Case Studies
Issue No. 29 - June/July 2006
Now hear this…
Fast Movers: Hearing Services
It’s taken Gary Rayment the best part of 20 years to become an overnight success.
Ranking high in last year’s ‘in-business’ magazine Fast Movers list of the top 25 fastest growing companies in the state, Gary’s firm Hearing Services SA based at Gilles Plains has grown rapidly from a single-practitioner office to a $2million a year network.
Hearing Services SA does exactly what it says — tests peoples’ hearing and prescribes and fits hearing aids. Given the aging population, it’s a wise line of work to be in.
Gary founded the company in May 1998, building it up from his first audiological assessment and hearing aid fitting centre in Salisbury. It is still a proprietary limited company.
The first outlet was attached to a medical practice and distributed mostly Oticon brand aids although others were stocked in order to cover all eventualities.
Bread and butter business comes through a joint agreement with the state department of human services and Veterans’ Affairs at federal level to provide service to pensioners. This agreement has to be renewed periodically, but it offers the essential cash flow stability Gary needs to plan.
He has spent a lot of time developing his business plan and he’s acutely conscious of the need for marketing, advertising and promotion in business development.
“When we’re going into an area we research thoroughly to find out which are the -plus’ suburbs,” Gary says.
“We source premises which are convenient (for clients) — in a shopping centre, for instance.”
This kind of roll-out is a major undertaking, with such essentials as skills development and shopfitting major concerns.
Hearing Services SA presently operates seven centres with 18 permanent staff and visits a further five or six regional centres on a regular basis.
Gary says he is “notorious” for his business development mania, includi...
