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Java-E UK - Our Business Ethos
1. The Customer is King
Without happy customers, we have no business. No amount of "clever" management will help our business if we don't give our customers exactly what they want. Anybody who does not listen to their customers has no business managing any part of any company (especially ours !)
2. People, not Capital
At the end of the day, no matter what your business is, it's people (be they customers or staff) and not capital or buildings that are the real value of a company. Every single piece of income from every company ultimately comes from individual people when you get down to the root cause of the income. Real value of a company comes from the skills, experience, and loyalty of the staff and the goodwill of the customers who believe in the company. Any valuation of a company which is based on anything else is simply an immediate-sale value, and does not reflect the true long-term value or potential of the company. If you are thinking long-term, then look after the people, because that is where the real strength of your company must be if you are to survive. If you fail to do your best to look after your staff and customers, then your business is doomed from the start and it deserves to fail.
3. Earn Trust
Very few companies offer the same level of provenance for their items as we try to achieve for this company. Our customers' trust in our products and service is of paramount importance to us - We strive for this company to be known as one of the most trustworthy sources of high quality jewellery (and other products) with an excellent level of service. We want to do everything possible to let our customers know exactly what has been involved in our various products and everything should be completely transparent. The customers must have all the information that they require/need. Failure to provide information to customers could be seen as hiding something, and we want our customers to know that we have nothing to hide. Similar logic applies to our staff/suppliers.
4. Be The Best
We want collectors in the years to come to regard a Java-E UK hallmark as a measure of excellence. Although we try to keep the prices of products as low as reasonably possible, cost-cutting must never occur at the expense of the quality of the products or the treatment of our staff/suppliers/customers.
5. Welcome Feedback
A company should always listen to the ideas of its employees, as it's invariably the ideas and worries of the ground-floor staff that are potentially most valuable to the company. No company should ever be afraid of constructive criticism by its employees (or by anyone else for that matter), and such feedback should always be welcomed, seriously considered at the highest level, and implemented wherever relevant. No manager knows everything; there will always be someone else in the company who will know something that a decision maker doesn't know, and decision makers must realise that and appreciate someone telling them something that they were not previously aware of. There should be no need for a whistle-blower; well-meaning staff and customers should never be put in the position where they feel it's necessary to tell a third-party of a problem; they should always feel that the company is approachable and willing to accept and rectify problems.
6. Use Common Sense and Logic
Well, that sounds reasonable. But in the real world it's sadly lacking in a lot of companies (most especially in large companies). Staff that make bad/illogical decisions for a company purely for their personal benefit or to save their own embarrasment or ineptitude have no place in our company. At the first sign of anyone involved in our company making such decisions for their own purely selfish reasons, their power will be instantly stripped and they will be expelled from our processes if they can not give an adequate explanation for their actions.
7. Manage for processes, not for profit
If you look after your staff and customers and manage the business processes well, then you will automatically generate the best profit. A company should never be driven solely by profits. The best way to get a profit would be to simply sell the assets of the company and walk away with all the money, which is not a very good way to run a company. Profits are an end-product of management; they are a symptom and not a cause. Running a company with only the profit in mind is a very backwards way of looking at things, and it makes no logical sense. Good profit comes from good management; to start with a preferred profit amount/proportion and then working your business processes backwards around that preferred profit is totally nonsensical. The processes should automatically be designed to make the company as efficient as possible; if a company needs to perform a cost-cutting exercise then that company has by definition not been managed properly.
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