P E R S O N A L I T Y H I G H L I G H T …
PIC PICOT
I became a peanut butter maker at 55. I was pretty much retired, with a mortgage-free house
and enough to live on if I was careful. I was developing Macular Degeneration, an eye condition
that makes reading difficult, driving dangerous and recognising faces near impossible.
Then one day, faced with a pallet of
jars and no way to unload them from
the truck, I leased a forklift. And that
was it. The shackles were off and I
committed to the ride. I cashed up
my retirement fund, took on staff and
gave the business its head.
Far from being stressful,
growing this business
is great fun and a
really exciting ride.
I love providing
opportunities for
people and the
more we can offer
the better it gets.
Today we
employ nearly
50 people. We
make a valuable
contribution
to our
community
and our
exports help New Zealand make its
mark on the world. We make food -
healthy, delicious and easy to eat food
- and because everybody eats, I have
something to offer everyone I meet.
Pic Picot is founder
of Pic’s Peanut
Butter in Nelson.
https://peanutbutterguy.co.nz/
I had to sell a sailing school I ran
out of Nelson Marina, but held
onto a small laundromat where
the yachties washed their clothes.
I had time on my hands. I bought
a keyboard and a course of music
lessons. I enrolled in a creative writing
course and took up bottling fruit from
the market. I got annoyed with the
sugar that had begun appearing in
commercial peanut butter, and so
made some myself.
The laundromat’s lease expired, and
I had to give it up. I missed the $200
I’d been trousering every Friday and
figured I could make it back by selling
50 jars of peanut butter at the weekend
market. I liked hanging around
the market, and quite fancied the life
of a barrow boy.
I was well prepared to launch a new
business. I had been largely self-employed
since making sandals for my
schoolmates, and had made and sold
bags, furniture and giftware. I’d built
a boat and sailed the Pacific, set up
and run a wildly unsuccessful restaurant,
then dabbled in journalism, established
a charter boat directory and
the sailing school. With the exception
of the restaurant, I had always been a
one-man band, so I was as comfortable
with machinery as I was with
marketing, graphic design, production
and budgets.
A couple of things that I think were
critical in setting the peanut butter off
on the right track were the creative
writing course and a shampoo label I
came across in a friend’s bathroom.
It was in a green bottle and it smelled
like mint sauce. I looked at the label.
It read: ‘BOB’S SHAMPOO…It smells
like mint sauce, but it cleans your
hair really well’. I felt a huge surge of
affection for Bob and his shampoo,
because he talked to me like he
was right there with me. No weird
copy-speak about the fresh aroma of
forest glades, follicular nutrition and
such nonsense.
The creative writing - a diploma
course at the Nelson Marlborough
Institute of Technology - helped me
find my ‘voice’, a writing style that
worked for me and the product. I
thought of myself as a publisher,
selling stories with a free jar of peanut
butter attached. This led us to print
stuff on the backs of our labels as
well as on the front (You mean you’ve
never found Bill’s poems or Pic’s
coupons?).
Selling at the Saturday market, faceto
face with the people who buy our
product, was - and still is - critical to
our success. Great ideas are twoa
penny, and your amazing skills or
ingenious production systems are
worth nothing if you don’t have a
market for them. Conversely, if you
discover a market, you have discovered
the gold. The magical thing
about getting out there, showing your
stuff and listening to your customers,
is that they will tell you what you need
to do.
Then, all you need to do is do it.
Deciding how much you want to
produce can tie you up in knots. My
suggestion would be to aim for a
production capacity that yields just
enough for you to live on. For me it
was $200 a week – and the equipment
(a concrete mixer and a grinder)
and stock (half a tonne of nuts and
four dozen jars) to achieve that cost
$10,000. Then scale up. There is a lot
to learn in a new business, and the
systems you will need are much easier
to establish when your inventory,
staff and debtor numbers are small. If
your costings work on a small scale,
the savings you make on scaling up
will go straight to your bottom line,
and you will have a clear picture of
the value of installing new plant or
taking on extra staff.
I started with the peanut butter with
the intention to keep it small. I was
rather enjoying retirement and had
no wish to bring stress into my life.
Specifically, I didn’t want to have to
deal with forklifts or invoicing staff.
14 ANNUAL DIRECTORY 2019
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