By Casey Neill
Carolyn Creswell was nominated 16 times for the Telstra Businesswoman of the Year before taking it home in 2012.
“No is not no forever. No is just no for now,” she said.
The Carman’s founder was the guest speaker at the Greater Dandenong Chamber of Commerce Business Awards breakfast at Sandhurst Club on Wednesday 9 August.
The 43-year-old sits on the Human Rights Law Centre board, is an ambassador for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and The Australian Childhood Foundation, and is a St Kilda Gatehouse patron.
She was a judge on Channel 10 television show Recipe to Riches and has four children aged 13 and under with husband Peter.
Ms Creswell was a university student when a family she babysat for asked her to work one day a week at their muesli business.
Six months later the owners decided to sell. Ms Creswell and her co-worker Manya van Aken decided to chip in $1000 each to buy it.
The owners hoped to sell for $10,000 but after three months of scaring off potential buyers by exaggerating the hard work involved, Ms Creswell and Ms van Aken got their wish.
They took the first three letters of each of their names and Carmen’s was born.
Ms Creswell bought the business outright two years later, able to devote more time and take more risk than her partner.
Desperate to get into supermarkets, she secured a six-month trial in 20 stores.
“This was the break,” she said.
She’d deliver the muesli in her Daewoo hatchback, leave samples in staff break rooms and set up displays.
Ms Creswell bought her own products off the shelves to boost sales and used friends and family to promote the brand at trade shows.
She sent samples to everyone in the phone book with the surname Carman and got her products onto airlines to build brand recognition.
“Now someone in the world buys a Carman’s product every two seconds,” she said.
The product range has expanded from muesli to nut bars, crackers and more and is sold in 32 countries. China is the next frontier.
Ms Creswell said it was pride and “a healthy paranoia” that drove her hard work rather than money and success.
That paranoia came from almost going broke about five years into the business, and from an 18-month period where a supermarket deleted her products following low sales.
“Know what numbers are important in your business, and watch them like a hawk,” she said.
Ms Creswell is customer-obsessed, and determined to be the type of person she’d like to meet.
“The vibe” is an important part of the Carman’s head office.
“I have to be brave enough to get rid of people when they’re not right,” she said.
She has a family-friendly focus, holds a 10am huddle to keep everyone in the loop, and invites staff to sit down to lunch together each day.
“I think leadership is making others better as a result of your presence,” she said.
“Most people don’t leave an organisation because they don’t like the organisation.
“They leave because they don’t like their manager.”
Ms Creswell has mastered the art of “the graceful no” and advised breakfast guests to do the same.
She has a blanket ban on coffee meetings.
“Your whole day can get caught up in meetings and then you don’t get to the important stuff,” she said.
