The Universal Kitchens story: Founder and CEO van Breda on faith, family and grit

Clinton van Breda has never had a boss, and in 21 years at the head of Universal Kitchens he says he has never installed a kitchen himself. He started at about 19 with a long-base bakkie his father chose instead of the double cab he wanted, and an overdraft secured by his father's R500,000. In this sponsored interview, he told Alec Hogg about the post-dated cheques that carried the business through 2008, opening in George weeks before COVID, the push into luxury kitchens against the imported brands, and the May flood at a newly occupied Malmesbury factory that held up payments on eight big jobs. He also explained why he chose not to expand his luxury showrooms nationally, and what his 19-year-old son is now building at the other end of the market.

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Edited transcript of the interview

Alec Hogg (00:02): This is a sponsored interview, but I tell you what, I'm really looking forward to it. Clinton van Breda is the founder of Universal Kitchens, and his is an entrepreneurial story that we're going to be getting into in some detail. Let's start off. How old are you?

Clinton van Breda: Turning 41 on 6 November.

Alec Hogg: And you've never worked for anybody else. What does that do to a man, not having a boss at any stage?

Clinton van Breda: Alec, thanks for the interview. I think it's about leadership, growing up, sports. I think that's got a huge role in it. I just took a different pathway, and sometimes I think I should perhaps have taken the longer route and started working for a boss, or gone to study. But it didn't work out that way.

Alec Hogg (01:03): But if you never worked for someone, who taught you how to manage people?

Clinton van Breda: I grew up in a business household. My dad was an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember.

Alec Hogg: So pretty much all you knew then was entrepreneurship. Around the table you probably spoke about things that most other families don't.

Clinton van Breda: A hundred percent. There was always this business. I actually take my hat off to my dad, because he didn't come out of a business household. My late granddad worked at ERPM [East Rand Proprietary Mines] as a fitter and turner. My dad is a qualified electrician by trade, also on the ERPM mine back then. And he quickly decided he didn't want to go his father's route. He started his own business in the 1980s. So for as long as I can remember, my dad had a business and it was just business all the time.

Clinton van Breda (02:25): Being a true entrepreneur, I think it's like a gift that you receive, the same as anyone gets gifts, sport gifts or whatever gifts you might get.

Alec Hogg: I'm interested in ERPM, because it closed down in 1980. It happened to a lot of Afrikaans people, and clearly we hear from your accent and your surname that you're Afrikaans. For a lot of Afrikaans people, the natural route would have been into government, into the civil service by default. I mean, call it what it was. When they no longer had that route, they went into entrepreneurship, and some of our greatest entrepreneurs in this country are Afrikaans-speaking people who previously might have ended up in government. Was your dad part of that closure of ERPM? Did he have to find another way?

Clinton van Breda: ERPM was a good mine, a very solid mine. I obviously didn't have a lot of knowledge of the ERPM mine, but it was a tough mine. They always said it was a dangerous one, very hard to get the gold out of. But it was there for many years.

Clinton van Breda (03:44): My granddad was also a pastor.

Alec Hogg: Okay.

Clinton van Breda: He was a professional boxer, and at the age of 28 he gave his life to the Lord. I think in everyone's life journey, the spiritual plays a huge role. My dad also came from Boksburg. They knew the Coetzees, the brothers. They grew up together.

Alec Hogg: Remember Gerrie Coetzee, the world champion.

Clinton van Breda: [Unclear first name] Coetzee, [unclear first name] Coetzee, all of them. They grew up together, they were friends. So it was very rough, and when my dad started his business, the stories I hear today, it was rough times.

Alec Hogg: And you didn't go boxing, you went into golf.

Clinton van Breda (04:39): So I was...

Alec Hogg: How good were you?

Clinton van Breda: I did a little bit of boxing when I was about nine or ten, but that was just because of my granddad. I was actually good at cricket and rugby, and then I started playing golf and saw, flipping heck, I'm actually playing well. At about the age of 17 I stopped. I think I was a plus two at the time.

Alec Hogg: How good is that? What does a plus two mean?

Clinton van Breda: A golf course in general is a par 72. That's a rating, so the course gives you 72 shots to play around the 18 holes. If you par, you're level. A plus two means you're in the minus, so you will shoot average scores of around 70.

Alec Hogg: So if you and I played against each other, I'm an 18 handicap, so I'm allowed to have 90 shots. You're allowed to have 70 shots. So 70 shots is a very good golfer, almost pro. Did you think of going pro?

Clinton van Breda (05:50): A hundred percent. That was what I was dreaming about. Back at the time my dad, I can't remember who the investor was at that time, but he actually took a few rand to America, thinking that I would end up there and that at least there would be money for me on that side when I wanted to turn pro in America. But it didn't work out that way. I play off six now. But if I must pick between a good meeting or a golf game, I would take a good meeting.

Alec Hogg: Well, that shows you did the right thing. And your dad did the right thing as well, because you wanted a double cab. Thank you, by the way, for preparing me so well. You sent me lots of information, and as you said earlier, ChatGPT helps nowadays. It was great to read through your story. Maybe one of the important points was when you wanted a double cab and your dad said, I'm going to give you a long-base bakkie.

Clinton van Breda: Strangely enough, I'm sitting in the same position today with my son.

Alec Hogg: Uh-huh.

Clinton van Breda: My son only sees the good side of life. I've seen the struggles of life, because business was different in the nineties and early two thousands.

Clinton van Breda (07:29): So I was really educated in how to work with money, spec money, turn money around. I do it with my son as well, but he gets under my skin. To get back to the bakkie story, there are certain things in your business career that you remember. My dad was first a building contractor.

Alec Hogg: What business was it that your father had?

Clinton van Breda (07:56): Coming from the electrical side of things, he did a lot of work for general housing. Then he started an aluminium business. It was quite a substantial business. He sold it in 2000 to the IDC, the Industrial Development Corporation. Then, long story, with my dad's brother-in-law, I think two years later he bought it back and they started aluminium again, and it grew. Then he sold his shares in the business, the family split up, and he just continued doing spec houses, three, four, five a year, at his own pace, with his own money. No bank.

Fast forward a bit, that's when I came on the scene. I'd left golf school and didn't know what to do, and I started being a foreman on his house projects. But not really. I think I always wanted to do my own thing. And then I saw the kitchen people who did all my dad's kitchen work at that time. We started to chat, and my dad said, well, why don't we give it a go?

Alec Hogg: Why kitchens?

Clinton van Breda (09:34): I can't tell you, Alec. I was not a real woodworker, although woodwork was a subject at school back then. To be honest with you, I just looked at it and it looked good to me, and I liked the idea of working with wood. And today, 21 years later, people think I'm joking when I say I've never installed a kitchen in my 21-year career.

Alec Hogg: But your company's called Universal Kitchens. How's that possible?

Clinton van Breda: I've never worked with my hands.

Alec Hogg: So how have you done it?

Clinton van Breda (10:24): Alec, I learnt the hard way. When I started, I did a bit of a headhunting type of thing. There was a guy Jack [unclear], a very good guy. I got in contact with him. He later got ill, but he still worked for us for a couple of years, and he actually taught me. I was winging it, if that's the right word, getting my stuff manufactured by someone else, loading it on a trailer behind our bakkie and delivering it to site. He did the installation, and I did more of the talking on site with the client. So it was really tough times. But I didn't really worry about where my end goal was going to be. I just went. I was young, so I didn't have financial pressures, although that came at a later stage. But my dad gave me a nice boost.

Alec Hogg: Mm-hmm. Just go back to your dad's sites. It's very interesting that out of everything he was doing, you could have gone for roofing, you could have gone for bricklaying, but you decided on kitchens. Was it because that was where the money was? We often hear that if you want to fix up a house, fix the kitchen and the bathrooms, and it'll sell.

Clinton van Breda (12:20): Interesting question, Alec. Not that I was a softie, but I didn't want to get my hands dirty being a plumber or doing roof installations or painting. I think timing in life is important. The time was right, the place was right, and I looked at it, and until today I've got a passion for it, the same as when I started. So I can't really tell you it was the money. A lot of people starting a business think about the money. I was not focused on the money side of things.

Alec Hogg: But you did get a half-a-million-rand overdraft. How did you get it in the first place?

Clinton van Breda (13:22): My dad was very clever. Like I say, my dad taught me a lot of business things. I took the good, and the bad I got rid of. He gave the bank R500,000 as collateral. He got interest on that money, and I had to service my overdraft.

Alec Hogg (13:47): You had to service it.

Clinton van Breda: After three to five years he got his money back, and I traded out of the overdraft. But it was tough times. Fast forward to 2008, the recession, when the banks didn't give loans to developers anymore. That's when the National Credit Act came along. We were involved in big projects, and we did a bit of restructuring.

Also a nice story: some of my suppliers who are still with us today, I will never forget, at that time I wrote out post-dated cheques because we owed them money. I'd write out cheques of R800,000, ten cheques at a time. And I said to one guy, I'll never forget, before you bank that cheque, phone me and make sure there's money. And he phoned me on that date and said, can I bank it? I said, Glenn, go for it.

Alec Hogg: That's what business is. Many people on the outside look at successful entrepreneurs like yourself and they don't know the granularity, the road that you travel. Issuing post-dated cheques is part of many entrepreneurial journeys.

Clinton van Breda (15:10): I say to my son, post-dated cheques, and he says...

Alec Hogg: What's that? Well, it was part of the entrepreneurial journey. But you obviously gave a lot up. You didn't even go on honeymoon until the builders' holiday. What did your wife think of that?

Clinton van Breda: Once again, I think we're very blessed. I believe there's a covenant, a blessing over us. My wife is the opposite of me. Earthly things don't worry her. When we started the business, we got married that October, 2005, and we were supposed to go on honeymoon. Today a lot of people would go on honeymoon, but be that as it may, we went on holiday that December. It was dedication all the time. I made a lot of sacrifices in my business that you forget about. Sometimes I go on my knees and just say thanks to the Lord for where I am today, by grace and blood, sweat and tears. Because yes, there were tough times. All I know is working for myself.

Clinton van Breda (16:48): Being in the kitchen industry, I'm proud of the brand that we've created today.

Alec Hogg: And your wife works in the business.

Clinton van Breda: Yes, Alec. My wife was privileged to be at home until our children went to primary school. There's an 18-month difference between them, my daughter and my son. When they both went to primary school, she got involved in the business, on a very small scale. Till today her role in the business is quite huge, on the financial side, with her team. I must say, where we are today as a business and as a family, if it wasn't for her we would not be where we are, because she really manages the cash flow, the expenses, overheads, spending. She will question every rand.

Alec Hogg (18:07): And you listen?

Clinton van Breda: Most of the time. Most of the time. She does a good job.

Alec Hogg (18:24): It's a partnership, isn't it? Unless there's a partnership and you realise the competence there is huge, it won't work. I was very interested to read in the information you sent me beforehand that every year in January you go back through your diaries of the previous year.

Clinton van Breda: Yeah.

Alec Hogg (18:52): I'll tell you why. I interviewed Andrew Smith recently, the co-founder of Yuppiechef. He journalled every day, and he said his journals made a huge difference in his life. They made it much easier when he wrote his book. You talk about your diary. How much time do you spend on it each day, and what do you actually put in there?

Clinton van Breda: I listened to that podcast.

Clinton van Breda (19:17): Alec, I think one of my successes, still today, is that if I say I'll do something, I do it. If I don't get it done in the day, I don't want to say I panic, but I'm an executor, and my word is my honour. If I say to someone I'm going to do it, I'll make sure I do it. I'm very old school.

Clinton van Breda: A hardcore diary. I write things down. If I don't get to something, it's first on the list the next day, and then I start my new to-do list. Then in the new year, I go back and check each day from January 2025. I refresh: that meeting, was it an interview, a client meeting, a supplier meeting, whatever. I just browse through it, and a lot of things come out. Then I set goals for the new year. These are the goals I would like to achieve. I pray about it, but the Lord's will must take its course. In my opinion, you just take it as it comes in life.

Alec Hogg (20:57): In those 2025 diaries, when you looked back, what was there that still bothers you, that bugs you?

Clinton van Breda (21:10): Finally, in the last quarter of this year, we got there. We started last year with a lot of innovation, computerised systems with our designers, integrated with the machinery. That gave me a lot of sleepless nights, because I come from the old school. We write down cutting lists.

Clinton van Breda (21:47): Now everything is integrated into IT.

Clinton van Breda (21:56): I'm now finally happy with the direction it's going, and I understand the direction we're taking with the nesting machines and all the automation that's going to happen. I suppose the owner of FlySafair doesn't fly his own aeroplane.

Alec Hogg: No, he certainly doesn't. And I know him well. He's actually a shareholder in this business.

Clinton van Breda: So I had to take that mindset of letting go. But not being a fan of technology, it was difficult for me.

Alec Hogg: Is control an issue that you struggle with?

Clinton van Breda: No, no. That's also a mental decision I take.

Alec Hogg (22:54): So why was the IT an issue then?

Clinton van Breda (23:01): Because with a manual way of manufacturing, if something goes wrong, we can still continue. If the Wi-Fi or the fibre goes down, or the people overseas, because it's all integrated... Manually, we could carry on. I took the long route. It wasn't handed to me on a plate. I worked hard. And I see today there's an easier way, so I'll let the easier way continue.

Alec Hogg (23:50): Let's move on to George now, and the five-year lease you signed in November 2019, just before COVID. You were starting to tell me this story before we came on air, and I said, wait, I want to hear it on air.

Clinton van Breda: Alec, when I said to you that we share the same brand, Pringle. You're lucky you get sponsored, which is good. For us, it's our corporate wear. I know Uncle Braam well, and Bernard, and the whole Frontier Co people. So in 2019, when we started the lease...

Alec Hogg: They're from George, of course.

Clinton van Breda: Yes, in George. That was the first mindset shift I took. Let's go and see what other avenues there are. Also, with my son being a golfer, I thought, let's open up a business or a set-up in George. But now he's in the business, and we'll get to that.

Alec Hogg: So he's also a golfer, you said.

Clinton van Breda (25:07): I thought, let me start a showroom and operations in George. Then at least when he goes to the Louis Oosthuizen Academy, we've got something to travel to and work from. That didn't work out. But the story is, I had a breakfast coffee with Braam, and we started to chat.

Alec Hogg: Tell people who he is.

Clinton van Breda: Braam van Huyssteen. Braam van Huyssteen was the founder of Tekkie Town. Today he's lucky enough to be retired. He worked hard, and I look up a lot to the advice he gives. I try to chat to him maybe once a week or once every two weeks, or we walk on the promenade.

Alec Hogg: That's a privilege, because he's very low profile. And I'll tell you what's also a privilege: he's coming to speak at our conference in Hermanus in March. It's unusual for him to do that. Bernard [Mostert] was in August.

Clinton van Breda (26:14): Nice.

Alec Hogg: Yeah, good podcast, good speech there.

Clinton van Breda: So we started to chat, and Braam's brother-in-law, Braam's wife's brother, Jakes, is my sales director at our George branch. At that time, when I started the showroom in George, Braam said, hold on a second, Jakes, I think he works for a company in Mossel Bay and I think they're closing down. Also a kitchen company. I don't want to name names, and actually I can't remember. And he said, I think he wants work. And I said, well, it's the right time. I had an interview with Jakes, and six years later he's still working for us. He's one of my really good staff members.

Clinton van Breda (27:22): That was before COVID. And I must say George was a real success story, and still is today.

Alec Hogg: But you would have thought... Just before COVID, a five-year lease, and here comes COVID. Could you operate?

Clinton van Breda: Alec, I prayed. I was on my knees, and we had faith. I didn't look left or right, I just focused. And our landlord there, we went through COVID and pulled through. We were active, we did deals, we did business. I think at the time we had that essential services status. I can't remember how we got it right.

Alec Hogg (28:16): Mm-hmm. Essential services.

Alec Hogg (28:21): But you could keep operating.

Clinton van Breda: Yes. People were also co-operative. They made plans for us to work at their houses, because they were at home, obviously with the protocols in place: sanitise, masks, whatever it may be. It was a challenge altogether, but thank God we came out of it stronger.

Alec Hogg: It's an interesting part of the whole journey. Over the past three years, you've pushed hard into luxury bespoke, the top end of the market. Why did you leave the middle market to go into that area?

Clinton van Breda: Obviously, being in George, and now we've been in Paarl in the Cape Winelands for two years, so call it three years back, I thought, right, George is running smoothly. We'd invested quite a substantial amount of money into the George operations. We bought our own factory there. We also do our own tops. I've got equity in a tops business that does our countertops, the quartz, your Caesarstone, your Eezi Quartz, your porcelain. That's a big part of our scope, and it helps us try to manage the lead time.

Alec Hogg (29:45): Yeah.

Clinton van Breda (30:06): We've got a say in that business, which I think is important, so that we're not just a number. To get back to it: when we started, it was Universal Kitchens and Granite. I rebranded it to Universal Kitchens. When we started doing work in George, it put us on a different scale compared with what we were used to in Boksburg. Not that there's anything wrong with the work we still do there today. But it was bigger houses, big projects, five-bedroom houses, people spending money. And I thought, hold on, look at our capabilities, look at our resources.

Alec Hogg: And there's lots of money in George.

Clinton van Breda (31:07): We could really do the work and carry it out. Then we took the next step to Paarl, the Cape Winelands. That was mind-blowing for me. I see some of the pictures, because I'm not that involved in going to sites anymore. I very seldom go. I'd love to, actually, but there are only so many hours in a day, travelling.

Alec Hogg: Val de Vie, Fancourt in George, those kinds of places.

Clinton van Breda: Stellenbosch, we're doing a lot of work. We just completed a huge development in Stellenbosch called [development name unclear]. So we put the benchmark higher every time. And I love it, because it's real craftsmanship, creative, writing programs for our CNCs, the nesting machines we've just invested in.

Alec Hogg (32:15): But the question, getting back to your son now: you've now gone back into the middle market through USave. You've been very successful at the top end with Universal Kitchens. What's the story here? Are you just making a business for him, or what did you find interesting about that area?

Clinton van Breda: Alec, just one step back. I think for any entrepreneur, if you build a brand that has been recognised in South Africa, you're proud of it. We're still very humble. But I wanted to take Universal Kitchens to the next level, to open up, because it's the only thing I know. I like new things, and being the leader, the rest will follow. So we opened up in De Waterkant in the meantime, in Somerset Road.

Alec Hogg: Cape Town.

Clinton van Breda: That area is known for its imported kitchens.

Clinton van Breda (33:41): All the import brands. And I said, hold on, I know we can play the game. I was lucky enough to be in Austria, and when I looked at some of the kitchens there, with the Germans saying when they're in South Africa that their work is the best, I looked at it from my angle and made a comparison. So I said no, stuff that.

Alec Hogg: We can take them on.

Clinton van Breda: We can take them on. I've done a really nice showroom there. Then I said, we can take this further, into different regions. And one of my sales directors at our Paarl showroom, Michelle du Plessis, told me, Clinton, if she can say so, she would be against us opening more showrooms. I actually took it a bit offensively. Then I realised, hold on a second, in the market we're playing in, and I think we're the market leaders when it comes to luxury on the scale we are. I'm not talking about a luxury brand that's a one-man show doing one kitchen at a time. We scale up from a bespoke luxury point of view. And I saw, hold on, that's how we're going to lose control, being in Hoedspruit, Rustenburg. I wanted to take it really national. And I decided, okay, no, let's wait.

Clinton van Breda (35:35): Let's leave it. I think with Universal Kitchens, the systems must now flow. I must give the systems a chance to flow. We've invested a lot in that, like I say. I've restructured. Sorry, I don't want to get distracted, but part of the new venture with the new brand is that Universal Kitchens has now really developed a model that we can nurse and make sure it works. And then obviously USave Kitchens, affordable luxury. Because, Alec, in manufacturing you can't do everything out of one factory. I can't cater for a R100,000 kitchen and a R1 million kitchen on the same production line, with the same resources.

Clinton van Breda (36:38): And the same lead time. Trying to do it on the same lead time, you can't.

Clinton van Breda (36:47): And I'm fortunate to have decided that we need to do that split. We'll get to the USave model later. As for Universal Kitchens, I think we'll maybe do one more showroom, Ballito, maybe Pretoria East, and then we're done. We've invested a lot of money. I'll invite you to our Paarl showroom.

Alec Hogg: Not Hermanus? Not big enough for you?

Clinton van Breda (37:25): There were talks. But fortunately we do cater for Hermanus from our Paarl showroom. People drive to us.

Alec Hogg: This Michelle du Plessis sounds like she's pretty smart. You didn't like what she said, but it worked out. But tell me about USave, because from the outside I see you're going back into the middle of the market, and you've got your son, who's about as old as you were with your bakkie. How old is he, 19?

Clinton van Breda: My son is 19.

Alec Hogg (38:05): Okay, so he's where you were when you first started, and he's going into that field. You're a real family business, so there's none of this King Code nonsense that the big corporates have to put up with. Was there a little bit of, I want to give my son a chance to do what I did?

Clinton van Breda: His hobby is cars. He wanted to get involved with cars, detailing and PPF, the film they stick on your car so it doesn't get stone chips. We looked at it, and I think it was about R3 million. No, man. And I knew that Universal Kitchens, our headquarters in Boksburg, is big. I think at that age things cross your path. And my MD at the Joburg headquarters, Jason Nel, is 28 years old, and he and my son get along very well. When Jaden was four or five years old, he would not leave me. When I went to work, when the business was small, he would come with me and play in the factory, on the trolleys, whatever it may be. But with Universal, the systems in place and the business being really upscaled and advanced structure-wise, where does he fit in?

So he started off in the factory, from the ground. He went to a few clients with complaints, not handling them himself, just being an ear. And when I told him about the idea I had, I said, you can start this from scratch. I'm there behind the scenes. It's a simple model, but it's going to be a good model.

Clinton van Breda (40:19): And Jason, our MD at head office, has been with me ten years. He was 18 when he started with us, I think, a young boy. That's a talent I've got: I can read people. I can see, hold on a second, there's something in this person, let's give it a chance. I like to take a donkey and make him a Durban July winner.

Clinton van Breda: Because I was a donkey.

Alec Hogg: Have you got big plans for USave? Is it going to be even bigger than your...

Clinton van Breda: I think it will be. We're bigger and better, but all we know is what we know. And taking 21 years of experience, hardcore lessons, blood, sweat and tears, into a new brand, I think that's good, because we've learnt, and we'll obviously still learn throughout the journey.

Clinton van Breda (41:31): Just to get back to Universal Kitchens quickly: we really focus on upmarket work. When I say next-level work, I mean I look at it and say, did we do this? Did this come out of our factory? That's next level. And it takes a long time. It's a long process.

Alec Hogg (42:10): With USave?

Clinton van Breda: We will follow the trends very closely. I don't want to share a lot of my ideas on this podcast now. But we're going to follow the trends, and we're also going to go overseas to buy some raw materials. And we're going to do four models. I'm not going to say the names of the four models.

Alec Hogg: But you've got a plan. Your son is going to run it, so it's someone you can trust, and it's the business you know. Before we go, because we've had a fantastic conversation, I need to know a little more about your faith. You started off talking about the fact that God is at the centre of your life, and I'd like to explore that with you, if you don't mind. You say that during your journey, God came through at exactly the right time, not on one but on many occasions. Share one with us.

Clinton van Breda (43:22): Alec...

Clinton van Breda (43:26): Just one last thing about Universal Kitchens. I've really come to understand the business side of things, because first of all I put trust into people, so I could step back, look at it from a different angle, and focus on strategy, on where the business is going. My cousin, Fred Landsberg, runs our Western Cape region. We've got a real organogram. We're not corporate, but we've got 200-plus staff, with each branch having its own management, and we really keep our finger on the pulse.

So what I wanted to say: in May there were floods. I can tell you a lot of stories of where God came through in my life, because coming from Boksburg, it was rough times. Faith for me is one of the highlights of my business career. So in May...

Alec Hogg: Talk about the floods.

Clinton van Breda (44:52): First of all, all our manufacturing happens in Joburg. It comes to George on our horse-and-trailer trucks, and from George to Paarl. In Paarl we had a depot, and we've just grown out of it. So I opened a factory in Malmesbury.

Alec Hogg: Why Malmesbury?

Clinton van Breda: Cheaper manufacturing operations, and the traffic is a challenge in Cape Town. On 1 March we took occupation of that building. I didn't know it, but we were fifteen, eighteen metres from the Malmesbury dam in the industrial area. When I woke up on 12 May, I got a video on my phone. The factory was flooded with about 100 millimetres of water, and it was still running in.

We manufacture everything in Joburg and deliver it down to George and Malmesbury. We work on a 60% deposit, 30% when we deliver to your house, Alec, and 10% on completion. Yes, we're a trusted brand, but those are the terms. That 30% delivery payment on eight of our jobs, big projects, didn't happen.

Clinton van Breda (46:41): Yet end of May came, and our overheads remained the same. But the Lord led me, in my quiet time, to the David and Goliath story. And with Peter, it was also on the water, in the storm. The giant is not going to frighten me. It almost got me down, but I focused, and it was confirmation upon confirmation from the Lord that He would protect us. And being the business we are today, I knew we had a BI, a business interruption, policy. We're paying it, it's there. We are 80%...

Alec Hogg: Underinsured?

Clinton van Breda: Things happen. I'm not reckless. I don't do reckless business. I keep my finger on the pulse, but I slipped up. A BI policy works on our claim value less 80%. We lost a lot of money. And yet, because of my faith, here I am today, and our cash flow is good. We gave late increases, because generally we give increases in June or July. Yesterday I signed off a lot of increases for our staff.

Alec Hogg: What have you done at Malmesbury so that it never happens again? You can't move the factory.

Clinton van Breda: No, Alec, also because of the accessibility for our superlinks coming in there, and we've invested in that building with our spray booths. It's really next level. We're busy discussing with the council putting in extra stormwater drainage systems. But I'm not scared.

Alec Hogg (49:05): I can hear it. Just something on that. I looked at your story, and you're very loyal. You're loyal to your family, you're loyal to your bank. I was with Mercantile Bank once as well, and I know you were there. It's an entrepreneur's bank, and they were great. Then Capitec bought them. Capitec hasn't got me back, but they got you back. And you're still with that same organisation. That's quite something.

Clinton van Breda: Alec, I took shortcuts in my business career when I started, and I'm not shy to say it. Sometimes if you don't, it's difficult. Starting your business, there's a lot of pressure, all these things happening at the same time. But being loyal, being transparent with your suppliers, with your bank, with your CA...

Clinton van Breda (50:16): By being transparent, being early, being honest, things start to work, and you make plans within your group, with your bank or your CA. PKF, Gerard van Groen, now. Gerard van Groen has been my CA for 15 or 16 years. And our bank, Capitec. So: honesty, being loyal.

Alec Hogg: Honourable.

Clinton van Breda (50:46): I told them about my plan with USave Kitchens, the affordable luxury range. They backed me 100%.

Alec Hogg: Just to close off, I'd love to know: if you could get in a time machine and go back to that 19-year-old with the bakkie... I'll tell you this. Christo Wiese, whose kitchen I believe you also did, says entrepreneurs are a crazy lot. I remember Koos Bekker saying in a speech he gave when he won entrepreneur of the year that entrepreneurs are very dysfunctional personalities. In fact, he didn't even give the speech, he got someone else to give it for him, he was so shy. Both of them suggest entrepreneurs are different. Something makes them want to do it, but if they knew what was ahead, maybe they would think differently. The road is always much tougher than you think it's going to be when you begin. So if you got into a time machine and went back to that 19-year-old in the bakkie, who wanted the twin cab and got the long base instead, what would you tell him?

Clinton van Breda (52:10): It's the same as what I tell my son, Alec. My dad financially had the money to say to me, there's a double-cab bakkie. So it was more a lesson in what I can actually get, or will be getting. It's the same with my son today. In business... Alec, they don't make them anymore, those Chev Utilities. I drove three in about five, six years of my business career. Bought one, pushed it back into the business, bought another one, drove it, pushed it back into the business. That's how I've operated. I didn't buy double-cab bakkies. I didn't go on holidays. In business, it's important to look after your money.

Clinton van Breda (53:27): And the money will just come when it's meant to be. I think that plays a huge role. Keep reinvesting, and doors will open for you when it's meant to be. Don't force a thing. These last three years, I don't want to say I'm antisocial, but I don't force deals anymore.

Alec Hogg: Keep reinvesting.

Clinton van Breda (53:52): I really let it take its course, and the Lord's will be done. Who am I, Alec, to run an organisation the size we are? Surely there must be some sort of...

Alec Hogg: And it's not yours?

Clinton van Breda (54:20): It's definitely not mine.

Alec Hogg: Let go and let God. I'm sure that's probably the story of your life, and the one you've told us. Well, Clinton, it's been fascinating talking to you, and I wish you all the best with Universal Kitchens. Clinton van Breda is the founder and chief executive of Universal Kitchens. I'm Alec Hogg from BizNews TV.