A Well Known South African Entrepreneur

TABLE OF CONTENTS

QUESTION 1

QUESTION 2

QUESTION 3

REFERENCES

QUESTION 1:

A well known South African entrepreneur

1. Introduction

1. Analysis

 Characteristics

• Need for autonomy – Herman Mashaba began door-to-door peddling in black townships. His products included life insurance, linens and crockery on a commission basis. On meeting black consumers one-on-one, he soon learnt of the demand for hair care products in the townships. Although he joined Super Kurlto sell hair care products to blacks and did extremely well,he soon became tired of working for others. He wanted his independence. This led to him successfully gaining financial backing to start up his own line of hair care products called “Black Like Me”
• Discipline – When he first started he was forced to setup his business away from the Johannesurg city centre due to barring from the previously demarcated ‘whitebusiness district’. Withhis wife as his office manager, he would start work at 7am on a daily basis visiting salons in black townships like Soweto trying to get his products on their shelves while his other salesman covered the other areas. At the end of the day they would come back to their business premises to manufacture more batches of their products. Long hours,hard work, commitment and dedication eventually culminated this perseverence into a huge success.

Risks

• Financial risk – Herman took a huge financial risk when setting up the business. He had no guarantee that the business would succeed. He accepted financial backing at 30% interest with a 25% stake in the business. He had to take the risk to setup his venture but he would have put himself and his family under huge financial strain if the venture was not a success.
• Family and social risk – Herman faced a huge risk of sacrificing the stability of his family life to start up this business. Social alienation could have crept into his family life due to the extended working hours that Herman kept.
• Physical and psychological risk – The long working hours can lead to the entrepreneur neglecting his health with regards to exercising and eating healthily. Herman had to put in the long hours to make a success of the business but stood the risk of health problems.

Macro environment

An entrepreneur from the so-called Asian Tiger Countries: -South Korea

1) Introduction:

Lee Byung-chul is the founder of the Samsung group. Samsung started off with numerous ventures such as construction, electronics, insurance, retail & so on. Over the years, Samsung has branched off & made electronics their core source of revenue. Samsung also began developing LCD software & took on Sony as a merging partner.