A sample of experience
Rebuilding a national distributor's operating engine.
Cook Islands Motor Centre · Rarotonga
The brief
I stepped into Cook Islands Motor Centre — a large local distributor and retail group carrying Honda motorcycles, Honda marine, Samsung appliances, Nissan and Honda new cars, and a multitude of other distributorships held both locally and across the Pacific Islands — tasked with restoring its operating ability, then getting it sale-ready. In a small economy, the whole business rested on what held its market dominance: the distributorship rights, the on-time international shipping that kept stock landing, and the foreign-exchange rates it bought and sold against. Each one needed work.
What the work delivered
Secured the Honda Japan distributorship
The first priority: restored the operating relationship with Honda Japan and protected the franchise the business's market position was built on — the foundation everything else depended on.
Made shipping a planned schedule, not just a booking
Booking left it to the shipping lines to coordinate around what suited them — not a business sitting in a small Pacific Island nation. Moving freight from booked-on-demand to planned schedules built efficiency into the supply line and cut delivery times sharply, in a market where every container comes a long way.
Grew Honda Marine into a Pacific-wide revenue line
Built up the marine side alongside the core — competitive on price and on speed of delivery (the shipping planning paid off here), with fast-moving service and known warranty parts kept on hand for immediate air freight. A second growth engine selling across multiple Pacific Island nations, rather than leaning on the one franchise.
Negotiated a faster foreign-exchange mechanism
A new FX setup for the business — faster, fewer decision-makers at the bank, the exchange process sped up significantly. It worked well enough that it inadvertently reshaped Westpac's own FX system across the Pacific. Not a better rate on a deal — a better mechanism, in an economy that lives and dies on exchange rates and speed of decision.
Ran the in-house finance company
Over 1,200 live clients, with a significant book of unpaid accounts at the outset. Undertook a sweeping tidy of the ledger — recovering goods where settlement couldn't be negotiated — and designed new finance applications and guarantor agreements. Profitability lifted, and unpaid and delinquent accounts fell below 6%: excellent for the sector.
Trained a sales team that sold — on time
Got the team onboard with a different way of working in service of the customer — from "island time" to deals done on time. Ran the sales training and lifted sales growth, turning the front line into a measurable driver instead of an afterthought.
Put in the systems & SOPs underneath
The systems and SOPs a small, currency-exposed business needed to run predictably — and to find where money was leaking (one example: $30K a year saved on freight-insurance costs). The operational spine that lets a market leader stay one.
The outcome
The brief was to prepare the business for sale. By the end of my contract it was sale-ready — and the owner, looking at the stronger business that now stood in front of them, chose to keep it.
Different country, same work: step inside a business, find what's actually broken, and rebuild the engine — commercial, financial and operational — until it runs. It's the operating model behind TSG.