After working in the fast-paced corporate world of Johannesburg for 7 years, Cheral Kennedy, the inspiration behind Living Matter, decided in early 2003 it was time to become a business owner herself. She went through a process of reflection to understand herself, her skills and her desires for job satisfaction in order to decide what type of business she should run.
In Dec 2003, she made a trip to Cape Town, and started conducting research into the local market and the landscaping industry. She identified a niche market, where she could position her company, what type of competitive advantage she could have and started putting together an effective marketing strategy.
Cheral identified the values, the philosophy and the culture that she would like to instill in her company and the way in which work was conducted, and started working on a brand strategy that reflected these values further.
After finalizing the brand with an external graphic design company, Cheral started strategizing how the operations of the business were going to be run, what processes needed to be in place, which systems needed to support these processes, and also most importantly what type of people (employees, suppliers and partners) the company would need in order to successfully bring the final solution to the client.
From the start of the company in May 2004, and continually as the company grew, processes were streamlined further, services were widened and systems enhanced.
Because of this, Cheral took her company from hand sketching small residential client's designs, to currently modelling large landscape designs in AutoCAD and 3D for local, national and international residential and corporate clients.
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