The Global Business That Started on a Fence Post with Ned and Lachie

This week Oli had two guests join him on the Humans of Agriculture Podcast! Lachie Knight and Ned Olsson from Clipex met up with Oli during the 2023 AgQuip Field Days. Clipex is a family business which started in manufacturing a solution for fencing and then expanded into other livestock handling equipment. They now have businesses across the globe in the likes of Ireland and Uruguay. 

Ned's family established Clipex and Lachie has since joined the team. The trio touch on the following: 

• Lachie's upbringing with his Dad running cattle throughout Eastern Australia while his Mum was building a career focusing on the people element of succession planning 

• How the Olsson's developed the fencing product and left the family farm to establish the business

• Neds' family unit and how each member is gifted and able to contribute to the business in their own way

• Working with international manufacturers and engineers

• Ned's passion for business, even as a kid

• Lachie's connection with customers and what he defines as 'solution driven outcomes'

• What advice Lachie and Ned have for young people looking at a career in agriculture 

Here’s an excerpt from Ned:

“We've been blessed as a family to have different giftings and different roles. And that's the only reason that the Clipex story exists. We are a family unit that has different things to contribute and different lines to stay in and run.

My dad is a fitter and machinist by trade and good with his hands and good on machinery.

My older brother, he's a real creative and engineer. He's good with 3D modelling, software designs and solving problems on that side of things.

My next younger brother, he's just a super diligent worker, as honest and trustworthy as they come. And just works hard. And he's committed. He's really passionate about what he does. He stayed back in Australia when he was 17 [while the elder children went to China] and he did maybe 30 Field Days by himself. He's more analytical and operational, but he's been a tremendous salesperson, because customers just want service and honesty, and he's been able to deliver that.

And then my youngest brother, who joined the business halfway through our journey, he's in the marketing side, and a real creative. He helps take care of videos, branding and all that stuff. He just took it to the next level.

I was always in different roles, sales and marketing more in the beginning, and also on the product development side, helping analyse which products we should develop first are where they needed to sit in the marketplace, price wise, or options and feature wise.

But it got to a stage where we were just trying to tread water and just survive… You start growing and things happen. And you've just got to keep the wheels spinning.

And then you have droughts, and floods and issues. And, all of a sudden, it's all hands on deck for a different problem that wasn't there last month. We've been able to adapt over those last 15 years to those obstacles that have come our way.

My grandfather would say to me, ‘Business is people, people is the thing that is harder to control. You build a machine and that machine will do what you programmed it to do, and it'll do that same job day in day out. People aren't just machines’.

So that's been a real learning side for all of us, especially in the last 10 years, is just learning on that people side… How to work well with people. And it's different when it's your own business.

When you started the business from scratch, you do what you've got to do and you understand the business… Then understanding if you bring somebody in, you can't just expect them to know what's going on or treat it like their own, you've got to teach them and you've got to set up processes. That's been just the the biggest probably learning curve for us.

But we've been fortunate along the way just to have some really good people coming into the business and that's helped us get to where we are. Lachie coming into the business, I loved his approach to that solution side of things. And just to find somebody with the experience that he had at that young age, you just don't find that.

Through his [Lachie’s] Dad and what he taught him, Lachie is a hard-worker and he’s passionate about livestock and handling stock.”

-Ned

Images supplied by Ned Olsson (left) and Lachie Knight (right).