LEADER - A Gifted Leader

Red Balloon’s CEO, Jemma Fastnedge, tells Mia Santoromito how the company became ‘a little dog with a big dog attitude’

WHETHER IT’S for Christmas, a birthday or even a wedding anniversary, coming up with that perfect gift idea leaves each of us stumped on occasions. The standard box of chocolates or bunch of flowers often limps in as a last resort.

It was this challenge that led to the birth in 2001 of Red Balloon, an organisation that has changed the face of giving gifts by offering experiences which could be selected online and tailored to an individual’s tastes and interests.

And it was one Naomi Simson who decided to take action, making it her mission to change the situation. Red Balloon has since gone on to become one of the most successful online businesses in Australia and New Zealand.

While Red Balloon was Ms Simson’s brainchild, it was Jemma Fastnedge’s joining the business in its early stages as product manager that helped ensure the dream flourished.

“I was quite a painful PR girl to work with because I refused to work on brands I couldn’t generate authentic coverage for,” she says.

“I was looking for a brand or cause that I could really get passionate about – something that would motivate me to get up in the mornings and look forward to the day ahead.

“When I saw the advert for Red Balloon, I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect brand, and I still can’t.”

Ms Simson’s and Ms Fastnedge’s enthusiastic collaboration has seen Red Balloon come to offer everything from watching the sun rise from a hot air balloon or learning to sail, to a range of corporate gifts and sales incentives offered as a way for businesses to motivate, reward and thank their employees.

TEAMWORK

Red Balloon’s achievement has come as no surprise to Ms Fastnedge; the idea and the organisation were always destined to succeed.

“I always knew Red Balloon was a special business,” she says. “Naomi’s enthusiasm and vision were so infectious that I always had a feeling we would achieve great things.

“Being there from pretty much the beginning gave me a sense of ownership in the company’s story and as such I have always treated Red Balloon like it was my own – and worked hard to ensure we achieve our vision.

“Naomi and I have become a great partnership over the years with skill sets that both complement and challenge each other.”

Ms Fastnedge is now CEO and with her at the helm, Red Balloon has become a multi-million dollar, multi-person company in just a matter of years.

From its beginnings as a one-woman, home office operation, the business has grown to boast 55 members of staff, both full-time and part-time, supported by home-based staff who work just eight hours a week.

Red Balloon believes a company’s employees are the greatest brand representatives it can have and the business actively looks for people who will embody its core values when recruiting.

“Our employees are the greatest brand ambassadors we have and we value them immensely,” Ms Fastnedge says.

“They are the most powerful voices an organisation can have in terms of building and maintaining a brand’s reputation.

Knowing that the service Red Balloon delivers will also form part of the brand’s marketing, Ms Fastnedge looks for employees who are going to value every single call.

“We have a dedicated and an amazing team of customer experience employees who make sure every time an email or call comes through that person has a great experience interacting with us,” she says.

“By employing people who share our common values, we have created a very strong brand that people seek out,” Ms Fastnedge says.

“We practise what we preach when it comes to having engaged employees. In 2008, we achieved a Hewitt Engagement Score of 97 per cent, well above the average Australian business, which ranks at 54 per cent.

RECRUITMENT

Growing a one-woman business into a multi-person company hasn’t been without its challenges though, and after experiencing the repercussions of misguided recruitment during the business’ evolution, Red Balloon now makes an active effort to be thorough.

“Our values are fundamental to everything we do at Red Balloon and this is nowhere more obvious than in our recruitment process,” Ms Fastnedge says.

“For the majority of roles we advertise at Red Balloon, we are inundated with applications. So, we start with a few rounds of group interviews.

“During our group interviews, potential candidates answer general lifestyle and personality-based questions so we can get a feel for them more quickly and see how they interact with other members within a group.

“Following the group interview process, and depending on the role, there may be two to three rounds of one-on-one interviews, a practical task and a team meet-and-greet as well as a personality profile,” she says.

Ms Fastnedge herself has learnt a thing at Red Balloon or two about recruiting, having been involved in most of the company’s hiring.

“In any fast growth company, things change so quickly that you often think the answer is to add more people to absorb it,” she says.

“This, however, is often a reactive mistake and many times the growing pains can be resolved more effectively.”

Based on what she has learned at Red Balloon, Ms Fastnedge has put together a ‘business bible’, known as the Little Red Book of Answers, which tackles some of the main issues in business and suggests simple, effective solutions.

Available free from www.redballoon.com.au, this resource has proved so popular that it is now in its third edition.

Despite the organisation’s success, however, Red Balloon has never been a brand content to rest on its laurels.

Rather, it has always seen itself as entrepreneurial and just recently attempted to further build on the brand’s current success by launching a new and improved version of the website.

“There was a significant risk that all of the history and trust we had accumulated with Google could be eroded once we switched to the new structure,” Ms Fastnedge says.

“However, with careful planning and testing over 12 months we delivered a result that far surpassed all expectations.

“Taking Red Balloon’s growth from 30 per cent in the previous financial year to 60 per cent in the year after we launched was the proof in the pudding,” she says.

While this has been the company’s biggest accomplishment to date, Ms Fastnedge doesn’t intend to ride the wave of success for long.

Staying true to Red Balloon’s ‘little dog with a big dog attitude’ mantra, she has already set big expectations for the company’s future.

“We are aiming to become a 100 million dollar company by 2015,” she says.