MyGlass – How it all Began

Like all good entrepreneurial companies, the MyGlass story began with a vision.

You could say Gary Stieger, the founder and CEO of upstart glass company, MyGlass, is the typical entrepreneur. He grew up with big dreams of making a good life for himself and his family-to-be.

He joined the glass industry as a trainee manager in 1987, but by 1990 had decided to take the plunge and start his own business. Never one to do things by halves, he took this big step in the same month that he got married.

The timing might look a little suspect but in fact the new Mrs Stieger was an integral part of the start-up business, learning the ropes alongside her new spouse. She even learned to cut glass.

Stieger was then invited to become a franchisee for a new glass franchise in 1992, and this experience was very valuable, helping him to learn business skills and how the industry worked.

“I also learned some hard lessons about the stresses and strains that rapid growth can create,” he says.

After internal problems within the franchisor emerged, Stieger moved over to another national glass company, again as a franchisee. The franchise had been mismanaged, and Stieger threw himself into rebuilding its brand with the customers, ultimately growing it from a 27% market share to 65%.

Over time, though, he began to question the franchisor’s integrity, and he took the decision to fly solo once again.

“I later came to realise that all these experiences as a franchisee were very valuable when it came to setting up my own business,” he says, looking back.

A disruptor is born

As Stieger tells it, he woke up one morning and informed his wife that he was going to do things his way, hence the name MyGlass. There’s no doubt that a big motivating factor was his desire to build a new type of glass business, one that was ethical and that also was in tune with the ethos of the newly democratic South Africa.

Another key factor was that with the ending of sanctions, imported glass became available, offering competition to the local producers.

“I knew that there were many small glass businesses out there, like I once was, who offered great service but needed to be part of a national business to break into the lucrative insurance market,” he says.

A key early decision was what the business model of the new business should be. Stieger decided that he would adopt a licence rather than a franchise model. The franchise model is essentially a turnkey approach, and he wasn’t in a position to offer that. But a more important factor was his desire not to constrain the entrepreneurial flair of the businesspeople who joined him.

“The licence model really allows us to have the best of both worlds: an agreed set of standards aligned with what the insurance industry demands, but they are also free to make deals with other customers,” he says. “In the end, you have to trust that the licensee knows what he or she is doing and shares your vision – that’s why they were chosen, after all!”

A big tent

Other important elements of the MyGlass business model are its inclusivity and its commitment to the customer experience. For Stieger, inclusivity means increasing the number of female licensees in a male-dominated industry; he has also been focused on finding black-owned glass businesses with the potential to join the MyGlass network.

Mumtaz Moola, Director, MyGlass, says that the company is proud of the fact that one of its biggest licensees is female-owned. “We have now set our sights on ensuring that 60% of our licensees will be B-BBEE Level 1, with a minimum of 25% owned by women,” she says. A lawyer and activist, Moola joined the company as a director and shareholder in 2016, inspired by Stieger’s vision to open up what had previously been an “old boys’ network”.

Ironically, the transformed nature of MyGlass’s network of licensees proved to be a hurdle in gaining acceptance with the all-important insurance market. A big breakthrough came when an executive at one of the bigger insurers was let down by his supplier. He took a chance on MyGlass, and the rest is history.

Stieger is passionate about customer service. A core part of the MyGlass brand is the concept of mobility – rather than customers going to fitment centres, he has always believed in the value of a mobile unit that goes to where the customer is. Convenience is obviously one benefit, but he knows that damaged glass is often the result of crime. “Nobody who is feeling traumatised wants to drive around looking for a fitment centre,” he says.

Technology underpins MyGlass’s pursuit of a superior customer. In 2018, he persuaded Zahed Rassool to join the business as director of technology. Rassool worked closely with him to develop a claims management system that underpins MyGlass’s operational and administrative systems and has the thumbs up from many brokers.

Stieger says his previous experience continues to help him with the delicate balancing act every growing business must strike between capacity and the demands of an expanding customer base.

“The truth is that we don’t just see MyGlass as a purely commercial venture,” he says. “It’s much more than that: empowering a new generation of entrepreneurs in the glass industry is part of it, but so too is the satisfaction of exceeding our customers’ expectations.”

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