SOME entrepreneurs experience a defining moment on their path to setting up a
business. Hasfa Abubacker can remember one such incident.
She was driving through Knightsbridge with a colleague when an elegant woman,
laden with designer shopping bags, crossed the road in front of them.
Abubacker’s male colleague turned to her and commented that one day that
might be her - if she married a rich man.
“At that moment I decided that if I was going to enjoy the luxuries of life it
would be because of my own success and not someone else’s,” she said.
Abubacker was brought up in Southall, west London. With five older brothers,
she was never the dainty daughter her mother longed for her to be. “My
parents were very traditional, being from southern India,” she said. “My
mother hoped I’d hit 18, get married and have lots of children.”
Abubacker, however, was determined to go into further education and gained a
scholarship to Sussex University to read media. “The degree wasn’t the
important bit,” she said. “The main objective was to get away from home.”
Yet, three years later, she found herself back with her parents, struggling to
live off £5,000 a year as a runner for London Weekend Television. Abubacker
slowly worked her way up, moving from a runner into graphic design and then
into the legal department of The Big Breakfast - where she was responsible
for ensuring copyright clearance for the music and film clips used in the
show. From there, she moved to a company called LMD, where she put together
music compilations as backing tracks for TV advertising and then sold them
to companies in Britain and abroad.
“It was my first experience of home shopping,” she said. “I loved it. I loved
putting together the music - it was all nostalgic stuff - and then I loved
selling it.”
Four years later - curious to see what home shopping looked like from the
inside - Abubacker became a buyer for a TV shopping channel that bought, and
then aired, commercials. However, she soon found herself frustrated by the
buying process. “I was just sitting there waiting for commercials to drop
into my lap. I thought there must be a better way of doing this, so I
started sourcing the tapes myself,” she said.
Once again, Abubacker was unimpressed - this time by the nature of the
commercials. “We were a UK shopping channel but we only ever bought US
commercials. I got so sick of them; they were so cheesy and exaggerated. I
was convinced that the average UK consumer was more sophisticated.”
She went to the Ideal Home Show where she witnessed demonstrators selling
their products and, impressed by their genuine knowledge and enthusiasm,
approached her boss with the idea to produce something similar.
After three months of persuasion, the company allowed her to film a live
demonstration and put the commercial on air. The product became a No 1
seller after just one week. At this point Abubacker decided to start out on
her own. “I decided that rather than line someone else’s pocket, I would
start lining my own,” she said.
Abubacker set up an office in her living room, named her company Pitchwell
Group, and approached a shopping channel. The channel offered to buy three
of her unique commercials if she could produce them in three months. “This
was brilliant. The only problem was I had no money,” she said. “I had a
concept which I knew worked, but no cash.”
Abubacker persuaded a friend, who owned a production company, to lend her
£50,000 in exchange for a stake in her business. She then used the money to
film three products: a mandolin slicer, a flower-arranging kit and a
hand-held car-washing device. As promised, the channel bought her
commercials and put them on air. All three products were instant bestsellers.
Encouraged, Abubacker decided to buy her own airtime in order to have a degree
of financial independence from the shopping channel. She also persuaded her
boyfriend, David Bredow, to join her business. The pair set up a call centre
so buyers could order products direct, and found a warehouse to dispatch
them. After one year, the company turned over £1.6m.
“That first year was hard work. We were completely focused, it was like our
baby - we sacrificed everything for it,” she said.
In March 2005, Abubacker and Bredow went to India for two weeks, to celebrate
their success and to get married. On their return, however, Pitchwell lost a
big client, who went bust almost overnight. Then Abubacker received a threat
from a shopping channel in Poland, which told her that unless she removed
her products from the Polish market it would stop selling airtime to the UK.
“If it wasn’t so serious it would have been funny,” she said. Yet rather than
give in, Abubacker decided to buy her own shopping channel. “The problems we
had came about because we were dependent on other people,” she said. “I
decided the answer was to have my own channel.”
After several weeks of negotiation, Abubacker managed to persuade the Express
Shopping Channel to sell for £2.5m. She used her home to guarantee a loan
and persuaded an investor to join her to raise funds. The channel was so
successful that Abubacker has since bought a second one.
Pitchwell Group has grown from only two people in a living room to 32 staff.
Turnover has reached £8.5m.
Abubacker, now the mother of a baby girl, puts the secret of her success down
to her straight talking. “I tell it like it is,” she said. “If I can do
something I will do it, and if I can’t do something I’ll tell people I
can’t. I think that a lot of people I have worked with respect that.”
She advises other entrepreneurs to stay focused. “Don’t give in. Be serious
about what you’re doing and be good at it.” Rose Gamble
