Arthur and Marilyn Gray have owned and managed MBE Manuka for the last 28 years. Photo: Thomas Lucraft.
A lot has changed in Manuka over the last 28 years. But husband-wife duo and small business tour de force, Arthur and Marilyn Gray, have remained a fixture in the inner-south dining and shopping precinct.
It takes only minutes and a short walk to a local cafe for the franchise partners of the global shipping services, printing and graphic design retailer, MBE, to recognise and greet one of their customers of two decades, who rents one of MBE Manuka’s 150 mailboxes.
These mailboxes, also called ‘virtual addresses’, allow travelling business people or those living out-of-state to keep a Canberra address.
Marilyn reveals the philosophy underpinning almost 30 years in business has been to treat smaller clients, like the local businessman in the cafe, equally to the large organisations on their books.
“No matter whether it’s just granny coming in to get her photos done or a big business client, we just want to help them in any way we can and assist people,” she says.
“We try to go the extra mile with clients, no matter whether it’s someone spending $25 or $5000. I think everybody deserves the same amount of treatment.”
MBE Manuka now counts the National Farmers’ Federation and National Press Club among its clients, along with a host of smaller businesses and individual people.
But back in 1995 when the pair had just opened shop in the would-be shopping precinct, it was a different century and Marilyn says, a different Manuka.
“It was quite isolated,” she says.
“When we moved into Endeavour House, opposite where the Coles supermarket is now, that [Coles] was a car park with about 130-odd car parking spaces.
“We had two shops vacant for three or four years so people had to come and find us. I think that was a hard way of trying to build your business.”
They moved in expecting the Coles supermarket to be built within two years and to bring with it the foot traffic to jumpstart their business, but instead it took about five years to open.
Despite being franchisees, Marilyn and Arthur had to run everything like any small business – from marketing and public relations through to the day-to-day management of their business.
“For every [small business] person that makes a killing in two or three years, there are 40 or 50 people that do it over five to 10 years. You’ve got to be prepared to stick with it and persevere,” Arthur says.
The pair did just that. Isolated from the then main shopping area of Manuka, Arthur and Marilyn turned to their building’s other tenants, which included a Finnish forestry company and the Canberra office of the architectural firm which designed the new Parliament House. These co-tenants would later become some of their first and major clients.
“People don’t want to go and buy a printer that’s worth between $50,000 and $100,000, which is what some of this equipment costs initially,” Marilyn says.
They can pop out anything from paperback novels and pamphlets through to posters and banners.
“I guess that’s what really helped us from the beginning, but then you’ve got to build on that base,” she says.
In intervening years, supermarket giant Coles arrived, as did a procession of clients big and small. Some of Arthur and Marilyn’s most memorable moments have included working 30 hours straight to deliver a hard-copy tender for the National Broadband Network and helping a mother deliver a new mobile phone to her son, who worked on an oil rig and dropped his phone overboard somewhere off the African coast.
Then COVID hit in 2020. While MBE Manuka remained open as an essential service, other businesses closed down, foot traffic collapsed and spending became more restrained.
“Like a lot of other people in COVID, we suffered,” Marilyn says. “But I think you can’t stand still. You’ve got to get on with things and move forward.”
And “move forward” they did after the lockdowns lifted – into their new M Centre shopfront where they say centre management and the landlord welcomed them with open arms. Here, the couple remains optimistic about the future of Manuka and their business.
“Manuka seems to be definitely more vibrant now and there’s quite a few new businesses starting to fill out and come into the place,” Marilyn says.
“There’s an ambience when you walk around here. It’s like a village but it’s still a shopping precinct.”
Arthur agrees. “I see a very good future for small shopping centres like Manuka.”
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