What’s in the box with the dots is the famous tag for the popular Domino’s Pizza brand, but it is thinking outside the box that has seen the Pizza delivery giant gradually dominate the industry with a 40% share of the Australian market. CEO for Domino’s Pizza Australia and New Zealand limited - Don Meij told leading business professionals, at the Queensland Institute of Chartered Accountants Business Forum, that Domino’s success is attributed to ‘Grow yourself rich and High Volume Mentality’ strategy and the innovative corporate culture employed by the company.  
 
As a result of this successful model the number of Domino’s Pizza stores has grown from just under 174 stores in 2001 to more than 620 stores in 2006 and the company is currently reviewing the opportunity of expanding into the European market.  
 
The success of this growth can be attributed to investing in growing the company and reducing bottlenecks through improving existing stores by adding more order stations and ovens and training more staff to support the growth.  
 
“In a mature market, there are two kinds of operators in retail, the ‘grow yourself rich’ vs the ‘save yourself rich’ strategists, it is important for those wishing to open a franchise or a small to medium sized business should adopt the ‘grow yourself rich’ strategy in order to enjoy future success,” Mr Meij said.  
 
Since it’s introduction into the market, Don Meij was eager to franchise, “we took the ‘grow yourself rich / high volume mentality’ approach and saw a huge spike in growth and overall success,” Mr Meij said.  
 
Mr Meij explained the ‘save yourself rich’ strategy, as the approach that sees business more focussed on banking dollars in preference to percentages, rather than investing in growing the business they often increase prices.  
 
“While initially, the ‘save yourself rich’ sees results, slowly overtime customers will begin drop off and eventually the business will shrink and in some cases close,” Mr Meij said.  
 
“However, the ‘grow yourself rich’ strategy is concerned with percentages and investing in offering the best value, best quality and the best service, in other words tight on waste and lose on capital, this approach is much more cost effective achieves strategy than the ‘save yourself rich’ scheme achieving greater results,” Mr Meij said.  
 
A store in Toowoomba, after employing the ‘grow yourself rich’ model enjoyed a 600% growth in its first year due to increased store size and an increase in trained staff.  
 
Taking control of the market also means employing other elements of strategic leadership including:  

• Innovation - Domino’s continually develops new products
 

• Brand positioning - Dominos targets 16 - 39 year olds with their strong marketing campaigns
 

• Leveraging centralised infrastructure - using the company’s scalability Domino's reduced costs on services that could be improved in-house
 

• Great team - Domino's has developed and trained more than 11,000 staff