like to buy them, they're all Swiss.
Tony McManus
I'll tell you what, it's a wonderful idea. I’ll tell you what we'll do, Molly. We'll put you back to Ben. We'll get all those details and make sure we put you in charge with Grant, the other side. I'm just intrigued because father was Bob. There must have been a time when Bob Menzies making watches in Australia would have been a source of some mirth I would imagine.
Grant Menzies
You hit the nail on the head with that one, Tony. While he was doing his apprenticeship, Bob Menzies was the Prime Minister, and when he would ring clients and say, it's Robert Menzies calling, I just wanted to let you know that your clock's ready for collection, and the clients would be, it's quite funny that the Prime Minister was calling them up and telling their clock repair was ready.
Tony McManus
Just love it. That's a great story. That movement from the transition, if you like, the transition from clock and clock making into the beautiful product that we now know as Adina, which are very smart, but excruciatingly affordable pieces, I might add, but they are gorgeous. The clocks - are people still interested in clocks as well?
Grant Menzies
It's funny. We started making grandfather clocks in let's say 1979, 78, in those late 70s, early 80s, and Dad went sourcing around for a cabinet maker that could make a grandfather clock, and then we brought all the hardware and the movers from Germany, and we built the clocks up here in Brisbane with the thinking behind having a grandfather clock, it would support our fledgling brand. So, when a customer would go into the retail jewellery store and they say, I've got these Adina watches, they're really affordable, you have a lot of watches from Adina. It's this, we haven't heard of those guys before. They also make these big, beautiful clocks. They must be good then. So, it was almost like a selling tool to have the grandfather clock sitting beside the watch counter so it could support the watch sales.
But we did get through, in those days, a hell of a lot of grandfather clocks. We still would probably send out one a week? So, they're still sought after, harder to come by these days as the retailers don't have the space, and especially in the suburban shopping centres, they don't have that square meterage like in the old days, where they could have a grandfather clock sitting on the floor. Now if they've got one on the floor, it's getting bumped by trolleys, prams and all the rest of it, so it's not as easy to display such a big piece.
Tony McManus
Was one of the great joys growing up in a house that had a grandfather clock on the quarter hour. We all love it. It was always gonna be there.
You stay there, Grant Menzies, Adina Watches, Family Business Association. An important part of what we do every couple of weeks. Australia Overnight. From Family Business Association, Grant Menzies, Adina Watches. Have a look at the website. It's fantastic. Family Business Association.
Now, Wendy, good morning to you. Now, you're an owner of an Adina watch?
Caller - Wendy
Yes, I worked in a jewellery shop in central NSW for a number of years and I suffered badly with eczema and a lot of the watches I couldn't wear and I believe my watch is an Adina. I'd have to go out because the name stuck in my head the minute she said it. It's a silver watch with a thin bangle, solid bangle. And it's the strap and it was one of the first bangle watches we’ve seen in the jewellery shop.
Tony McManus
On the bracelet. Now, what year are we talking, Wendy? And Grant’s listening.
Caller - Wendy
Early 1975, 76.
Tony McManus
So, there you go, and what colour’s the dial? Do you remember? Do you know?
Caller - Wendy
It's a whitish dial and it's a silver, oblongy-shaped face with a very thin bangle that you just used to clip in one side and could wear it.
Tony McManus
That's the one, and it's referred to as a lady’s watch, Wendy? Or is it more generic than that?
Caller- Wendy
Now, it’s a lady’s watch. Very dainty, very easy to wear because the bangle was quite thin but solid and it was always lovely.
Tony McManus
Grant, you and I want to know as to whether you still wear it, Wendy.
Caller - Wendy
I don't, I've got it. I've still got it, and I was actually looking at it the other day, going through some jewellery, and I've never been able to part with it. It's just one of my favorite things to own.
Tony McManus
And nor should you, and that's a part of the sentiment.
I can't tell you, Grant, when we talk about watches and talking with St Andrew McCutchen from Time + Tide, for example, how many people ring through and say they've got these beautiful pieces, but they sit in a drawer?
Grant Menzies
It's a travesty, and especially if it's battery operated. You don't want battery operated watches sitting around in drawers because there is a tendency when the battery does go flat, that the batteries do like to leak. If it's a mechanical watch, you can just pop it on and wind it up or give it a shake. If it's an automatic, and away you go, even though the oils might be a little drier. But watches are there to wear, enjoyed. We see, in today's era, with a lot of smart wearables, that sometimes those special pieces are put on the back burner. But I'm always one for encouraging people, if they've got something that's got immense sentiment tied up, is to get it on their wrist and enjoy it.
Tony McManus
Is there a greater distinction now between, often referred to as a Ladies’ watch or a Men's watch? Is the distinction as great?
Grant Menzies
It's still definitely there. All the rules have gone. Like when I started working for Dad 30 years ago, especially in Females’ watch, that if they wore gold jewellery, they wore a gold watch. They wore silver jewellery, they wore a silver watch. You get away with a bit of 2 tone putting a shoe in each camp. But today, all those rules are gone. If you wear gold, you can wear a silver watch with a leather band. It doesn't really matter. So, all those sorts of rules are gone. There are a lot of practicalities for wearing a bigger watch, and that's why a number of the watch companies went away from calling it Gents, and Ladies’ or Men’s and Women's, and just went to sizing, to say a 43 mil, 41 mil, 38 mil, whatever the case may be. But there is still a fairly strong demarcation, especially in Adina, between what would be deemed a Men's watch or a Ladies’ watch. But we do have watches that are very much a unisex, like we just released a Moon Phase model that could be worn by a man or a lady quite comfortably.
Tony McManus
Some of the dials, they have what often referred to as complication as the dial, some look busy, some look cleaner, and I guess, that gets down to, presumably, when looking at those beautiful automatic, just a personal you know what you want to have on your wrist, whether it looks busy as a sports watch for some or something more historically elegant.
Grant Menzies
That becomes how long is a piece of string, Tony? When we're designing our watches, we want to build a collection of watches that has a broad appeal. So, when we're designing something new to fit in with our collection, we'll start with what's missing and at the moment, we're entertaining a tide watch that we'd like to, we live on an island, so watch this space. We're working on Tide watch. And Ronda, one of our Swiss watch movement suppliers, have now released a solar movement, so we're really sort of testing the markets. Our reps are discussing with our retailers, if they feel there's a need for us to go down that road. The Japanese are really heavy into solar but with a lot of people's green thinking, there could be potential for us to move in that direction as well.
Tony McManus
I happened to have a conversation with the great Matthew Haymes from Haymes Paint in the last week or so. Given we're talking about the Melbourne Football Club, he made the point that, with great pride, they used from a corporate point of view, some Adina Watches as gifts for senior staff members. That corporate sector is very important, presumably?
Grant Menzies
It was great when Mattie Haymes gave me the call and said, mate, we'd like to use your watches for our 10-year service level. A hugely successful, iconic Australian family business, and to have our watches being used at that 10-year level makes me really, really proud.
But it's a growing area in our business, it's the corporate sector. It started for us with a rise in which used to be Queensland Rail. They're the rail freighters here in Queensland, and originally back in the 80s, the drivers and the firemen and the engineer would wear our watches and then when they retired, they would get the golden handshake. What happened about 10 years ago arose and saw more value and actually rewarding the employees whilst they were in the business, not when they left the business. So, they asked us to make a bespoke 20-year wristwatch for men and women, and a 40-year pocket watch for the real old timers that’ve been with the business a hell of a long time.
It's funny, that pocket watch, we get railway, bus from all over the world emailing me saying, I'd like to buy one of these Horizon pocket watches, but they're just not for sale. The only way you can own one is to have done your 40 years with Horizon. So, for us, that corporate channel is growing, and I think people like working with us off the back of it's Australian, and it's also, the watch is unique. It's not just something that's been bought off the shelf and said, here's your 10-year service watch. It's something that, like I was talking about before, really reflects at the company’s brand ethos and that ethos we've got to bring to life in a wristwatch.
Tony McManus
How important is the design and changes in fashion along with anything that's being produced?
Grant Menzies
We are a conservative brand but fashion still plays a part and probably the best example I can give recently would be the size of a wristwatch, I know we're talking about Men's and Ladies’ watches, but watches got quite big there for a while, up to 50 mil and bigger, but now it's retreating in size and we're seeing some of the celebrities wearing what would be deemed a Ladies’ watch to the Grammys or the Oscars, the Academy Awards, so those rules have gone out the window as well. So, we see ourselves from a size point view, we like to live around that, for a bigger Mens’ watch, might be 43 mil, and a Ladies’ watch might be around 25 to 30 mil, so still practical and clean and clear and functional, but still big enough to read the time, which is probably the whole key to the whole show.
Tony McManus
You stay there, Bob Menzies, Adina Watches. When we come back, we'll have a conversation about succession planning for any great Australian small business. Family Business Association. It is Australia Overnight.
Good morning, nice to have your company. Our special guest this morning, part of Family Business Association, is Grant Menzies from Adina Watches. Grant, the idea of remaining relevant and sustainable is a challenge for any business. That continues to be the case?
Grant Menzies
Yeah, Tony, you always want to stay relevant. There's no two ways about that. For a business that's like ours, we started when the watches, there was only mechanical and hand wind, the digital watches came on the scene, and then Quartz battery operated watches came in, and we had to keep evolving with that. Then, Swatch was absolutely enormous in the 80s too, then the surf brands really had a go at the market in the 90s, and then we moved into like we were talking about before, the wearables that we're up against now. So, there's always been a technology changing offering and so too, in a family business.
When I joined our business just under 30 years ago, I didn't really have any idea I was going to end up in the business, let alone stay almost 30 years, but Dad and I work pretty well together. Make no mistake, we certainly had our moments at times, but when we've got the commonality of what we're striving towards to make fantastic watches that are affordable, backed by a fantastic service, we get on the same page pretty quickly. And now that he's in his 80s, we really had to have those discussions, which in fairness, Tony, weren't easy to have with Dad because there's just the assumption that everything's going to be taken care of, as in wills, and when you work in family business generally, you're doing a lot of it for the love of it, and the remuneration comes at the end.
So, for me to get Dad to the table to understand that I wasn't looking for a payout or anything like that, we just wanted certainty moving forward, and we wanted to make sure that we had our house in order. It was our people that really got Dad to the table because I said to him, I said Dad, if you were to die unexpectedly, and has not been in order, this person's got a mortgage, this person's got two kids at the private school, this person's got this, and if our finances are tied up through poor planning on our behalf, these people that we've put food on their table, and they put food on ours for the last however many years, we're letting them down.
It was that approach that got Dad to seeing that, as a family business, we had a broader responsibility that really, deeply includes our people, and to make sure that that we have planned for succession and what succession looks like. For him, he wants to be here. He loves it. He doesn't have any other hobbies, so he loves to be deeply immersed in the production team and seeing the watches getting made every day. That's what he loves, so it's not for me to tip him out, but he needs to also understand that as the business evolves and changes, he's got to be open to still taking risks, and sometimes, a big hindrance to a business that gets to kind of our age, you become a little bit risk averse. You've done not too bad over the decades and you've squirreled a bit away and you don't want to keep putting it on the line. But if you don't keep taking those risks, your business becomes stagnant and that leads to the overall, in my eyes, the overall demise of the business.
Tony McManus
And we've seen that in other great family businesses historically that no longer exist for a range of various reasons by the way, but often it's linked into maybe not always planning the future, what that looks like for family business going forward.
Grant Menzies
To have those open conversations, Tony, is.
Tony McManus
It's not easy.
Grant Menzies
It's not easy. There's probably two really difficult conversations I've had in the 30 years of working here. One was when Covid started going there in 2020, I asked my right hand, her name is Renee, I said, Renee, can you just print out what we have in the bank, and what we owe, and what we're owed. Those 3 numbers all worked out that we could probably keep going at full capacity. If another cent didn't come in and we didn't pay anyone, we'd probably go for about a year. And you didn't know how long it was. We were in unknown territory, so I asked each of the team, in with Dad and myself to one of the back workshops and we sat down. I said, this is how it looks, explained it out. I said, we can keep going for 2 years but you'll come in three days a week. So, the production team will work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the repairs team will work Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. But I can only pay you for 3 days. And I had every answer from ‘Do you mind if I take my 3 days a week as holiday so I can go look for another job?’ to ‘I've got nothing else to do in the day, I'll just come and work 5 days’. So, you can imagine that the guys that are saying, I'm happy to work 5 days to get 3 days' pay, they're still with me. The other guys, they're not.
Tony McManus
Well done. A lot of challenges. I've got to leave you there, Grant, except to say thank you very much. People gonna go online, have a look at what you do and keep on doing it. Adina Watches, a proud Family Business Association brand and Grant, it's a delight to have you on the program, Australia Overnight this morning.
Grant Menzies
Tony, my absolute pleasure, mate. Thank you so much. It's been a real joy.
