Eve Davies PhD is co-founder and director of ProtectaPet, an international Newcastle-under-Lyme-based firm which helps protect domestic cats from danger.
An export champion for the Department for International Trade, she is also a Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce Board Director. Here Eve outlines her business philosophy which combines a passionate sense of mission with a keen strategic outlook.
When we lost Lola, our cat, in a road traffic accident in 2009, it started us – a husband and wife team – on a mission to prevent cats from coming to similar fates and prevent owners from experiencing our heartache.
This mission has been core to ProtectaPet’s nine-year history and instrumental in the business growth – most recently culminating in the King’s Award for Innovation (allow me a small but shameless boast).
Leading a business with a heartfelt sense of purpose is only half the recipe for success: you can have an incredible idea that isn’t commercially viable and conversely, you can have an awful idea that is commercially viable (just look at all the disposable products that are sold in vast quantities).
On a daily basis, customers ring up with new product requests, or they send us information about how they have re-purposed our existing products for a new use, such as security fencing or pigeon prevention on balconies.
We receive enquiries from across the globe and each time, we make a snap decision on the commercial viability of the opportunity.
We are in an incredible position: business development opportunities are abundant.
On one hand, you have innovative concepts, new markets, exciting untrodden paths. On the other hand, you have risks, investments without guaranteed returns and a lot of uncertainties.
Each idea has to be measured against our overall purpose – enabling cats to access safe outdoor territories and owners to experience total peace of mind.
Decision-making is where I think we ‘do or die’ – and as organisations, we have to be visionary and strategic in perfectly equal measure in order to succeed.
At the height of the industrial revolution, Napoleon famously commented that we were a ‘nation of shopkeepers’ – his surgeon later expanded his comment to explain how as a country not rich in population, territory nor natural resources we were wondrously affluent from enterprise and trade.
While ‘shopkeeping’ has dramatically changed since the 18th century, the metaphysical skills of evaluating opportunities course through our cultural heritage.
For me ‘shopkeeping’ is in my DNA – from my great grandparents who ran the Colliers Arms in Talke to my grandparents who ran a pet shop in Hanley.
On the other side too, my grandparents ran a convenience store in Blurton and going further back, the Adderleys manufactured China and earthenware in Longton.
And when there is a decision to be made, I trust my emotional integrity to make the best strategic decision.
