Thibaut Carminho, Co-Founder of Tartes & Pop

Thibaut Carminho, Co-Founder of Tartes & Pop, shares his journey from working in a marketing agency to becoming an entrepreneur, realizing a dream with his best friend Lou Campagna.

In this episode, Thibaut discusses how the brand was built, how important the logo design was to them, how the brand positioning evolved, and what it took to make Tartes & Pop what it is today: "Probably the best French tartes you will ever eat in Hong Kong..."

Thibaut also tells us where he sees Tartes & Pop in the future...

Transcript

Bertrand Théaud:   0:08
Hello, so welcome to this new episode of Grown in Asia. We're very pleased today to have a new host, Thibaut Carminho. So Thibaut. Hi, nice to meet you. I mean "nice to meet you", we met once before. We're not best friends, but we have the occasion to meet before. So the reason why you were invited to this podcast is not that you're French. That would have been a good reason because I'm French as well, so we can have a good discussion. And actually we have a glass of wine to share during this podcast. But the real reason is because you sell the best tartes in Hong Kong with your company Tartes & Pop. And so before we go further and we know about your experience and we share, you know, your experience, can you please introduce yourself briefly in a few words

Thibaut Carminho:   0:55
Yes, yes, yes. So my name is Thibaut Carminho. I am French. I've been in Hong Kong for seven years. I'm 30 years old and I have been an entrepreneur for five years now.  

Bertrand Théaud:   1:08
Five years ago, so you arrive in Hong Kong and almost immediately you went for entrepreneurship.Five years ago, so you arrive in Hong Kong and almost immediately you went for entrepreneurship.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:19
Yes, I didn’t work much, I think. 

Bertrand Théaud:   1:19
Okay. So, you say you're French or you grew up in France? 

Thibaut Carminho:   1:19
Yeah. Yeah. I was born in Paris and I spent half of my life about 10 years in Paris, and then my family moved to Poitiers, the West of France. And so, yeah, this is where I spent most of my childhood. So yeah, I studied in and grew up in Poitiers.

Bertrand Théaud:   1:35
So you did your study as well in Poitiers?

Thibaut Carminho:   1:39
Yes, but I did not have the chance to really find a job there. I was sent to Hong Kong before that.

Bertrand Théaud:   1:47
Okay, what did you study? I mean, there was any passion that when you were young, I mean, anything that will explain why you decided to go for, you know, setting up your company later on.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:57
Well my dad is an entrepreneur, so he had a business of anti-theft systems, you know, these little things at the entrance of the shop.  

Bertrand Théaud:   2:11
Yeah. That's the one you put in a shop, not in the cars. 

Thibaut Carminho:   2:13
No, no, no. In the shops only, it's for retail, for clothes especially. So he was selling these tags. He had a small business in France and this small business grew up to become one of the top European businesses in that market. So he later sold his company. But yeah, I grew up seeing my dad moving from being a staff to being an entrepreneur into a successful businessman. So I had that.

Bertrand Théaud:   2:39
Was that inspiring?

Thibaut Carminho:   2:41
It's very inspiring, but it's very hard to touch. I didn't expect I would actually reach his level and I didn't really want his life either, because he took me on holiday a lot and I saw him being on the phone constantly. I saw him never been off work. When you are, when you own the business, you have to constantly be here and available. 

Bertrand Théaud:   3:06
You have to be here 24/7, especially when you're growing the business. 

Thibaut Carminho:   3:09
So I was enjoying my time on holiday, thanks to his job, but he wasn't enjoying his time. He was always busy. So I would not say he inspired me. I would say it was a lot less difficult because I know it was possible. 

Bertrand Théaud:   3:25
Okay. Because you studied business, right? So is there anywhere, some kind of a connection between your father being an entrepreneur and decided that he wanted you to study business or it was like a choice by default? Like many kids at the age of 18 you didn't know what you do, and so why not business?

Thibaut Carminho:   3:41
That's actually what happened. I'm terrible at math and science in general. I'm just bad at it.

Bertrand Théaud:   3:46
Welcome to the club.  

Thibaut Carminho:   3:47
There's a lot of entrepreneurs. We love numbers, but we're not really good at handling them. So yeah, so I was terrible at math, so I had a choice between science or literature. So I chose literature. I learned English, French, and I realised there's not much work in this field. There's not much to do after that. So I was like: "Okay, now I'm here. What can I do with my English speaking skills if I don't want to be a teacher? And the only logical thing I could do without entering into the math world was to move to do business." So I was probably not prepared because I didn't have the background of some other students. I had to work extra hard to be able to get into the business school. It was a public business school, so it's cheap. It's almost free. So it's a little bit more difficult to get in because it's free, but at the same time, it's not a very prestigious school.

Bertrand Théaud:   4:44
Once you get in that school, you didn't have math? Because very often in business school you have some finance majors or things like that, and you still have to deal with math. Right? 

Thibaut Carminho:   4:53
Yeah. I wasn't very, very, very often into. I wasn't actually not really going to class mascot. I was just giving them most of the time. So I had to fly my way through the duty to explain why I was not in the math class. But thanks to the French university system, you don't have to be good at everything. You can just be good into. You have to be extra good in other fields. But you can be terrible at math in and still go through

Bertrand Théaud:   5:27
the as long as I have read you. Yeah, Managed. Teo, make it. There

Thibaut Carminho:   5:31
was only one year with must. The first year was like a common a common base. So everybody had to do that. And then I move to marketing and for marketing and moved to international studies. And so these the study pushed me out. They were like, Okay, now you need to spend six months offices. So I had to go to a place far away to work. That's how Hong Kong

Bertrand Théaud:   5:54
that's arriving on campus. That was initially you arrived here. I mean, you know, we're recording this broadcast throughout your storeys.

Thibaut Carminho:   6:04
Yeah, Yeah. China and Hong Kong. It was definitely not part of my plans that divide beginning. I was a very European born and raised kids, and I was planning to work influence, and my internationals side of my studies would be probably Europe, Spain, UK, this kind very I would I was not ready to go to China, but because because of the world we're in and the prospects off business in China, I was like, I need to spend at least six months there, even though I don't want to do it. I need to do it because they will look good on my CV and yeah, So why I Look, I look for company, and I was like, That's gonna be a very difficult six months, but you need to be strong on DH. Yeah, I really didn't know anything about China because I thought I was going to Shanghai, and my boss at the time by the guy who gave me the internship, said, We haven't known opening in Hong Kong. Is that okay? And I was like, Yeah, never mind. It's all the same to me. So I really didn't know anything about China. And that's how I ended up in Hong Kong. I thought it was actually mainland China at the time. Before before, before I entered the flame, I realised he was likely not exactly mainland

Bertrand Théaud:   7:16
China. Okay, so this is all your land? Yes. Yes, that was, like six months internship.

Thibaut Carminho:   7:22
I was supposed to be a six month in the chip, but it turned out to be they offered me a job at the end of the internship. Thie internship was very, very, very special in his own way. My boss wass trying to expand his business by delegating most off the task. So Hee took me as an intern and he asked me to manage the rest of the team, which were also intense. So it was the old

Bertrand Théaud:   7:49
oh, almost. The whole business was made off interns

Thibaut Carminho:   7:53
because they're cheap or free for some of them. but also because Hong Kong was what kind of business With them. It was a buying office. We were buying things from China and selling men in China on DH, selling them to Europe. Mostly promotional gifts. Okay, like, yeah, key rings, USB keys, discount things. Everything you can put a local on. Basically. And so there was a big side of the business I was sourcing. So this was done in China directly by the China team and all the sales part and the customer service was in Uncle and I was in charge of that part. I was I was 2021 at the time, so he was very young, very young. Yeah, he was very young to actually manage people. I had no idea what I was doing located for me. Most of the people I was imagining what, more or less my age except dudes in China were actually a lot older than me. So I had to pretend to be older. That's why I grew the bail. So I looked a little bit older and, yeah, I had to. I made a lot of mistake, but because it was an internship and because my stuff. We're actually interns every three or six months. They were going out and I had a new batch of fresh interns coming in so I could just start over. I could try again. So I tried the first time and I was a very nice boss, very gentle and funny and didn't work out, But nobody was doing anything. And so I was basically doing the work of four people just because they were not doing their job properly. So after that, I was like, OK, now it's over. I'm gonna be the angry bad boss worked, But I was having my lunch alone every single time, and everybody hated me in the office. The atmosphere was horrible s that obviously wasn't who I am. And so I tried again, and I tweak the little bit. I was like, Okay, you need to be hard. Sometimes We need to be nice sometimes. So I made Yeah, I had basically imagine in school for myself like, yeah, that was paid to try, try new imaginary ways and then get the work done. So that helped me a lot in the

Bertrand Théaud:   9:58
future. Now you find out you're on your own management style, which is? Yeah, in between being to relax or two.

Thibaut Carminho:   10:04
Yeah, I'm very relaxed, but I said the rules at the very beginning, I don't let things go out of control when I'm hiring someone. I'm telling them exactly how we operate and what I expect from them and what I will accept and what I will not accept. Most of these were written is in the contract or or in a management book or something like that. I will make sure it's written and it's clear so that if anything happened, that is not supposed to happen. I will sanction that. But the same time once, Once the rules are clear, everybody knows them. Usually people are just a lot more relaxed, and they know they know what are the boundaries, and they will just work within these boundaries. And I have a wonderful team Now. Everybody is overly nice. And so and so, Yeah, it you need to be respected enough in your own company, and for that most of the time, you need to know enough about the job. There's nothing worse than not knowing what you're talking about. And so that's what I found out even though I'm not a pastry chef. I want cake shop, not a pastry chef. You need to know enough about your business. Need to be dangerous enough in every area of the business, at least for the people that you manage in order to be taken seriously. When you say something, I can't ask someone to do something in a certain amount of time. You have no idea if it's actually doable.

Bertrand Théaud:   11:23
Now you need to have some kind of the basic knowledge so you can follow up on what's going up. Yeah.

Thibaut Carminho:   11:27
Yeah. So you so that requires works on yourself. You need to actually, either. You do the job first, and then you hire someone to replace you all. You are someone, and you train yourself on the side to make sure that you know what you're talking about.

Bertrand Théaud:   11:40
Okay? But when you're at this internship which turned into a job right after. Okay. On. So you were managing teams off interns? Yes, on. So you were saying that this interns, they will stay for a couple of months on me? Yes. You didn't grow some. You know, it didn't go some kind of frustration because even if you have somebody that you like isn't good in turn, you know, you trained that person. It takes energy, takes time, and then it must be me, I guess maybe first ready to have this person out of the door exactly, like about month. Because it must be difficult to to build the business in the longer

Thibaut Carminho:   12:16
it was killing me. I mean, I was very happy to see some of them live, but at the same time, once you have a team and I mean, you know that it exactly sweet

Bertrand Théaud:   12:25
point, you know, drink sometimes. So

Thibaut Carminho:   12:27
when court actually at the maximum off their knowledge and they are really, really blooming, that's where you have to see them go. That was very frustrating. And that's one of the reason why I left. Also, the company was growing. So luckily, we had some full time staff. After that, we were theory lying on interns. But we had some full time stuff. So when I arrived, the company had around four stuff while including in terms. And when I left, we were close to 20. So it was a lot more.

Bertrand Théaud:   12:58
How long did you stay with this company?

Thibaut Carminho:   13:01
Well, I stayed. I worked from home for a while. The last year I was actually working on my business, setting up my business on the side and all the operation will move to China, So I didn't want to China. So I was staying in Hong Kong. I think I was employed for about three and 1/2 year in total.

Bertrand Théaud:   13:21
Okay, so that's that's pretty good. From 4 to 20. Yeah, Yeah, 20 people.

Thibaut Carminho:   13:27
Yeah, well, that was not only thanks to me, the whole country was working well, but yeah, but that definitely it was a big The problems are not the same when you have Ah, Dima for a team of 20. So I learned a lot along the way on dso you know, it became a pretty big company. That's one of the reasons why I left because I realised I would never be able to grow. I mean, the company would grow under me, but not I would not be able to go higher in the key. I was stuck just below the Big Buster's, but the owner and he was young enough. We would not know retiring any time soon, so I knew that I was stuck here with that level of responsibility and that level of

Bertrand Théaud:   14:05
salary, probably. You realise that after one of the one year, two years, you realise that anyone will be there will be a stopping your progression. Yeah, Was it because sometimes okay, Alan would have to live with this position, so it's better to move to something else

Thibaut Carminho:   14:21
or that was most. The main reason why I left was obviously because I was about to start a business, which we can discuss that later on. But mostly it was because of the nature of the business. It's not a business that you can really build on long term. It's every project is a one time thing, and you need to restart from scratch every time. Marketing budget not are flexible The sometimes some years some companies will have a big budget. Next year. They have nothing. And, um, when you do give to your clients, you don't over the same gift every year. So it's not

Bertrand Théaud:   15:01
because it's or is it the same clients placing orders one after the other? Or

Thibaut Carminho:   15:07
that's what we try to keep. Its very difficult because clients want changes, they

Bertrand Théaud:   15:11
want one of gift. So they were so

Thibaut Carminho:   15:13
we would be able to sort everything, but it we depends. So we we had to offer something new. Non stop just to make sure the client think about us and the convention is very hard. And because you're not actually making anything your middleman, your invoicing them, you're taking the money and you're asking someone else to do the job. So the factory that is going to make the gift can work with hundreds of agents like you. So your clients as the choices, they really can go with anyone else. So it's very, very difficult. You get blamed when your factory is in the wrong, but you don't get praised when when they're doing their job s Oh, yeah, The business itself was very frustrating in the margins were not

Bertrand Théaud:   15:54
because that was my point. Must be driven by price,

Thibaut Carminho:   15:56
right? You need to offer low price, but you need to offer extra service to be so Yeah, so it's not. It's difficult in the weights built. You need to be chip because people don't want to spend a lot of money on gifts because it doesn't bring anything back. It's just is just a gift. It's just something you sway on the table in the perceived value of the gifts of Allah O. If you buy USB key, if I give you a USB key and they're going to thank me five for five days off for five years, just the USB key. So the impact on the client is not big, and at the same time someone needs to pay for it s o the cheaper the better. And most clients don't even care if their clients are going to use the gift that just the fact

Bertrand Théaud:   16:37
that you bring it gestures, that feeling you get when you go to another your real ranger similar or something like that. So, yeah, it remember that, You know, it's

Thibaut Carminho:   16:45
it's a gamble when you actually take the money from your client. When you're like, OK, I can do, I can give you these price and you lower your march into five or 10%. You haven't produced anything yet. You don't know if you're factor is going to do the job right or if they're going to mess it up. If they mess up, obviously you have to pay back so you're constantly gambling on. I hope China's factory is going to do the job right, and I hope the delivery companies that ever is going to deliver on time. And I hope there's so many steps. What can go wrong along the way in the margins are still Ito that it's a very, very stressful industry

Bertrand Théaud:   17:23
because I guess also, you have no in venturing in this industry. You wait. You wait until you have a note from new clients. For you. Place an order with

Thibaut Carminho:   17:30
a 45 day or 60 days

Bertrand Théaud:   17:33
so that you can create a lot of stress because you receive the order from your client just to make sure that you will deliver.

Thibaut Carminho:   17:38
Exactly. And people don't understand why you are chasing them in July for for Christmas orders, so they are not really the most off them. They're going to think about Christmas two months before Christmas, not not not six months before, and, you know, it was a very tough industry. So I started to look around, find us a job,

Bertrand Théaud:   17:56
and what would you say? You learn that during this spirit that is still useful or helpful today and you're in your with your current business

Thibaut Carminho:   18:04
like pretty much everything I knew when I started my business. I learned it there because I didn't work much before that. So that was most of the things that I learned a lot. I learned how to manage a team. I learned how to work on a budget. I have sent e mails to clients to apologise for the China factory, making a wrong job. What, And this caviar? I hope I would I would never have to write them. I had to step in into my stuff. Clients are e mails or what? To to apologise for something happening. So all of these things, I basically had to take responsibility and have to be responsible for what was happening in almost everything. Pretty much. There was a time where for some interns, I asked the money to be given to me so I could pay them myself instead of them being paid by someone else. Because I realise some people are more respectful when when it comes Tio, they tend to respect more. The guy pay them

Bertrand Théaud:   19:00
three end of the month. So when you're just a paycheck. So

Thibaut Carminho:   19:05
that's why I asked some of them to the air for some of them to receive their money. And I would give them back. I would give them the money in cash. Just all you know, you just pay them using some of the money of the company. Just because I felt like OK, they will respect me more if I do that. I'm so yeah. No, I learned I learned a lot of things I don't know how to speak English for for for first, Which is why I learnt how Teo, how I learned a lot about hunting culture. I was living in Hong Kong and working in Hong Kong for four years before I started this business. And and yeah, there's a lot of little cultural things that I learned along the way. I think if I was working for the company, I would have loved them anyway. But just being in a coma for four years helped me a lot to understand who are Hong Kong people. I

Bertrand Théaud:   19:53
guess you learn a lot because of this position that you had and the weather business where structure you arrive as an intern and immediately you have a lot of responsibility. You almost conducting the business.

Thibaut Carminho:   20:03
Yeah. Then the well, the reason why I give myself 100 into this job is because I when my my boss at the time wanted to hire me, he asked me, Okay, How much? Trying to pay you for you to stay, and I just I felt like Okay, that's my one. Once in a lifetime moment, I gave him a crazy number. Of course, he didn't pay me that way. Bar gain. And we reached a point where I was paid much more than I thought I was worth. So every morning I was working. I'm thinking, while you were getting paid too much for what you do it. So it turns out I was not factoring in distress. If job gives you a lot of stress, you need to be paid for that stress. So at the end of the inferior was overpaid. But at the time, I felt like I was massively over, paid for what I was over. I was fresh out of school. I had no knowledge of anything in the industry, know Madge Mints Gale's No. So I had to learn. And so I Yeah, I read a lot of articles on Electron 19. I read a lot of books. I was really trying to better myself. You know that You match the team and keep keep my boss away from the working space because that was what he wanted to be. You wanted to be out, and he wanted me to handle the team. So it was not an easy task. But I learned I learned a lot along the way. I failed a lot. That's how you learn.

Bertrand Théaud:   21:17
Exactly. And so, after why you realise that anywhere you would not be spending your next five years in this company on DH, I didn't mean you knew that you wanted to set up a business in the food industry. This's you called pastures, or do you explore different opportunities?

Thibaut Carminho:   21:40
No, I was not really not willing to start a business. I didn't quit because, I mean, I didn't I was thinking to quit way before I started to think about making a opening. A company here, um, actually got a lot of job interviews in different areas of luxury retail. Ah. Ah. Like a newspaper magazine like sales magazine. I try to change that. Try to learn more things So I was looking around. Obviously, the salary a was offered was lower than what I had said. It was difficult for me to switch. I was at the time. I was really mastering my job. So it was not too difficult for me to go to work because I knew what I was away. So, yeah, I was a bit sceptical about, like, moving to a new industry, learning everything new, being paid less. So I was not really rushing anything. I was taking my time looking for job offers and everything.

Bertrand Théaud:   22:37
You knew that you will stay at that time. He was like that. There is a transition because they were that transition. I'll go back to Europe.

Thibaut Carminho:   22:45
No, it was our question. I was staying in my company off fighting something else in Congress thing in common. And so yeah, so my best friend at the time, the French guy arrived in Hong Kong pretty much at the same time as me. We met at AA of French Chambers of Commerce meeting. I've never been to this caf places. I mean, that was the first time and the only time I ever went. Teo, the Chamber of commerce gathering your metre. And so I met. I met Lu there. Lu is a pastry chef. And so he was my friend. He became my best friend. We played, We parted, we drank. We someway everything. We did everything together and we were leaving, right? We're almost neighbours. Eso We were spending a lot of time together. We both had our jobs, but yeah, he was really my best friend. And he always talked about how, before his 30 years old, he would have his own business set up.

Bertrand Théaud:   23:43
And what was his job at

Thibaut Carminho:   23:46
that time? He was a pastry trainer. So he was working for a chocolate company, French chocolate company. And he was training pastry chef. How to use the

Bertrand Théaud:   23:56
chocolate. Okay, so he's doing one with the Connexion with your current business?

Thibaut Carminho:   24:01
Yeah, definitely. Is the one who came up with the route? The base of the concept? He talked to me. Have an idea. Listen to him. You wanted to do a touch up. So you want to do it? A pastry pastry shop. Focus on that for me. Um And so that was

Bertrand Théaud:   24:23
the only reason why pastries and that chocolate cross our lemon, lemon, lemon thought or whatever other cheesecake.

Thibaut Carminho:   24:33
I The reason. First of all, he's a He's a pastry chef, so everything that is not everything that is linked to bakery. We He's not an expert, so he was really forgetting on pastry and did the love cake shop already on the market. But when you go to these cake shops, even the most expensive one, you will find a lot of good things. But tarts are usually not the best for a simple reason. It takes a lot of money in machinery and everything to make your own base. The base of the crease people, the biscuits and biscuit this is is not really technical, but this is really We're talking about the product itself, the biscuit that the crunchy. It counts for 50% off the experience. If you buy your eyes, not crispy. If it's soggy and soft, you won't enjoy it. And the problem is most cake shop, because they are just having one or two passing there in the whole range of products. They are not going to invest in the kitchen, just 4000 so they are buying the base frozen and the bays when they're frozen, especially with Hong Kong humidity. It's soft. And so he and is usually not amazing. But it's fast. You just buy the frozen days you put cream you Gertrude, you have a top. You can sell it.

Bertrand Théaud:   25:49
Okay, Beckett, and you

Thibaut Carminho:   25:50
don't have to. Beckett's delivered to you baked, and so you don't have to do anything.

Bertrand Théaud:   25:55
Quality must be

Thibaut Carminho:   25:57
amazing, but that's the job for most of these places. It save a lot of time. I'd say we're off space, so hotels and a lot of places use that because it's fast and efficient, but it doesn't taste amazing. And Hong Kong people love crunch, love, crispy and crunchy things. I have no idea about that. He told me about it because he travelled around Asia Pacific doing different CAF cakes and the one that are the most popular ones are always the one with some crunch on it. So he felt like I'm confident that this thing and worst case and I hope people don't know why the top. They would just think it's a cake and it's no problem. We're cake shop, which is good cakes. So I told him I said, Well, crew idea. Great. Now what's your What's your marketing? What's your special selling point? What makes you special? What's the name of the company? Just tell me more about the rest, like you have the cakes. What what's around it around the product? Because there's a lot of examples in many, many different market of a poor product off low quality product, very well packaged in Hong Kong and very successful. So having a good product is great, but having a bad product well, package works as well, so you need to really work on your packaging. And so I don't even see what's the plan it, so I don't know. So I gave him a few tips that you need to find someone that can help you. You need to find a partner. Obviously, I wasn't thinking of myself, but he's my friend. And there's one thing I know. One thing I know is never build a business with your friends. My dad told me that everybody was You can take any business entrepreneur book. They all say that don't do business with family or friends if you care about them. So I was not ready to start a business with the marrow. And yeah, he kept talking about that business thing and he was talking about the way you would say all the tiles and everything, But you still have no idea of the marketing. So one day it's okay, let's let's sit down and let's talk about what we could do. I was working for for a company that was selling marketing gift, promotional gift. So I was in touch with marketing directors all day long. So I was I was like, Okay, this is what I think I would do if I was starting a tough business. So I gave him a few ideas. I told him, what would I try to promote it? What would I How would a package it discount things and not all of my ideas were good, but some of them were not bad. And he was like, Okay, why don't you just do it with me? And so I started to think, No, no, that's not for me or my friend. I don't think it's a good idea. And you said, No, Don't Russia just take time? Think about it. Took me a day or two. I called my mom my Dad The booze there, you should. My dad said you should start a business with your friend. But if the business is good, then why not? Mom? Say if if you're happy with it, just go for it on deep inside. I knew I I I would not accept that he's doing it without me because of my ideas. I mean, I already got you already spent time thinking about what? The concept. So if you found someone that just step in and do it with him and they are successful, I would feel that

Bertrand Théaud:   29:12
they were part of the storey already. Right?

Thibaut Carminho:   29:13
So Andy and he was my best friend. So I knew that somehow I wanted him to succeed. If watching him fail was not, was not I wasn't a happy ending for me. So I was like, Okay, I'm not 100% confident with my skills because I'm not I'm not a marketing director. I'm not business owner. I'm not entrepreneur. I'm none of this. But I knew that you could do great kicks. I knew it because I trusted him. And I think he had the same feeling about me. He was like, I'm not so sure Hall of my cakes are going to be a best seller, but I trust that Ikea and package it in a way that they would obviously we never talked about that. At the time. We would just say, Oh, I can do it and he was saying, I can do it So both of us were very proud and working on it When we started, we started working hard on building the logo and everything. I care a lot about the logo because that was for me. That was the starting point of everything else. Once you have your logo and your colour, then your packaging is easy to design. Your your your shop is to design.

Bertrand Théaud:   30:15
So you designed the logo you find, so

Thibaut Carminho:   30:17
I tried to get myself on. Then I paid someone to do it somewhat, Chip, like a freelance searching. And we did not agree. I we were 90% okay with the logo. But there was something to change and we didn't know what or what or where we were. I tried that. We played around with the logo. In many ways, it just wasn't working. And one day, the baby, so one day we weigh sat down and we were arguing very hard about that. And he said, How about we just accept that this is not the right level? We just start from scratch, okay? Yeah, Let's do it. So we hired a illustrator, someone that is a lot more expensive, a lot more skill. And we told him, This is what we don't like. This is what we like. We stand them, the whole, the whole thing. And he came up with three logo that was part of the contract. Sweet things. All of them were good again. Not perfect. Not nothing. Nothing really Like That's the one. So we were desperate. It's never gonna work. And WeII paid a pretty big amount of money for three locals for three ideas. And none of the three ideas were they were all good in their own way. Thank you. Click right. And we were kind of giving up, but we didn't have time to write him an e mail, so we didn't We will let it go for a weekend. They were in Macau playing like partying, and we received the une mail from that desire and saying, Oh, I just got a false idea. Sorry, E. I don't charge you for that. Just that's my idea. And when we saw it, we were both in the hotel room and we were like, That's it. That's this one. It's not perfected the colony to be changed, But that's the way we want. And where we were really, really lucky that this design decided to I came up with a false idea when we paid him for sweet. And that's the local wheezing today. And we never regretted this local. I know that a lot of people who actually don't like the orange colour I don't like the logo itself. I'm in love with it

Bertrand Théaud:   32:14
very well. And it's really your brand. I don't Yeah, it worked for us. So I

Thibaut Carminho:   32:20
don't think we may change the last thing in the future. But not that this week.

Bertrand Théaud:   32:24
And so you. So you if we take, you know, the storey chronologically. So you had the logo. That was even before you started the business before you set up the company. Yeah, because you started with this idea. Okay, We will, as basically bake and sell talks in the Hong Kong market and then you wanted to build the concept around us, and I mean the business plan. But did you have a lot of discussion about? But I do want to want to sell without, you know, the gender distribution channel that we will be using on all that you set up

Thibaut Carminho:   33:00
before we even had a local. We have to talk about the name. And before we could talk about the name, we have to understand what we wanted. This name two vacant to do to show to the world. First of all, I told him I said, I'm not. I am not a pastry chef and I'm not a shop clerk. I've never bean on the front on the front side of a shop. Never doctor client like this given change, they can change. So I say, if we do that, we do it in a way that is, we can scale it. So we think our brand not like a small shop made by two friends. We don't put our names out there. We don't put our face out there. We just make a brand that eventually we can just copy paste different

Bertrand Théaud:   33:40
countries. Okay, So you had this idea

Thibaut Carminho:   33:41
that from the beginning, that was That was the plan, I told him. I said, I trust you to make good cakes. Trust me on that. We need to make it big. We need to think it as it's big, We still have one shop. So right now we're not anywhere close to be where we want to be, but the steel of oftime. But, yeah, the concept was, we do something scaleable. But then the cakes are good, our five star quality. So I told him I said, This is great, But if there's only two way we can market, that is a luxury.

Bertrand Théaud:   34:17
Because where? Because of the

Thibaut Carminho:   34:18
prices, Because, yeah, because of the production price and because of the quality, if we go for luxury, there's a lot of things you can't do in marketing. If you are a luxury brand, I won't name any. But if you are very luxury brand, you're stuck in your marketing. You can do three promotion. You'll never CMS doing street promotion. You can dio buy one. Get one free you're never gonna see leave. It'll the company doing this so there's a lot of things you can do is your business doesn't go as well as you expected. So you're stuck in your marketing if you go luxury. Plus luxury is not fun and a luxury is already existing, especially in the in the cake industry. In Hong Kong, 99% of the cake shop look that expensive ones now luxury in their design. Marble everywhere, clean colours, very detailed bags and things like this. The only problem is the service. But this is the only problem in any luxury company in Hong Kong. The service is not up there. The terrific. Yeah, it is not great, isn't it? You're not, You're not. It's not up to what you expect when you see the look of the shop. So I thought you might say, I don't want actually, I want people to. First of all, I'm not comfortable working in an environment that is called and it's two to luxury and I don't like it. Not a luxury consumer and now willing to spend eight hours or 10 hours every day in the shop that is like

Bertrand Théaud:   35:40
just don't relate.

Thibaut Carminho:   35:42
So I said, okay, if we go something for something fun, cool, fun is chip. Funny is usually not not expensive, so we were stuck. So we had to associate the product with something high end but not luxury. And that's where we came up with the pot. I think art is expensive artists. I mean, it doesn't have to be, but art is, is, is is ah, valuable. And so pop art and tart is this is quite is matching. So Lou came up with popped out problems popped out to Kellogg's, and I didn't want to have the lawyers of Kellogg's. Your

Bertrand Théaud:   36:24
right eye's just ready pretty. They're very, very bad. Put them in the microwave for two seconds that

Thibaut Carminho:   36:33
I've actually never tried one. But I know that dry on existing registered trademark, and I know that they have a NA me off lawyer going threat.

Bertrand Théaud:   36:41
Don't you think about it? So, pop,

Thibaut Carminho:   36:43
that was definitely not an idea of The problem is pop was exactly what we wanted to do, because if you take okay, if you take pop music for Michael Jackson, the king of pop is music. If you ask any musician out there, they're going to tell the same thing. Michael Jackson was a musical god, while the genius was so it is quite either music is quite. It was high, high quality production hike, weighty music. But if you look at who is actually listening to him, why, it's pretty much everybody. Poor people, rich people. Women man

Bertrand Théaud:   37:15
won every large audience.

Thibaut Carminho:   37:16
So it's This is the true essence. Off pop. It's doesn't have to be battle good Quiet. It has to be popular among all people, and so everybody agree on the same thing. People will appreciate it in a different way, but they all agree that it's good. And so that's why we wanted to achieve. That's why we decided to call the company Tarts and Pop Tarts. We write in French because that's what we do. French tarts and pop because of the pop art

Bertrand Théaud:   37:42
being because everybody understands the concept.

Thibaut Carminho:   37:47
Yeah, so the pub concept was actually a bit difficult to take after that. That's that's why we had to come up with a new idea to boost it. I had pop music in my hand from the beginning, but the design of the shop was pop up. He was popped out and thought that was the retail shop, and I had her chances of client coming in turn me OK, We are the props because we're selling task on. So obviously people wear the. At first I was explaining it. I was wasting my time trying to really explain it, but I realised that if I have to explain to every client, that means it's not obvious enough. So I I realise that, okay, it's pointless to try to explain. It should be clear. So if pop art is not a thing that is obvious enough, then let's go for pop music. So we approach a few like production companies in Hong Kong, companies that endo the tour, the water off artists but pop artist or any artist and even right, right after we opened the shop a few weeks after, we had a Ben Co. Imagine Dragons, who actually all the cakes for there for the backstage for their show. So that was our first pop star eating cakes, and they loved it. So they recommended to the company and the company put us on the Marron five show months after so two months, one month and 1/2 after we opened the shop, we had imagine dragons and married five eating the cakes so we were like, Wow, that's

Bertrand Théaud:   39:26
a huge exposure. Yeah,

Thibaut Carminho:   39:28
that's not not that, actually, because they don't They one off them way, they find the box. So I have in my shop, we have a wall full of boxes signed without is now. We have modern 40 years. We have a lot of that is now, But the time we only had two. So we were like, Okay, this seems to be a better way to push the pop thing, because people understand that now, in five Bob, Britney Spears is Bob. And so that was our exit. Like the way we rerouted our marketing toward pop music instead of out. Because art is not obvious enough.

Bertrand Théaud:   40:02
Okay? And so, but so you build the concept, and so at some point, so you So I guess you set up the company you mentioned before that If you want Teo, I mean, bake tart, then you need some some special equipment that pricey. So I don't Maybe it's confidential about Did you find all the first, the first retail locations in the kitchen and all

Thibaut Carminho:   40:28
that? It's not confidential. The truth is, I had pretty much no money. I mean, no saving. I had the whole The whole company costed us close to three. Sorry. The whole company cost It is close to 500,000 Att. The very beginning. Hongkong dollars. Ah, so we had

Bertrand Théaud:   40:54
to secure the first location and the kitchen equipment.

Thibaut Carminho:   40:57
This is just once we had the If you count, if you factor in all the cost, including logo and everything. We're close to 100,000 euro one. A 1,000,000 on conductor. Okay, Roughly So. Obviously I didn't have anywhere near that amount on Di. We really wanted to keep 50 50. We want to keep the control. Um, what we did is we We saved as much as we can.

Bertrand Théaud:   41:25
So no more, No more party. My

Thibaut Carminho:   41:27
party. I was I was walking and I was I was paid by commissioner. Worked as hard as I could to get as many commission as I could, and I was saving them. Or second step. We live together. We were both single at the time. We were both way. Don't have any kids. So we were like, OK, we are paying two rents and we're spending literally 90% of our time together. How about we just moved to the same flat will be cheaper. So we moved to a flat, but the flat was What we found was bigger than we expected. So we sub rented one of the room. So we ended up with we had we were together, post one person. So we're trying to really keep our Castillo. We were eating the cheapest food you can think off. We were the blocked out at the time. There was none of that s so it was really, really We're keeping our cost low. But that's not enough to you don't find a 1,000,000 Incan dollar by just saving a little bit of money on the side and eating cheaper food. So we had to approach banks because we don't have any lonely. I don't have a student loan. He doesn't have a loan. So we were pretty clean in terms ofthe great school. So we went to HSBC and other banks. Obviously all of them rejected us. They don't even want to hear about about the way that they don't care. Ah, So we went Tio. We tried many, many banks and at the end we tried Bank of China and make of China was okay to finance us, you know? Yeah, they were OK to toe to lend us money. The money that the lone wass I mean, it's funny because the the rate you know, the credit dress for interest rate, the one they actually tell you the one they show you is gradually lo is the open upon 58 or appears to be very long. But when you really when you there's a lot off extra fees and extra charge and the interest rate are actually not stable, they are not fixed. So when you realise how much money you received on your bank account and how much you have to repay its close to 30% at the end, so it's not ideal, the monthly repayment are high, so we we board money from from that bank.

Bertrand Théaud:   43:45
So you had a lot of pressure when you started. You reimburse this alone, I guess on a monthly basis raises you to generate catch very quick.

Thibaut Carminho:   43:53
Exactly. We had to pay ourselves. We have no choice, because the rent, the rent of our flat, the food we had to pay the rent of our shop, the electricity, the bills and everything plus the loan. We in order to cover it, we had to pay ourself the salaries. I was close to 20,000 each. That was what we had to pay. Thes

Bertrand Théaud:   44:16
money was just cover your face just to survive. There was, you

Thibaut Carminho:   44:19
know? So the first month we paid that money without it was with cash. With what we had in the in the company fund, second months, it was a bit more tricky. The certain months started to Yeah, it took. It took some time to really way. I think it took three months to break even for the company. But we were still we will. We reduced our salary a limit, and we were living off because, I mean, this 20,000 thing was actually just covering for cost. If we wanted to take a taxi, we had to take it from our saving. If I wanted to buy not the cheapest eggs, but exhibit more expensive. I had to take it if I wanted to charge my octopus cop. It was not a hot ticket for my saving. My saving was going really, really feeding their two year old Nia. Yeah, next to the Rome which we quickly reached zero. And then it was my partner paying for both of us because we're living together. Well, we have to go. He told me. Okay. You don't pay the rent anymore. You just You just safe and s. So he covered for me for about 23 months. And until he saving was very, very close to zero as well. And when this is where we got extremely lucky, that's where we got our first hotel contract, which boosted the company profit and allowed us to studying. Finally. Sterlite. Yeah, make money and start to actually being positive. It took It took 68 to 6 to seven months. We we didn't have a staff of the time, so the shop was open 77 days a week.

Bertrand Théaud:   45:57
So it was you and your partner doing everything.

Thibaut Carminho:   46:00
Everything. We we built the way we were cleaning the kitchen. We were He was making the cakes. We were cleaning the shop. We were taking the money of the client doing. They are counting playing the windows. Yeah, and it wasn't enough, eh? So we started doing things like way sub rented our shop. Wait. There was a person who wanted there was a baker. Wanted to try new recipes, but he couldn't do it in the company was working for. So he was renting our kitchen before we opened the shop. So he was coming around six AM living around 8 30 and we were opening at night. And after that, we had a lady making Qassem afterward. So we were basically taking two rent. Okay, extra. This was not ideal. You give the keys of your business to other people. It was not the best. But without that we would have We would have probably collapsed on. So this they were doing these 55 days a week. So we were sub renting our shop five days a week. And the extra two days we were basically offering people to rent Ah, whole shop for parties. So we were here to offer them the service that making the cake it was all you can eat. I would never do that again. But

Bertrand Théaud:   47:25
basically you were looking for possible source. Even you Exactly. We were money, Communion

Thibaut Carminho:   47:31
way had no other source of income. That was the main. That was gumbo. And we had no saving. None of us. So at the end, the money was not profitable enough. And not not by a little. We really need to boost the cells. And I realised the retail sales down there going to be double overnight. You need working, It takes time.

Bertrand Théaud:   47:53
Is it also because of the location of the store? Because I guess if you don't have money at the beginning, maybe you didn't have the best location in retail. Location is his key. The

Thibaut Carminho:   48:02
location is location is really the best forest right now. It is the best we can get with our budget. It was really having a shop in Central Shang Guan, like in really the centre off someone for this, for this price was impossible. Everything we we visited before and after was tripled the price that what we're paying now, so

Bertrand Théaud:   48:24
okay, it was a good deal.

Thibaut Carminho:   48:25
He was a good deal. The problem is, the location is not ideal, It's great, it's great for our budget is a good value for money, but it's not ideal. It's no shopping more. It's not. Central Central is not next to the MTR station, so they're not made food traffics. Not many pedestrians passing by that not many people think. So let's see

Bertrand Théaud:   48:45
that it's getting It's going to storm on days to talk.

Thibaut Carminho:   48:50
Yeah, and so yeah, so retail was slow. And this

Bertrand Théaud:   48:54
you knew that from the beginning because you said before that use your idea was to go big on considering, you know, the retail price retail price. The price of rental in Hong Kong is difficult to grow company, you know, building one starts the others. So what was your strategy? I need to have more people at least coming in that store and do to expand from

Thibaut Carminho:   49:14
that. The idea. I still have that excel file. That is the projection of sales. The DD estimated sales. I remember we were estimated the average spending like the average basket but ed about 200 something per person, which is four pieces. So we were expecting people, on average, two by four pieces and we were expecting 40 off these people per day, which is not crazy. If you think about it,

Bertrand Théaud:   49:44
doesn't sound completely reasonable.

Thibaut Carminho:   49:46
We never even up to that day we never achieve that. Never the we don't have

Bertrand Théaud:   49:52
the wind because we might not enough people coming to the store, people buying much less than what you expected.

Thibaut Carminho:   49:58
First of all, people are lazy people. Don't you know that people do not walk to your shop? People want to always online that e I mean, if they have given the option, they always choose to all the online because it saves them time and it takes them the the bad. Bad luck like you come all the one I want is not available anymore. If you're online, there's no risk.

Bertrand Théaud:   50:21
But they don't like the experience in coming to the stores. See different

Thibaut Carminho:   50:24
time. They love it, but just they love it. If it's on their way and our shop is on nobody's way, it's done in a place that nobody passed by. So so yeah, So we quickly realised the first week we realise that my calculation and I'm taking the blame because it was really my calculations were wrong. We

Bertrand Théaud:   50:45
do not have stuck with the store.

Thibaut Carminho:   50:46
Yeah, and we already have a Israel Eze. There's no way to step out. You have machines that cost you. You have a loan to repay.

Bertrand Théaud:   50:53
So you have to be quick thinking What? What did you do what you do next.

Thibaut Carminho:   50:58
So yeah, so we took every possible way to get money. Now, not tomorrow now, because that was so. At that moment, we were not talking about strategy. We're not talking with him about survival. We're talking about being able to pay our rent, the shop rent and are hungry. Um, I guess being two people helps because first of all, you have to saving, which helps. Second, you don't want to let the other down. I feel like it's also your responsibility Was my calculation that put us in this in his in this situation. So I needed to find a way, and I think he was. It was also thinking the same. He's a chef, is making cakes that people eat. When nobody come and buy your case, you feel like maybe Mac, it sounded so good. So he also tries this to to do something that people want it. So we both work hard to match what people were expecting from us. So we we started to do kicks with much of a simple majority. We didn't have that when we started, so we did a match at top because we expected people would like it. Um, yeah, We took money everywhere we could. We rented the shop we started to. We went to bed at six. AM because we had a party in the shop, starting the next day at 9 a.m. We work seven days a week that I wasn't here. We finally reached the moment where we have enough profit to ira stuff.

Bertrand Théaud:   52:16
And that was when you signed your first contract with the hotel. Yeah, a month after when we got the first payment. How did you manage tto gett this agreement signed with the hotel?

Thibaut Carminho:   52:25
There's no argument. There is never any agreement. Yeah. I

Bertrand Théaud:   52:27
mean, you have this business commercial relationship

Thibaut Carminho:   52:30
that Zoey Lou Lou has a lot of Connexion because he was working for a chocolate company. He was spending most of his weekdays in the kitchens of the big hotels. So in those a lot of people in the market in Hong Kong, but also in Asia Pacific, So yeah, so one way did not approach them. Actually, it's one of them came to us and say, Oh, since you're living touch eyes the way you could do that for us on DH way said yes to everything at a time. There's also one thing alone afterward. You need to set some rules on you can't say like that. But anyway, the time were saying yes to everything. So the guy said you wanted? Yes, we started making a lot of other. Yeah, so that's that's hard work and these helped us. And now there's a It's about 30% of our business now. The hotel we do, we do cakes for hotels. This is really a big part of our business. Now we have the retail, the shop retail, which is not amazing. It's not bad. It's not amazing online sales which are booming, and we have the the hotels in the hotel

Bertrand Théaud:   53:37
thing. But will you said that what save you at some point is that is because you didn't compromise on the quality of the product. Yeah, because a lot I mean, we know the storey a lot off. You know, you you have new products coming on the market. They're good And then over time the quality, you know, decrees. And this's so maybe you mean maybe for sure, you increase your profit for a while. But then you lose your customers, you want up tended to do

Thibaut Carminho:   54:02
long term. That's what you do, and we had. Even now, even today, we have proof of that. This I don't recommend that strategy. Oh, I think people in Hong Kong or else where people are not stupid if they have tried something good once there's a high chance and that's really what you should expect as a business owner is a high chance that they come back, bringing someone with them, recommending you to someone. If you disappoint them at that moment, the second time when they are actually showing off your product to someone else, you lose them forever. Used both of them now only use them. They are going to go on to

Bertrand Théaud:   54:35
give you bad reputations, get good reviews

Thibaut Carminho:   54:38
because especially when you expensive were not the cheaper. So it's very difficult to get good reviews because at the end, today

Bertrand Théaud:   54:45
you said you have yeah, our expectation when you pay a high price to

Thibaut Carminho:   54:49
expect a higher, high quality thing so exceeding this is difficult. So we way really worked hard to get people to write reviews. But people were unhappy, especially those people were happy and they're disappointed they had no problem going online and just keeping your business right away. And when you are new to the industry, you don't have many reviews, and I say it is difficult to get good reviews so you don't have many of them. You need to bad or very bad, and you can see already a drop.

Bertrand Théaud:   55:15
All your friends you

Thibaut Carminho:   55:17
started myself. I write good reviews for myself. I on Facebook that still review written by me with my own name on it, saying, I'm the owner, but you got to love yourself. So, yeah, you put you put reviews. I have my friends, but reviews. But yeah, it's not enough. We have to review thing, good reviews, all in English or in French if you have what bad reviews in Chinese people are going to trust. But people trust you, but I I do the same you want. If you about to travel, you

Bertrand Théaud:   55:42
want to know you cheque the reviews and there's nothing

Thibaut Carminho:   55:46
that is good. And if the body's not too bad, like okay, if people are complaining over the colour off the blanket, and I don't mind if they are complaining that there was a rat in the bed. There is a problem. So that's actually yeah. People trust the bad reviews more than the good ones. And so, yeah, so that's why we never compromising the quality. It's actually the opposite. When we started making profit, we started using more expensive ingredients. Most of all of our engines are imported from France, except the match, which would buy from Japan all the rest. The chocolate cream, the butter and flour. Everything is French, so it costs. But in Hong Kong with the no tax policy, it's not about is actually a good place to be to do a food business. But but even within the good, good quality brands there is, there is different. You have excellent quality of you already know where we started using the ultimate quality thing, and I'm not saying people would notice the difference. But I fought, so I feel good about it. I feel good telling my client I have the best quality. They confined, and second, you don't want to start selling people things that people can do at home. I yeah, if you're doing something cheap that people could actually make better by himself. Then why would they pay you to do it? So I think access to these ingredients, not You need to be professional. Reach you. You need to be nice to have a kitchen, too, to be able to even buy these chocolate. So we have access to the best quality ingredients, the best cream, the best chocolate, the best, everything we used the best and the steel room for profit. People would tell you that there's no profit to be made is really because they don't want make huge profits. But there's good profit to be made using good quiting regions. And long term, I believe in that. But it's a lot easier to say it now that it's working, Then when when we were actually struggling and people were like, Oh, you should consider making lunch show you should consider making savoury talks or yell or sandwich or whatever you seriously consider it. You start to consider it because you're like losing money now with my tough and my strategy was to go for the doubts. But I've been wrong before. I could be wrong on that as well. Maybe I should seriously start to do yeah, Savoury things. Lunch sandwich? I don't know. Luckily enough, we believe that the second you stop deal like the looting your concept or you start. You make your concept blur to clients not clear. You lose your you lose your your identity. And because we were building the identity, it was not a good time to start to get to to experiment. We wanted. We wanted to make sure people understand that. 1000 puppies doing tots only. Good, Good, good, good. That's it. That's it.

Bertrand Théaud:   58:22
And and then So you had this first business relationship with one hotel on day was successful, and that gives you the idea to approach off the hotel in Hong Kong. And this is how you initially basically made the business successful or you went from one hotel to 5 to 10 and son, and still the case today used to working with a lot of

Thibaut Carminho:   58:45
we still walking with. Yeah, it took time. The reason it takes time is because obviously, when you work with the hotel, the quantities are huge. Profit is less so you need more hands, more stuff. So every time we signed a new hotel, we usually make drastic changes in the kitchen. We hire more staff way by more machines. With this, there's money to be spent. So we had one hotel. We let it run, see if it's actually stable or not. Once we realised it was stable, we hired a nurse stuff and we signed. We had. We knew the other what they wanted us. So we discussed the price with them. We got the agreement. We have the second, a second staff and assert, and now we're walking with four different hotel. There's more. We have talked to many hotels, and there's a lot of them that we could work with. The issue we are now way are in a situation where we we can't take everybody without compromising the quality. And

Bertrand Théaud:   59:44
also, maybe you don't want to have your the same dots, you know, wearing on coming all the different things they tell you because they're your doubts, that kind of unique. So,

Thibaut Carminho:   59:53
yeah, but yeah, and again it's It's a bit. The kitchen is the size of the kitchen is big, but it's not the biggest. So if we add one more hotel, I will have two options. Either I remove one of the other hotel. Okay? Replaced this hotel with another 10 I decided to to kind of, uh, treasure along my retail sales. Like OK, after this level of sales, we don't take any orders. We block the others, we And so this way we can

Bertrand Théaud:   1:0:23
focus on delivering our

Thibaut Carminho:   1:0:26
but long term I don't believe in I believe in retail. I believe in you. I believe in the brand growing up and being more and more so. The retail sales are more profitable and they are more long term. So right now we want to keep 20 to 30% of production capacity for the retail to mean for the retail to grow. So our stuff I'm not crazy busy. But if tomorrow we have big owners or we have an increase in sales of 10 15 20% we're growing at a rate off 60 to 70% per year right now. So yeah, it's big. And mostly it's thanks to the retail. So I don't want to kill my team with I don't want stop the returns I need to tell you.

Bertrand Théaud:   1:1:09
But then when you speak about retail and considering that there are not so many people, you know opening, pushing the door to enter a new store. It's it's more online.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:1:18
It's yeah, the best decision we've ever taken, and really, this is considering. Everything we've done was, too. I decided to have our own online online shop on the online online store. People want to orry online, they don't want to come to your shop and they want you have a delivery and these two things you can work with food, pendel deliverer or these kind of companies to take care of that for you. Problem is,

Bertrand Théaud:   1:1:49
they take so much of you,

Thibaut Carminho:   1:1:50
they take a big part of profit. Second, they are the middleman, which means they're going to blame you when something goes wrong. They are not going to. Other clients are sorry we messed up. They're going to say Sorry, let's cheque with the restaurant. What happened? So I'm not against that. I make sense. So we worked with them for a while, and then I realised that the people order from them, actually, my clients. So I was He was basically our client were coming to their platform to order from us because there was no other choice to all the online so they were taking my profit to use my clients that

Bertrand Théaud:   1:2:24
were giving up your profit and plant based.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:2:27
So I was like, Okay, there's something to be done here. If we had our own delivery service in our own online ordering platform with people, it's the other former. So they would just stick to food, panda and deliver when uber it's and all that. So I just kept condemn. Oh, stop walking with them and I built we built. I worked with the company that makes these online things. We started this the first month we made enough money to cover for the whole year off that software. It's an expensive one. So the first month I knew that that was a good decision and because we didn't have that crazy fee to pay every month he was at one time was a yearly fee. You pay a yearly software and then use it for the rest of the year. There's no there's no

Bertrand Théaud:   1:3:14
amounts Lee.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:3:16
So it's a fixed fee because of that, starting from the first month's pay for that software. Second month I had extra profit, so I was like I can start to give discounts to my client or the only which I couldn't do before. Because if I give this complex the phial So I started giving free. Deliberate someplace is giving discounts and we have really been booming since we have that online thing yearly, yearly online it It's good for 70% on DH before, before we went online to after, I think it was the three sweet digits. Increasing cells.

Bertrand Théaud:   1:3:52
So what about the future? So okay, hotel. We understand you're happy to work with a few hotels that many on nine years. I mean your good Already. You can grow no more stores in Hong Kong. So what is the strategy for the future growth of the company?

Thibaut Carminho:   1:4:09
Well, no more Storey in Hong Kong. We are still discussing I having another retail store could be a good idea, but the same time it's a very expensive move, so we need to need to consider it. And I don't think having a second shop is going to double my online sales. And this is where the money is mostly made. So it's just going to increase my in shop sales for that shop. Esso. I haven't put the number down here that I haven't really calculated anything. So what? I really? But what I really, really want is because I know that this concept, the way we packaged the task, the way we make the cakes, the recipes, everything seems to be working. Even for a guy like me who never actually had any expense with food and beverage or even pastry, it's very easy to set up. It's very easy to run and with the right strategy, the right marketing or it's profitable. What I want to do now is to expand it to other countries. I want to do Franchising in Asia or we have rejected the brand everywhere, including Europe, on us. But yes, I think I think I don't think Hong Kong, Hong Kong people are so different from Singaporeans off. I mean, they have this specific, the specificity. But I think in terms ofthe food and restaurant, there's there's a food culture in Asia. People like to try a different kind of food, and and yet I really believe that it could work in Singapore. It could work in in Malaysia, could work in Taiwan or so in Korea, so yeah, so I'm not going to do it by myself because I don't have the Connexion. I don't have the network, but I'm very, very, very interested in Franchising this concept and supporting the whoever is going to be a Franchising supporting them going. They're opening the shop with them, helping them with design

Bertrand Théaud:   1:6:00
everything. So does it mean that your position and your role in the I mean, maybe not the position but your role in the company and started to change? I guess you spend less time in in the store. You spent more time thinking about what's next. Yeah.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:6:13
Yeah, totally. I don't believe I should be in the store to begin with. I make in my in my mind, there's a clear distinction between being a president and being a CEO. Uh, being a CEO, chief executive officer, You doing the executive? You're supposed to take care of the executive work. The actual work, The work of today, tomorrow. Don't you think so? Whenever this designed to prove, you need to approve it whenever there's the stuff missing or there's a stuff absolutely secret what you need to take care of that. That you here to run the business daily when you're the president you are supposed to our founder or whoever you're supposed to be thinking off next month in six months in two years, in five years he's supposed to think about the direction the company is supposed to be taking, and it's like having your back. If you're looking at the front wheel when you're driving, you know where you're going. You're definitely going to fail. Yeah, so that's why I'm trying to step out as much as possible from being the CEO of the company because I'm not bringing much value. Some people can do it for me. I mean, the shop, the stuff are well trained. They know what they're doing, and they're doing it very well. They don't need me to run the shop. Actually, when the phone is ringing, being me, answering the phone or someone who's big Cantonese is actually probably better. That's my stuff and go in the front, but giving the direction, trying to give the impulse, trying to contact the right person to get the network. And this cannot be done by your stuff, first of all, because they don't have the motivation to do it. Second, because there's no this,

Bertrand Théaud:   1:7:43
I think the future of your business, you know you want to be in control.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:7:46
Yeah, but you need to have a clear mind to do that. You can't be. You're thinking about your business when you're running. When you're taking a shower when you're you're not doing it when you are actually working on something for your business, so you need time, you need to step back and really look at where you want to go. So that's what I'm trying to do right now. I we worked seven days a week for a while, running, really doing the stuff work. Then we moved to six days or weeks and five days a week, and now we are on a three day schedule. So we work. I work Monday, Wednesday and Friday because I don't want I won't spend too long out of the shop because I want to know what's happening. I want I have something to print, have cheques to sign things like this. But I tried to be away long enough so that really can think about where I want this company to go and what actions I wantto put. And also any time for you to train myself to really get more skills that I really believe that this thing that I can improve to be better a better leader and so so I'm really, really I look forward to be off the shop four days a week off, five days a week, because, yeah, I keep control of the of the the finance, their counting this. I want to keep control of that because I want to know how the money, how my money spent, basically how the company money spent. So I need to know, and you need to have a look at that.

Bertrand Théaud:   1:9:16
So are you using? I mean, this time that you don't no longer spend in the store, so I can understand you. You're thinking off where the company will be going. You think this time as well to learn more things, things that may be useful in the company as inside. You know, you're not bringing that much value. It doesn't bring that much value for for you to be the one picking up the phone in the store. So you develop new skills or

Thibaut Carminho:   1:9:40
yeah, I spent a lot of time and money training myself. Many different things. First of all, not we don't. I mean, I'm not super old, and so I never really I didn't work much before. I was a business owner. So there's many things I didn't know about money and, you know, passive income assets, liabilities. Discounting. I had to learn them when I actually started a business. So I spend the left. I'm teaching myself how it works, how the company is working the accounting system. I used to do my counting. I think pretty much every young person or new to the business is going to do that. You now have access to Google Drive and Exhale, and people know how to use them. So they're like, Okay, let's do an Excel sheet with my expenses on my accounting or it we works. He works for, Well, it works when you're alone. If you're doing your own, accounting like this is fine. If it's your for personal finance, it's fine. But when it's for your own business, at some point you're going to be very limited because you're very time consuming. Its first of all, it's very time consuming. There's a lot of room for errors and yes, and you are. And one day someone is going to tell you a new investor potential. You plan to sell your company, you need Teo. Increase the amount of share the capital, whatever you're going to have to give a document quickly. Trial balance, I don't know. And very an accounting documents quickly. Not not 95 weeks. And you don't You don't know how to do it because you excel fathers and show any of this shows your daily spending and your daily entries. And you know how much you make that day. And you know how much you spend that day. And that's it. You so Yeah, so I still have in the content like a c p A. I'm not a C p A. But I know enough about counting so that I can handle my accounting software so that I can have a clear overview of what's happening on the bank account of this company. What the cash is being used for, what the who is using the credit cards? How many money? How many sales coming in, how many money we're coming up? I have a clear understanding of that. And if I have to issue accounting document. Now I can do it from my phone. So it's It's really encourage people who start a business well about to start a business. Do not not be too greedy about saving money on on accounting making invoices. And, yeah, there's very chips off 12 now that can do that. I can name two of them zero and QuickBooks. These two are cheap. Monthly is very monster. Fee is very low, but they will save you a lot of time. You can always get assistance from. You are content to stay up, but once it's running up and running, it's really it's going to save you a lot of time in love money having a place where you can track What are you? Invoices? Haven't been paid yet, And yeah, and what are you? Expenses I want It's

Bertrand Théaud:   1:12:40
forever useful. Pilot, your business young again. So that old So you okay, it's clear that you want to keep control of the financial matters related to your business, but is it also because, I mean, in order to finance the future growth, do you expect that you may? You may need some financing and you might need investors and you want to have to be able at any time. Do you have a clear picture? Whether whether what is with the businesses and the way will be going,

Thibaut Carminho:   1:13:08
I don't think we will need financing. I don't expect we will. We are. We are trying to keep the control of the business and keep the shot the way it is, and that's why our expansions. We plan our expansion franchise finance. But we are in Hong Kong. There's a lot of business going on here, and it's not impossible that one day we have a random person coming and say, Okay, how much is your? How much is your business? How much do you sell your business for? And it would be a very, very bad move to look. I mean, first of all, you need to know how much is your business is worth right now. Second, so that's what you need. You are financing to be up today, and again if that person is making you an offer that sound ridiculously high, Um, and you don't know how much is your business. You may actually miss an opportunity to sell your business where it's growing. It's too late when your business has grown already. When the growth is done, there's nothing to sell the potential of your businesses already already done. You've already done it. You're successful, You keep your business and you make your money like this. But once you reach a point where your business is stable, but there's a lot of things to be done to really put it to the next level you might have on offer, you might have someone coming and say, Well, this potential, I could I could I could do that. I could buy this business. I was interested in it. And so, yeah, so I really wanted to keep a clear view of how much the company's worth and how much I'm willing to cite for because because, yeah, because you never know if someone making you an offer that puts you you're financially stable for rest of your life. Then

Bertrand Théaud:   1:14:50
you can start another business.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:14:52
Yeah, so So, yeah, so that's that's the reason why I want to keep control. That's because I think it's important to know. First of all, you'll net worth, you have shares of the business. You need to know how much they're worth second, you need to know how much the business is actually worth, because you you may be interested in selling it. You may be interested in. We're having more people entering your capital in the know how much you need to sell your shares fall. So yeah. So also, I think it's a very good way to see what's happening. I used to see numbers are hated. Numbers are hated math. But I took the time to teach myself to take a class to learn accounting all the basics of accounting. And now I don't It doesn't bother me anymore. Seeing I see accounting as Ah, yeah, I don't really see numbers. I see a a situation. I see the house of the company. Why? Why have we spent that money? Why have we done that? And it doesn't bother me anymore. Doesn't numbers don't bother me anymore.

Bertrand Théaud:   1:15:52
Okay, so on bean, one hour, 15 minutes already. So that was That was a good discussion. Maybe a few last questions Also, Um how do you typically organise your day? Is that I mean, do you? Because you are you Are you on birds? You don't spend so much time now. handling, You know, the daily business. Yeah. So do you have a discipline? You know, you will do this and that. You have objective that you want to fill in.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:16:25
Yeah. First of all, I have, ah, have a our to do list on my phone. That is auto updating. So there's recurring things that are good team. So that's a yes. So a normal day for me is I wake up. I, um, take my breakfast quickly. I usually easy listen to my my podcast on my training class or whatever. I love video format, so I take a lot of, ah, class video class. So I would usually spend an hour an hour and half checking this out, because that is this a good moment You're working up. You don't have anything else to do. And I like to do that after that. Usually either take my dogs out. Like for work. I will go. I try to not because to a computer fall after now, Earl, just so I can use my brain

Bertrand Théaud:   1:17:19
like some kind of routine to stop.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:17:22
And also because when you learn something, it's very easy to be like, Okay, I've done my Learning Shop chapter finished. You close the work and you go to do something like very uncreative, like counting, discounting and doing this is just pretty much you raising everything you've learned from your brain. You're you eat here, but you're not going to reflect on it. And so when I've spent time learning something, I like to take a bit of time to think about it so I would go out of my dogs living in island. So it's It's easy for me to just go down, have a lot of green, a reason. So I just walk around for half an hour and then we are. And then I would usually work, like, try to exercise or try to do something to stay healthy. Hong Kong is a very fast paced city, very, very easy to end up eating late or eating in a restaurant, or it's not easy to. I have a very unhealthy routine on the account off trying to build a business or trying to be because you keep busy. Yeah, I try to stay healthy as Mrs I can. It's not always easy, and then usually I would operate my job remotely. I tried Teo. I make it very important for me to be able to do my job from anywhere in the world. If tomorrow I decide that I want to live in a place where the cost of living out a lot lower and so I want to be on the beach and I want to work from my bitch, Then I need to be able to do so in a very efficient manner. So that's very important from developed process. Exactly. Supposed to have two being having the control of everything and being the only one to know how to do this in this and I trained my stuff, I put, um, software assistant in place so that I can managing and I can control the company remotely. So that's usually even when I'm off the shop. It I'm usually working usually working 3 to 4 hours, but remotely so. So, yeah, on the computer and yeah, that's it. I ah, I tried to stay up to date with with news and then think that yeah, I usually do the class the class that I usually take along like 60 70 hours. So I tried to do have her per week dollar is just the class of 70 our class or you need to do so. But I like I really consume content in a way that I once I'm interested in something, I need to spend hours and hours on it right away. I make it bought after a while, but the second I started to be interested in this I need to

Bertrand Théaud:   1:19:54
hear you want more. You want so

Thibaut Carminho:   1:19:56
you Usually when I have a class I would do morning and live it up at night. So I would do when I want half and I won't have to hear. So 60 hours, that's That's a month, 20 days, you

Bertrand Théaud:   1:20:06
know so and so may be the last question. The as you grow this business as an entrepreneur, it looks like you're pretty disciplined. Organised. You mentioned one too, that you recommend to other business owners that zero quick book for the accounting Is there any another one more tool or two more to your using maybe the daily, but weekly and that are very at all whether your food to build your business, you know, save your time or

Thibaut Carminho:   1:20:38
number one to cloud. Hey, it doesn't matter which cloud. He could be the one Dr from Microsoft. He could be Google Cloud. That could be anything. Just do yourself a favour by cloud and put all your files on it so that you will not Even

Bertrand Théaud:   1:20:54
so you can share. Yes, but

Thibaut Carminho:   1:20:56
most importantly, you don't have. If you lose your computer, you can just buy a new computer and take the work where you left it. This's very important. You can also work from everywhere. You don't have nothing to one computer to work. You can be from your phone. You can cheque things. So cloud is very, very important because you're gonna have some very expensive files on your computer and you don't want to lose them. So that's the first thing club Second I am. I would try to avoid paper on Emanuel actions as much as possible. I have Celsius for everything. I have a software from my viewers system that is linked to my accounting software. I have ah, software for my online order is already so when the orders come, they go directly to the accounting software as well. I have software that I'm using recently haven't really started using it yet it's called G People. It's to pay. My stuff is to able to end all the payrolls, to generate the tax, the yearly tax and to end the sick leave and annual leave off the stuff. It wasn't necessary when we had one stuff. Now we're seven people. It's it's It's a bit of a headache because a za business owner, you're the one approving the staff leaves. So you are the one they're going to turn to and say, Oh, can I take leave on this sort of October to the 16? And if you don't have a clear view of who is on leave, what kind of holidays? A reason that they are. It's a nightmare. So So, yeah, so having away, too. I spent quite enough time making the shakes and making the payment and making sure everything is fine on the salary sheets and everything. Having a software that do that for you for for very cheap cost. It's a must, in my opinion, it I should have done it another. If I had to start over again, I would put on accounting software from the very beginning, and I'll put these cuffs off like payments off right away

Bertrand Théaud:   1:22:55
to save time from the very beginning.

Thibaut Carminho:   1:22:57
And because you build your company on that so busy you build yourself too at the same time as you've been in your company. So it doesn't require you to rethink everything s o. Yeah. So these are the Yeah, Whatever your industries cheque online is, there's not a not a mighty tool that can help you to avoid manual input. And yeah, and the last thing always calculate your Olly Olly wage a za business owner. I need to know. I knew exactly how much I cost per hour on. So when I spent one hour on something, I want to make sure that I'm not wasting my money If I do, If I help my stuff to do a delivery, I know how much it costs for me to send ah company to deliver the kicks when I'm doing it. If I cost more than that, then I should not do it. So it's not. You're free on bond. That's the thing. Is I always Especially when I was working a seven days a week at the very beginning, I always used to think I was free to the company. I was not a cost because my time had no value. The time, the free time you have. Especially if you don't have a lot of free time. The free time you have is the time where you are going to think of the strategy. And there's not much of this. So you need to keep it and cherish it. And so don't exchange this free time against something that you could pay someone to do. S O take your salary divided by the number of hours you're working and cheque. How much you cost per hour. And make sure that you don't do something that is making your company lose money by doing an action that could be done by a software out by someone else. Yeah, that's what

Bertrand Théaud:   1:24:22
I do. Thank you. Thank you for this recommendation. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for the wine. The wine was good s Oh, no, no, we learned a lot. I really enjoyed this discussion on. It's interesting to see how you manage to be a well organised, well disciplined on the value that you allocate to your time. And I think that's something that a lot of other business owners can can use to develop their business. So thank you again. Thank you. Feel like that now. Encourage. You know, everybody listening to these guests too. If you live in Hong Kong to goto up, order online. If you go over to lazy as they mentioned before Andi, get some good thoughts on Gyu will see. You won't be disappointed. Thank you to both. Thank you. Up to the next time that like