hen business owner Shana Sandri decided to buy out her business partner of nearly three years and go it alone, little did she know that the necessary decision making required a cool head.
"As a young woman in business I was very emotional and only saw the big picture and the big dream at the time," says Shana, 30. The dream was to provide upmarket head, face, hand, body and foot treatments for men, customised to suit each client, making use of the Dermalogica range of skincare products. But the partner in Durban-based Men's Executive Grooming (MEG) was emigrating and this narrowed the time frame in which an agreement had to be reached. And Shana's business partner was also a 40-year old former senior partner and litigator at one of Durban's foremost law firms, who had given it all up to run a small business in order to spend more time with her kids.
The 50/50 partnership in MEG started in December 2005 when the partner, let's call her Tanya, decided that she needed bigger premises from which to run her struggling skincare centre. Shana took over the existing premises and provided 50% of the capital in the new venture, or half of the R300 000 start-up costs, and brought a professionalism garnered from launching and managing Demalogica skincare stores in Cape Town and Durban.
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"When we drew up the contract, we thought we liked each other and did not concentrate on the nitty-gritty," Shana, who was 26 at the time, says. "Tanya valued her contribution as 50% in the shell company," Shana says. "But the beauty industry has surpassed the touchy-feely small businesses of the past for ones that can turn over in excess of R3 million a year."
Three years on, MEG has 500 top Durban businessmen as clients, turnover of about R2-million a year, and is now starting to break even.
"In a perfect world, the separation was supposed to be amicable and quick. Instead it took three months of negotiations, but was settled within three days once I got a lawyer in place," Shana says. "I should have got the lawyer in from day one. But I learned so much in three months, and it has made me a businesswoman and a tougher businesswoman at that."
Shana's 35-year old boyfriend, Adriaan, an economist with a large banking group, acted as the mediator in the separation process, because Shana says she was too emotionally involved. "I discovered that there were non-emotional decisions that get you where you want to be," she says. "It was a fascinating experience."
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