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Dawid Mocke hits surfing success online

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Dawid Mocke trying on his brand's life jacket.
Dawid Mocke trying on his brand's life jacket.

Cape Town – Being a professional sportsman and a successful entrepreneur are two highly challenging careers, but being able to tick both boxes simultaneously is worth celebrating.

Four-time world surfski champion Dawid Mocke has not only succeeded in both, but he lives a lifestyle that he has passionately worked towards.

His dream-come-true: A small business with low expenditure and steady income, a flourishing surfski school and the freedom to live in a small False Bay town where he is able to spend as much time on the sea paddling or chilling with his family as he likes.

So how did he get there?

“After studying information science at Stellies [University of Stellenbosch], I worked for a software company and was very unhappy,” he said. “My passion was being outdoors on water.”

Mocke and his wife Nikki were “Nipper” lifesavers who represented South Africa. Their life was on the water and they enjoyed flat-water marathons and sprint paddling, river marathons and surfski racing.

And that’s when he had a light bulb moment. “It started with the basic premise of following your passion and following it as far as possible,” he explains. “To that end, I decided to surfski professionally.”

The income from prize money meant Mocke travelled the globe following competitions, but back home a more sustainable business was taking shape. “All my friends and their friends wanted to surfski too and so I spent many weekends teaching them, and that was the birth of the surfski school,” he said.


Mocke Paddling

The next stage of his push to keep his passion and business together came when he started his apparel business, the source of his major success as an entrepreneur.

Due to regulations tightening, paddlers were forced to wear life jackets, which Mocke found uncomfortable and which overheated him on the water. “I saw so many things that I could improve and so decided to start designing apparel that I knew other paddlers would enjoy.

“It opened up a whole new passion in me,” he said.

In 2007, he opened Mocke Paddling, the shop in Fish Hoek that sold his brands as well as kayaks.

Lesson in small business

“In principle you think it’s fine opening a shop,” he said. “You don’t think long term. You don’t think of the rental lease. My advice to others would be to think very carefully before you sign into a lease. Ensure you can sustain your business.”

Mocke had two investors to report to, which he said was a good source of accountability. “Sometimes as an entrepreneur, you like to shoot from the hip,” he said. “They kept me in line.”

Balancing his small shop, training school and professional racing was not easy.  “It was not easy to run a business and paddle,” he said. I had to travel once every six weeks to a race.”

Life decision

After seven years, Mocke was ready to expand, but in order to do so, he had to move his shop out of Fish Hoek and change the way he worked.

“For that to happen would have required me to say goodbye to paddling and my lifestyle,” the father of two said. “It would have been a success, but there are two measures of success: lifestyle and income. The business would have scored more on the income side and less on the lifestyle.”

And selling his company was not an option. “The paddling centre and the Mocke brand were so interlinked, so I could not sell it.”

And his decision ...

“Instead of expanding my shop, I decided to take my business fully online last year and close down the store,” he said.

Online challenge

You can have the best shop, said Mocke, but if you don’t get paid it won’t work. “The easier you make it for people to pay you, the better your online business will do,” he said.

“We have a niche business in a fiercely competitive field and it’s essential to make the experience as easy as possible for our customers if we want them to buy, and come back,” said Mocke. “We’ve learned that when the checkout process is complicated, we lose sales.”

Mocke’s advice is to treat your online customers as real people and respond to them immediately. “I know most of the people on a first name basis who buy online,” he said. “I need that community and I need to be able to be flexible.”

Watch:


Payment gateway

PayGate allowed payments to go directly into Mocke’s account and not into a holding account, which he said was quite unique.

It also allowed him to process refunds, which he said was critical from a customer service point of view. “Sometimes people change their minds, or decide to come in and pick something up instead of having it delivered - things happen. We could just tell them ‘too bad, no refunds’, but that would be terrible customer service. It certainly wouldn’t win us the repeat customers we want.

“To sell online successfully you need to communicate clearly, with an authentic voice,” he said. “It’s much harder than chatting with someone who walks into our bricks-and-mortar store. We have to build trust by communicating clearly, making sure we carry reviews prominently on the site and making the payment process simple and logical. PayGate as a payment service provider helps us build that trust.”

Tips for small online businesses:

- If you are in a niche market with a community, the relationship is key.
- You need to build trust and not break it.
- There are no call centres; you are the person behind the business.
- Don’t lose sight that everyone visiting your site is a customer.
- If you don’t answer emails submitted from a website and pretend to communicate, it will fail.
- Treat customers on web as if they’re in your shop.

Making profit

“Profitability goes up enormously when you’re online,” he said. “It takes a lot of investment to keep a bricks-and-mortar store maintained. Now there is less capital outstock, meaning the turnover and profitability is higher.”

However, Mocke said that if you don’t understand bricks-and-mortar business then you won’t do well online.

Mocke has a very small team, with two other staff members working online. He is in charge of all the social networking and content on the site.

Website:

Meet the team - Mocke Paddling


The good life

“We have a vision to be the best paddling brand in the world,” he said. “It’s a big call to make, but that’s my vision.

“The brand is now at a level where I don’t have to rely on competitions for income,” he said. “We are getting a brand ambassador to publicise the Mocke brand.

“Weekends are going to be awesome.”

- Fin24

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