Nick Comer is CEO of Rosetta Brands, an e-commerce business based in Nateby, near Garstang, which is among the UK’s biggest suppliers of food and beverage products to Amazon.
Rosetta is one of the North of England’s fastest growing companies, and Nick discussed with Two Zero the company’s journey to date, what he has learned and the support he has received, including from Boost; Lancashire’s Business Growth Hub.
What is the most important quality of a scaleup business leader and why?
Delegation – it’s very easy to want to be involved in every decision, as that’s what is needed when you are an individual setting up a business. Scaling is all about taking away the bottle necks, which can invariably be the founder / CEO.
How have you grown and developed as a scaleup leader?
Recruitment, by employing people who have personality traits which are important to me and the business – honesty, ambition, kindness, resilience.
I have learnt over the years these traits are hard to teach if they’re not already built into a person, so we need to recruit these into the business. Anyone who shows the opposite of these traits tends not to last too long at Rosetta.
How do you inspire and empower your people?
Through a clear strategy. Everyone in the business understands the big goals – where we’re travelling and how they can help to influence and contribute to this. As CEO, it’s my job to live in the future, but also to explain and convince employees that this can be a reality.
What is the best piece of business advice you have received and why?
It was from a consultant at Boost; Lancashire’s Business Growth Hub called Hayley Caine. When I explained our new idea and business model to her, she was blown away and asked me “why isn’t this a £5m business?” – I couldn’t give her a real answer.
The next day, I got the train to London to build this out with our finance team. We’re now a £15m turnover business and one of Amazon’s biggest vendor suppliers of grocery products in the UK.
We also now have offices in Australia and Germany doing the same model. Being challenged in that way and also gaining the external validation and excitement really inspired me to make it happen.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned on your business journey, and how has this impacted you?
Do not run out of cash. However good your model or idea is, if you run out of cash then it’s game over.
Stay in the game by whatever means possible, which is always having enough cash to keep the wheels turning. Everything after this can be worked on and gives a business time to breath.
What scaleup business do you admire the most and why?
Anyone who started around 2009-2010 when we did and is still in business today! We know they’ve gone through a lot (the credit crisis, Covid, inflation etc.) Congrats to anyone who has navigated a business through all of that and still come out the other side with a bigger business than when they started!
What key metrics do you look at everyday in your business?
Revenue – every single day with Amazon to their consumer, us to Amazon and new business pipeline.
The CEO has a different fire in his belly to any other employee and new business/sales coming in is the starting point for any business. Without these, there is no other need to have a support function. Get the new business/sales healthy and then work on refining it with other areas of the business such as supply chain and finance.
What is the legacy you want to create?
Anyone who starts up their own business has to be a slight fruitcake! It’s not easy, and certainly it wasn’t for the money. Any legacy I have I will never hear about that.
I would like anyone who worked for or with me to look back on their time here and say it helped them in their life. Other than that, making sure my kids know by example that getting up for work every day can be fun, rewarding and enjoyable. Since starting Rosetta, I have never ‘worked’ a day in my life or in a place that I hated, I have immensely enjoyed coming in every day since 2009.