Before establishing Piece of Cake seven years ago, Popovic spent three years working for another moving firm in New York, first as a mover and then later in sales. Through his experience across the business and inspired by the examples of what companies like Starbucks, Google and Amazon were doing regarding customer experience, he saw lots of opportunities for how he could create a different type of moving company.
Starting with one truck, the business now employs 800 movers and drivers in five city hubs, including New York. Last year, it completed 100,000 moves. Popovic’s story and approach are really interesting and offer some valuable lessons for other entrepreneurs looking to disrupt crowded, competitive and/or traditional sectors through the service and experience that they deliver to their customers.Don’t Hold Down The Ctrl Key—New Warning As Cyber Attacks Confirmed
When starting out and trying to drum up business, Popovic told me that he often spent hours walking around Manhattan placing business cards in the reception areas of apartment blocks. These cards would frequently get removed by the ‘Supers’ managing those blocks, but Popovic would return regularly to ensure the reception areas always had a stock of his cards.
Over the last seven years, they have grown to 800 movers and drivers spread across five city hubs. But, given the investments that Popovic has made in his team, they have never needed to post a job advertisement for a new team member. Instead, all of their new recruits have come from referrals from existing team members. Each team member refers, on average, 10-15 people into the business who they believe would be a good fit with Piece of Cake, the service it provides and what it stands for.