Peter Cullinane, CEO of Lewis Road Creamery waxes lyrical

Most of us are aware of the Lewis Road Creamery success story. What we don’t know is the success story that took place behind the scenes. It’s one that Peter wants to put on the record and as you’ll find out it’s not often that you hear a CEO singing the praises of a supplier in this way. Lewis Road Creamery went from a small team of four, to big in a heartbeat. To say we had a boom is an understatement. We experienced an increase in customers from twelve to hundreds almost overnight.

We quickly learnt that getting milk to market is the ultimate challenge with fast moving consumables. Butter is relatively easy. We sold to two big supermarket chains, with centralised distribution. Milk is another story. Now we were dealing with a fresh product that was ordered through individual stores. Putting high-quality white milk in beautiful packaging created the stupendous growth. It was proof of the strength of the brand and the fact we nailed meeting the needs of our consumers.

Enter In Good Company

However, we didn’t have the infrastructure to support our growth. Looking back we only pulled this off because we found the right partner in Aimee and In Good Company. Aimee was our virtual finance director and her people were our accounts team. In Good Company owned the total ordering process. Ordering, accounting, debt collection, informing the supply side of what was required in terms of production and then providing us with the information we needed to run and plan our business. Most importantly they could scale everything to match our growth, as we moved from supplying 12 stores to 543. They never missed a beat.

What we liked

Aimee treated our business as her own. Not in a way that felt like she was becoming too dominant or that you were losing control. It reflects her dedication and the way she conducts her business. In Good Company does whatever it takes, but they also don’t overdo it. They’re smart but don’t try to be too clever. It shows real confidence in what they do and how they do it. The fact that they were being the best at what they do, allowed as to be the best at what we do.

Aimee is unflappable and has an incredibly calming presence. She takes enormous delight in getting things done. She is a bloody hard worker, doesn’t over complicate things, doesn’t over sell and gets on and does it. She is truthful and handles herself brilliantly. Aimee became part of our whanau. There was a lovely fit from the get go and we just grew from there.

All great things come to an end. Once we got to a certain size, we had to look at bringing the resource in house. Aimee and her team had set the standard and had the class to train us so we could become as good as them. How brilliant is that? We are still friends and I’m looking forward to working with In Good Company and Aimee on my next venture. In Good Company was a brilliant enabler of what we wanted to achieve. They provided us with peace of mind and we never had a day when they let us down. Aimee delivers an amazing service to the SME business community and everyone should know about them. That’s the story I wanted to tell.