Worldwide OfficesHaggis hard talk
A member of the V66 Vistage group, Jo Macsween is a director of Macsween Haggis. The firm was started in 1953 by Jo’s grandparents. Still a family firm, Macsween Haggis is run by Jo and her brother James from a state of the art production plant on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
While January and the lead-up to Burns Night are the busiest time of the year for Macsween, the company has worked hard to make haggis a year round dish. Product development and innovations, including a range of microwaveable haggis and fresh ways of serving the food, have opened up new markets for Macsween.
As Burns Night approaches, Jo discusses her family business and what effect her membership of Vistage has had.
Is this a peak time of year for you?
JM: January accounts for about 30% of our turnover. In fact, most of the customer orders for Burns Night need to be completed in less than a month. It’s usually about the 6th of January by the time everybody has woken up from Hogmanay and, if people don’t have their order en route by Monday 23rd, then it’s too late.
It’s a very concentrated period for the business which has to be run with military precision. It puts a lot of pressure on the team but they have done it before and it is nothing they are not used to doing.
What we want to do is ease that curve out and get away from the idea of haggis being the national dish which is just for Burns Night and only served with neeps and tatties. It’s so much more than that.
How are you trying to change that perception?
JM: Some of it is down to product innovation. The microwaveable range has been a huge success with our core market but what we were really after was the under thirties. We knew they liked and ate haggis, often from the chip shop, but wouldn’t go to a supermarket and buy it because it was an inaccessible product to them.
Microwaveable haggis allowed us to change that. We did some market research and found that one product has changed the haggis eating demographic considerably. Macsween is the brand that has brought a whole new consumer base to haggis. In the last three years, we are responsible for a quarter of a million new haggis consumers and I’m really proud of that.
You have just launched a new website with advice for haggis virgins along with sections on haggis myths; serving tips and even a Burns Night app. Is that part of the campaign?
JM: It’s just at phase one and we have more to do but January is when the site gets most visitors and we wanted to get the new site up and running. We’ve gone out on a limb a bit. The whole haggis virgin things needs a bit more design but we wanted to get it out there, get some feedback and see what it does for us.
We have had some fun with it. There are clips of people dressed up as giant haggis. If you want to engage with your customers then you have to give them something. It needn’t cost much. You can give them a laugh which is why we have people dressed up as giant haggis doing silly things.
As it develops, we will add sections on sustainability and a chefs’ section showing how our products can be used in different types of commercial kitchens.
There is also a blog element to it and, as that progresses, it will be less about haggis and more about Scotland and all things Scottish. We stand for all those things and I want to promote the best of Scotland and not just haggis. The point of a good blog is not to do hard selling of your wares but to engage with people at a wider level and build your brand credibility.
Is there a big export market for haggis or is it all for the domestic market?
JM: It depends what you mean by domestic. There is a 40/60 split in sales and you might be surprised to learn that the 60% goes to England. About 20% of our turnover is sold in London alone. Export is under developed and we intend to work on that.
What is the biggest challenge for Macsween?
JM: We are going to step up our leadership, management and delivery of ideas. We are very clear about where we want to go. We have spent a lot of time on strategy. Now, we want to empower and develop the management team to deliver our strategy.
Over the last twelve months, we have built a management team to allow James and I to step away from the minutiae of the day to day business. Because we now have a factory manager, this is the first January that James is not in a white coat on the factory floor. It frees him up to think about our export strategy.
Linked to this is the professional development which James and I have been doing. I’ve been getting coaching and professional development with Vistage, James with ‘The leadership Factory’. When the directors of the business are receiving intense development, that ethos of life long learning spreads to the management team and through every level of the business. It creates a very powerful culture of learning.
A big commitment for us is that, by 2013, every single person in the business will have been on a professional development course or gained a new qualification relevant to their role. For those directly involved in making and packing haggis, for example this will be the achievement of an SVQ level 2 or 3. It is all part of our vision to create ‘The Haggis Academy’!
In what ways did you hope to benefit from joining Vistage?
JM: I hoped to gain a clearer personal and business vision. We were doing a lot of thinking about the business and too often, I was internalising it and it was going around and around in my head. I thought that Vistage would offer both a way of externalising those thoughts as well as coaching and support for how to map them out.
When you have been in a family business for twenty years; it’s the main place you have ever worked, with a newly created management team, then you need external influences and ideas to challenge yourself and the team.
Although I’m the main person that benefits from being part of Vistage, I feel as though all of Macsween has joined. On the Vistage member guest days, my managers can come along and they have absolutely loved those sessions. They have been very powerful for them.
We went to one with Susan Scott called ‘Fierce Conversations’. It was about having emotionally intelligent communications. As a result of going to that session, one of my managers came in the next week and told me that she had had a life-changing conversation with her husband which enabled them to understand each other more clearly. That’s the sort of value add that you can’t put a price on.
Is there any one aspect of Vistage which is most useful for you?
JM: Each strand is very powerful and would be on its own. If I just turned up for the lectures and had the coaching then that would be good but, what makes it very special, is the other people in my group who are on the journey with you.
We have shared a lot of very special moments and I feel that I am in a very good place when I meet with them. We all learn together and we all challenge each other and I trust them.
That’s very special in business: to have a safe place in which you can be vulnerable and to admit that you have struggled with something. That opens up possibilities. You don’t have to look tough and look as though you know what you are doing. It’s a space in which you can say, ‘I’m really lost. Help me out here’. And then people do. They give fantastic feedback and it’s hardcore in that they don’t miss and hit the wall. It’s like being surrounded by really heavyweight consultants that care about you.
10:41 am on January 25th, 2012
Fantastic Jo. Hope Burns season went well for you and I think your comments regarding Vistage are spot on. See you on Thursday
12:07 pm on January 25th, 2012
Great stuff Jo. Further wonderful insights into your business and a great description of V66. It’s a privilege to be part of it.