By Hogan Webb
Executive Features Editor
Mira Costa alumnus Alecia King dropped out of college with a wild idea in mind, and 27 years later, her risky business ventures have paid off as she retires from her adventures with crocodiles.
After dropping out of college in her senior year, King founded Australian Crocodile Traders, one of the most advanced and well-maintained crocodile farms in the industry, she said. King managed the company for 27 years, during which she expanded and eventually monopolized the crocodile skin market. King eventually sold her company to the French fashion brand Hermès in 2012, and she has since then retired.
Link: Check out Australian Crocodile Trader’s website
“Nobody had ever grown crocodiles commercially for large handbag skins, so we basically pioneered the process,” King said. “You need a lot of technology to work with these vast numbers of animals, which are capable of some serious damage.”
King graduated from Mira Costa in 1983 and participated in cross country and was a member of the Recipe Club. Following her time at Costa, King studied psychology at University of California, Berkeley for three years before deciding to drop out.
King’s decision to pursue a career in the crocodile skin industry was sparked during a trip to Australia following her junior year in college. During the trip, she met her business partner, Keith Cook, an Australian native who was planning on traveling to America to work on a crocodile farm. In the fall of her senior year at Berkeley, King decided to drop out due to general disinterest and exhaustion, she said. She instead traveled back to Australia in order to reconnect with Cook.
“I arrived in Australia, and we just had this idea,” King said. “We started with nothing. I remember going through the grocery store and thinking one day I’ll be able to go through here and buy whatever I want.”
Together, Cook and King began their business in Australia as small-scale crocodile skin sellers. They bought skins from existing farms, tanned the skins and sold them to customers such as Louis Vuitton and Hermès. King’s company was not able to receive bank loans for its first few years due to King’s lack of assets, which didn’t leave much room for the company’s initial expansion, King said.
Link: Learn how crocodile skins are tanned
“I think it was a blessing in disguise not being able to borrow money,” King said. “Because we didn’t get any loans, we could only grow as fast as we could make money, and that really helped us take it slow and learn. Failure is your best teacher; success teaches you nothing.”
Photo: Check out a picture from King’s early days in the industry
Following seven years of purchasing and selling skins, King and Cook began purchasing crocodile supplying farms. She purchased farms in Cairns, Edward River and Janamba, all located in Australia. She began breeding 4,500 crocodiles and slowly expanded to 60,000 over the span of 20 years, becoming the largest and most dependable crocodile skin producer of quality in the world, King said.
“The market was just crying out for us; it was there. It was just challenging getting the product out there,” King said. “We always just had a strong faith in our own abilities and saw that through.”
Since crocodile farming on such a large scale had never been done before, King had to develop innovative technologies, such as specific cages to reduce crocodile fighting. King and her co-workers had to create effective methods to both feed and transport the crocodiles. Most importantly, King refined a process of placing similarly-sized crocodiles in pens to reduce crocodile fighting, which devalues and damages the skins.
“It’s all about stress minimization,” King said. “You don’t want them to have any reason to react, because they will react very quickly, which can obviously be from a stress reaction. So we try to minimize the stress level at all times when we and our employees are working with the animals.”
Currently retired, King alternates between living in her Australian home just off the Great Barrier Reef and a strand-front property in Hermosa Beach. King does not wish to work again and plans to enjoy the lifestyle that her successful business ventures have allowed her to live, she said.
“I think that taking calculated risks is very important,” King said. “I don’t mean just crazy risks, but assessing the risk and backing your own judgement and going okay now I can do this, and that is what is the key to being successful.”
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