FEATURES
47
Mike Piper has
thoroughly enjoyed
his time in the
plumbing industry.
The work he did was clearly excellent, as over 11 years,
he built a formidable reputation, eventually joining the
board of the “Zululand subsidiary” of the company.
Grinaker was busy with a construction project, building
a highway at Empangeni, when Piper got what he
considers a “lucky break”: being offered the position of
managing director of Incledon Johannesburg.
“My very good friend Hylton Kinloch recommended me for
the position. So I flew up to meet Irvine Brittan and David
Gevisser at their tiny, dingy offices in Cape Towers (I am
going back a few years now), and Irvine offered me the job,”
he says, adding with a laugh, “I don’t know if I had to put
education on my application, but if I did, I am sure I lied.”
At the time, he couldn’t have known it, but that move
was Piper’s giant leap into the plumbing industry that
would become a defining element not only of his working
life, but the lives of the people around him and members
of his family. He quickly established a reputation as
a reliable and effective leader, and when Brittan-
Boustred was having “a bit of a hiccough”, Brittan
asked him to take over there.
He is quoted in the ‘Boumatters’ company newsletter
at the time as saying, “The company is very sound and
is well known in the Transvaal with a reputation second
to none. It has an excellent staff with some outstanding
people … provided it is properly managed, it can only go
from strength to strength. So, on my head be it.”
His head must have been safe, because under Piper the
company built a massive warehouse in what was then
undeveloped foothills and is now Kramerville, Sandton, by the
M1 highway. Things were stable, growing, and looking good,
but life took a sudden and dramatic turn when Piper’s brother,
an entrepreneur in the pool industry, committed suicide.
“I couldn’t understand why he did it. He was well off;
things seemed to be going well. I have never found out
why he did it,” he says sadly. “That is what made me
want to change my life.”
Along with two friends, Bruce and Bryan, who owned
B&B hardware, and James Moncour, Piper bought
plumbing supplier Jack Hobson.
“I was there for much of my son’s childhood, before we
were approached by Boumat who wanted to buy us.
Vainly, I sometimes like to think they wanted James and
I back. So, we sold, and I was appointed chairman of all
the plumbing companies in Gauteng.”
“While I enjoyed my time there, I found they grew
rapidly and, as they did so, things became increasingly
corporate,” Piper says by way of explanation for his next,
most important move.
“I spoke to Barry Chipps, who was a sales director at the
time, and I said, ‘Let’s start a company’,” Piper says.
While he always credits the people around him with
his success, there is little doubt that Piper has an
inherent ability to acknowledge his own strengths
and weaknesses and augment those weaknesses by
partnering with the right people.
“I am a numbers guy. Good at administration and at
keeping things on track,” he says later, while also
admitting, “I have never been a good salesman.”
As a sales director at the time, Chipps was the perfect
partner for getting the fledgling company off the ground.
“We were starting from scratch. We didn’t have money
per se, but fortunately I had quite a good reputation in
the industry, and people like Derick Todd, well, he had
a lot of respect for me and he said, ‘Go for it’. He gave
me credit from the outset. And we did. We found these
premises, and that was Independent Plumbing Suppliers
20 years ago,” he says.
When asked about the biggest factors that contribute to
the success of IPS, Piper is quick to credit his staff and the
people who have bought from the company over the years.
“It’s people you know. No one is a success by
themselves. We all depend on others, and the staff here,
and the people around us, have always kept us going.
Without them, there is no IPS,” he says, explaining that
the thing he is most proud of is the number of staff who
remain at IPS and who have been with the company
since the start.
"No one is a
success by
themselves.
We all depend
on others."
Continued on page 49 >>
www.plumbingafrica.co.za
March 2019 Volume 25 I Number 1