The man who dropped out of university, started a record company, and then launched South Africa’s largest beauty salon chain

Fuhr has had an extensive business career, building multiple successful companies across various sectors, including retail, consulting, music, and beauty.

Ian Fuhr was born in 1953, and despite his family not being religious, his parents decided to send him to a Jewish school, King David.

Once he graduated, he joined the Air Force as part of the mandatory conscription rules at the time. He didn’t particularly enjoy this experience and was relieved when it ended, allowing him to proceed to university.

However, this also didn’t last very long, and he dropped out in his second year. “That didn’t work out well for me at all,” Fuhr told Harvard Business School. “I was itching to be in business.”

Fortunately, his father was one of the founding directors of a large furniture chain, Russells Furniture. He taught Fuhr and his older brothers about business.

When Fuhr left university, he got a job in the music industry. He worked at a record company for about 18 months when, in 1976, his brother, Rodney, came back from a trip to the United States with an idea.

There, Rodney had come across Kmart, a popular department store chain, and he proposed that Fuhr bring it to South Africa.

So, 22-year-old Fuhr left the record business and set out to open his first store. However, there were some major issues. First of all, he didn’t realise that he needed authorisation from the Kmart Corporation.

“What I didn’t know was that you were supposed to be conscious of things like trademarks. So, I just used the name. I thought, well, it worked in America. It should surely work for us.”

“I didn’t register anything. To make it worse, I used their logo as well, which was really stupid, but what did I know?”

Later on, that would become a cause of significant problems for the business, but in the meantime, they set up the business.

Kmart

At the time, South Africa was at the height of Apartheid, and the store opening had to be postponed due to the 1976 Soweto uprising.

When they opened their first store two weeks later on 1 July 1976 in Johannesburg, they were met with another challenge.

Even though there were discount stores at the time, there weren’t really businesses aiming at the lower end of the market.

“That was the opportunity. So, we aimed specifically at the low-income group. In South Africa, that was predominantly black people. So, we aimed it at that target market.”

They slashed their prices and took out four-page spreads in the local newspaper. This marketing had worked so well that when the time came to open the store, there was a stampede.

In fact, someone had even called the police, thinking another riot had broken out. Eventually, they managed to get some order, but the queues still went right around the block in both ways and met at the back on the other side.

For four days, they had queues around the block. While this may have seemed like a good thing, Fuhr had no idea how to manage money or staff.

Adding to the challenge, growing up as isolated as he did, he didn’t know how to communicate with the 25 black members of staff working for him.

He soon realised that he needed a mentor. So, he asked one of his employees, Ralph, to guide him and improve his communication with his staff.

“That was a very difficult process in the beginning because I don’t think they had any respect for me whatsoever,” Fuhr said.

“I was too young, firstly. I was white, secondly. And I didn’t know much about the business. So, the level of respect for me as a manager at the time was a bit of a joke.”

However, over time, he started building up his relationship with his black employees, as well as the country’s black population.

To earn their trust, the store allowed customers to receive hassle-free refunds, which was unheard of at the time. They also had black store managers.

Since this wasn’t allowed, they used a loophole by hiring wheelchair-bound white managers who simply opened the doors, which was the requirement to be considered a store manager.

They did nothing for the rest of the day while the real black manager ran the store. This approach worked, and the stores became very popular.

Changing careers

In the early 1980s, Fuhr pivoted back into music and left Rodney to run Kmart alone. He joined Letta Mbulu and her husband, Caiphus Semenya, two very well-known artists, to start a record company.

They signed artists such as Hugh Masekela. However, in 1986, due to the boycotts in South Africa, Kmart went into liquidation, and Fuhr left the music business to help his brother.

He managed to save the business and bring it out of liquidation, but once he did, the Kmart corporation in the United States sued them.

“They were just a very ominous-looking bunch, and they came, and they sued us. Of course, we defended, but we lost. So, they forced us to change our name, even though we had been using it for 10 years at that stage.”

So, in 1988, they changed the name from Kmart to Super Mart. In 1991, Fuhr decided that because of his experience at Kmart and the country’s changing political tide, he wanted to open a consultancy firm.

The aim of this firm, called Labour Link, was to teach other companies about race relations in the workplace. Initially, he was laughed out of the room.

However, he came up with the idea of creating a play about racism in the workplace, which was a huge success. Soon, he was consulting large companies like Murray & Roberts.

He did that for seven years until he returned to Kmart to help his brother. Fuhr built the business up before selling it to the Edcon Group, which renamed it to JetMart.

Sorbet

After selling the business, Fuhr started looking for a new project. “I was trying to keep off the streets. I was having a massage one day, and the lady doing my massage said to me, ‘Why don’t you look at the beauty industry?’”

“I just really couldn’t imagine myself in the beauty industry. I didn’t quite see myself fitting in there too well.” His massage therapist pointed out that South Africa had no significant multiple-unit branded chain of beauty salons.

This excited Fuhr. She told him, “There’s definitely a gap in the market.” He replied, “Yes, but is there a market in the gap?”

She said, “Well, why don’t you go and find out?” And that is precisely what Fuhr did. After doing some research, he found that she was right.

Even though there were many independent operators, none of them had ever been able to build a successful chain. So, he began developing the Sorbet Group, rebranding six salons which opened in August 2005.

“The first few years were quite tough. I was funding it myself with the money that I had made from the sale of Super Mart.” Although he wanted to franchise immediately, they only got their first franchisee after opening 22 stores.

The service philosophy that Fuhr created for the Sorbet Group was that if customers were not satisfied with their service, they did not have to pay.

If a customer does not like a product they purchase, they can also return it for a full refund, no matter how much they have used it.

He had never seen a spa with a similar policy, and although he was afraid customers would come in demanding free treatments, it turned out to be their competitive advantage.

By the time he left the group, they were performing approximately 400,000 treatments a month, with only between 100 and 200 resulting in refunds. “So, it was a minute percentage, but at the same time, it was giving us massive credibility.”

In 2017, Sorbet was acquired by Long4Life, a publicly listed company. Fuhr subsequently left Sorbet in February 2019 and has recently set up a new Business and Life coaching organisation called The Hatch Institute.

Today, Sorbet performs 3.6 million treatments annually across 196 stores, including Sorbet Salons, Sorbet Nailbars, Sorbet Hairbars, Sorbet MAN, and Candi&Co. Stores.

In 2023, Clicks acquired Sorbet, leading to a close partnership between the companies. As part of this collaboration, customers can earn points on their Clicks ClubCard with every transaction at Sorbet.

They also teamed up to create an exclusive range of Sorbet-branded products, which are available in Sorbet and Clicks stores.

Inside Sorbet

Issued on Daily Investor by Kristen Minnaar | https://dailyinvestor.com/business/89296/the-man-who-dropped-out-of-university-started-a-record-company-and-then-launched-south-africas-largest-beauty-salon-chain/