Tim Bishop is the founder of ManWithAVan.com.au, the first branded removal company in the world. Using his marketing nous he has turned a vanilla, functional service into a sexy and attractive business.

When Tim Bishop was studying at uni he was looking for a way to make a quick buck. Using money earned from working as a bus boy at a nightclub he bought an old “bongo” van and started promoting himself as THE man with a delivery van around Melbourne.

He quickly achieved a return on his investment and shortly after began working with his business partner to expand the business. Using slick design and branding he has turned what is a relatively pedestrian service and gave it a recognisable, youthful and interesting brand.

Man With A Van is a very simple concept that uses branding for elegant execution. How did you come up with the idea?

It occurred to me when I was student and needing to move myself that there were no removal
services specifically targeted at my demographic. All the business around were marketed in a style that would appeal to your grandparents. There were lots of dinosaurs in the industry.
It helped that I had a 12 year old bongo van which was “too old” for me to get work as a courier and I needed a flexible job around study.

Since starting it I’ve become aware that I’m not as original as I thought - there are already MWAV’s in England and the USA.

How did you develop the idea and turn it into a reality? Did you find investors or bootstrap it?

The first van was purchased for $1500 from money earned working as a bus boy in a nightclub. There are no investors thus far, we grow at a pace we can afford. The Man With A Van logo was done by a housemate in return for going down the street and getting him a slurpee and sausage roll.

I guess that’s the power of using your networks!

It seems one of the reasons the business has been successful is because it is such a simple value proposition. How do you deal with others who think they could easily do what you are doing? Is it already happening?

The two most similar competitors are an ex-housemate of mine and an ex-employee. They both saw it in it’s infancy, before we’d implemented the systems which enable it to grow. We hope that the innovations in our booking system, for example, will keep us ahead. Competition forces you to find different ways to differentiate yourself in the market which is not a bad thing.

How are you expanding the business - will it turn into Men with Vans? Man With A Plan (business solutions)? Man With A Can (sanitation)? Man With A Flan (bakery)?

People always ask this, an old girlfriend used to do the occasional move in her panel van, she was going to call her business “Fanny with a Panny”. Part of what enables us to grow is maintaining the KISS principle throughout the entire business, this way every time we add another van it’s a simple and painless process. We believe there’s still plenty of scope to expand through innovative marketing without seeking new revenue streams that would complicate the business system. Man With A Plan is good though. Might check if anyones trademarked it!

What do you wish you had been told before you went into the business?

Secure your intellectual property early (it’s taken us four years of wrangling to register our trademark). It’s money well spent early on because it will help you avoid spending a lot later one when your business is worth the big bucks.

Also where you can hire people smarter than yourself. Again on the intellectual property side we represented ourselves initially but after a time we got the lawyers involved which was something we should have done earlier.

Man With A Van currently operates 8 delivery vans in and around Melbourne with plans to expand statewide later in the year and nationally soon after that.

Interviewed by Ned Dwyer, a Melbourne based entrepreneur founder of Australia’s number one music blog, Electrorash.com. His current venture is Mr Chop, an Australian online advertising company.

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Posted on October 2nd, 2008 by Nicholas