Katie Page: CEO of Harvey Norman

This essay discusses the success story of Katie Page, the CEO of Harvey Norman, a renowned retail company. Learn about her journey, achievements, and contributions to the business world.

Running Head: Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship
Essay
System04104
12/16/2018

Entrepreneurship
1
Katie Page (CEO of Harvey Norman)
This essay is about a successful woman entrepreneur of the world - Katie Page, who is
currently working as a CEO of Harvey Norman. Katie Page is known as Australia's most
successful woman business entrepreneur. Harvey Norman Company is a famous retail
channel of furniture goods, consumer goods, electronic items, computers, communication
devices, office furniture and appliances, and even beddings as well. As of 2016, more than
280 franchise stores operating the business of Harvey Norman in Different countries such as
New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, and some countries of South-east Asia and Europe
(Psaros and Seamer, 2015). The founder of this company was Gerry Harvey and his partner
Ian Norman, but now it is operated by Katie page as a CEO of the company. Katie page is
one of the great entrepreneurs in Australia and a good thinker about the business as well. She
was ranked fourth in 2015, out of 50 most powerful women business in the Australian
Business Review's list (Bruce, 2012). Her full name is Kay Leslie Katie Page and she was
born in 1956, in Mareeba, Queensland (Australia). Actually, she was one of the great
business-minded women in the world and supports many professional sports and she also was
known as an active promoter of sports game all over the world. She has three sisters, her
father was a banker by profession, and thus the profession of father force him to relocate his
family in different cities after every four years. Katie page in 1973 completed her graduation
from Brisbane State High School. In her starting days, Katie decided to work as a surveyor,
but in those days, low pay for the same work forced her to leave the work. After this, she
decided to move to Sydney. When she was 19, she decided to work for children and
completed an intelligence test to raise funds with autism. In these test, one of the judges
named Gerry Harvey offered her for a job in her stores and gave her position as an assistant at
his new store. Page worked as an assistant there and worked for marketing, publicity, and
buying, and selling, and also helped Harvey syndicate his horses. In 1988, she married at the
age of 32 with Harvey, and she was his second wife, then Harvey was 49 years old.
Moreover, in 1982, Norman Harvey was established by Harvey with Ian Norman, and Katie
Page joined the company in 1983 (Wong, 2016). Later in 1999, she became the CEO of the
Company and Garry Harvey is the Executive Chairman of the company.
Katie page is a good decision–maker and always think about the progress of Harvey Norman
and focuses on ‘what is next’. Her main motive is to promote the business all over the world.
She spends a lot of time in the R&D department of the company and spends lots of time with

Entrepreneurship
2
the manufacturers. Her company Harvey Norman is a lifestyle brand that focuses on the
better living of sportsman and their customers (Staff, 2017).
After becoming the CEO of the company, Katie focuses on spreading her business all over
the world. She expanded Harvey and Norman into New eland, Singapore, Malaysia, Ireland,
and Slovenia. Further, she focuses on expanding the company business through online
marketing and works on to make it popular all over the world. Katie Page is an energetic and
wonderful leader, who believes in her strategies. She is a good strategy maker as well. As she
was a champion player of a number of sports, her vision was fantastic about the opportunities
in the sports business. As a great supporter of various professional sports game, she provides
sponsorships for games and in 2015, she opened more than 277 stores of Harvey Norman in 8
countries. The total revenue of the company was $4.9 billion and net profit was $165 million
in 2015 (Lehman, 2015). In 2005, she was appointed as board member of the National Rugby
League. It was a history in self when a woman appointed as a board member of a major
sports administration in Australia, and she was the first lady who appointed as a board
member in national Rugby League (Smartcompany.com, 2018). She also served as the
director of Rebel Sports Limited (RSL) and is now working as a director of Pertama Holdings
Limited (PHL), in Singapore.
Katie Page joined the business as an assistant of the boss, and now she is running
multibillion-dollar international retail chain business. Katie Page also involves in building her
own Magic Millions thoroughbred sales business in jointly partnership with Harvey. She
continuously makes strategies to grow up her business and even compete with other business
competitors in the global financial crisis as well. After the time of global crisis, when all the
competitors of the company facing challenges in the market, her company able to earn a net
profit of $211.7 million in 2013-14, that was much and more than a 2012-13 financial year.
The net profit was increased by almost 49% in 2013-14 (Harvey Norman, 2018). In an
interview, she said that they (husband and wife) are working as a team and they both make
take the right decisions regarding the company business and its development (Mehta and
Silva, 2018). Katie Page having a good understanding of amrket9ng strategies, she is a good
planner, she believes in innovative and creative ideas that help them to run their retail chain
business. Katie is sensational in her areas and she was fully supported by her husband Mr
Gerry to run her business smoothly all over the world.

Entrepreneurship
3
Harvey Norman is a public company that operates its business through multiple channels
such as franchisors, business owners, grant business franchises, and business operators that
are doing business in office appliances and different products related to office in all over the
world. It also provides its product and services through online channels. The company also
deals in property business. The internal business model of the company was designed by
Katie Page in such a way that it competes with competitors and gain a competitive advantage
over them in the marketplace (Lee, Hallak, and Sardeshmukh, 2016). She was passionate
about making effective change and designs for their brands like Poliform that is a high-end
space furniture company. Katie page also is known for her innovative ideas for expanding the
business of the company and she also worked on to reduce the company's debt level. She is
working on opening new stores in many countries such in Asia and Europe. Especially, she
interested in Asia because of the huge population in the Asian country (Cavusgil and Knight,
2015).
Katie Page is one of the known women business entrepreneur in Australia and very
passionate about their work. She has a strong willpower that makes her highly strong and
attractive businesswoman. She is known for many things such as a good leader, a good
entrepreneur, a woman with a clear vision and goals, her retail business mind, and even her
interests in horseracing. She is a role model for many women and girls in Australia that how a
woman can handle such a huge empire with willpower and their skills to manage it. She also
supports the role of women in the technological field and in design as well. She also focuses
on providing jobs to the women in the company for design roles. Katie Page is known for
their support to female sports person as well. Even she appreciates the engineering and
technologies, but she is not the fan of designing of these products and always tries to find
something for their female customers (Harvey, Voelker, Cope, and Dieffenbach, 2018). As a
great entrepreneur, she always tries to find something new in for her customers and try to
bring it in her products and in designs. She always believes in partnership with other firms
and collaboration with other countries in the business. As a good designer, she focuses to
bring attractive designs for their customers in technical products such as Laptops, Mobile
phones, and other communicational and electronic devices. She always tries to bring
something new to their customers.
Although, Katie page is one of the most successful and longest-running CEO's in Australia
and works in the company from last 19 years. The success behind this powerful woman

Entrepreneurship
4
entrepreneur is her innovative thinking that always pinches her mind “what is next” for her
business. She is working for women in both corporate industry and in sports as well. She
believes in more power for women in the society to a large number of women in the position
of power. She focuses on more positions as a leader for women in the retail sector and works
for their development as well. Apart from a good leader who focuses on earning profit from
her business, she is also a good human heaving a beautiful heart that always thinks for society
and for its people.

Entrepreneurship
5
References
Bruce, M. (2012) Passion on the Field [online]. Available from:
https://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/katie-pages-passions-of-the-field/news-story/
01f81cc6d5ece45804604a9ac10d94b9 [Accessed: 16/12/2018].
Wong, Z. (2016) Tech talk with Katie Page: “Women are the technologists of this century”
[online]. Available from: https://www.vogue.com.au/vogue-codes/news/tech-talk-with-katie-
page-women-are-the-technologists-of-this-century/news-story/
789ef9930068d84658333f76b7aa06f6 [Accessed: 16/12/2018].
Staff, G. (2017) Meet the woman who inspired HP’s chicest computer yet [online]. Available
from: https://garage.ext.hp.com/us/en/business/katie-page-harvey-norman.html [Accessed
from: 16/12/2018].
Lehman, J. (2015) Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page will sponsor the Auburn Giants AFL
team [online]. Available from: https://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/harvey-norman-ceo-katie-
page-will-sponsor-the-auburn-giantsshy-afl-team/news-story/
e6dd9bd0cb273704bb425272b045e72a [Accessed: 16/12/2018].
Smartcompany.com (2018) Katie Page [online]. Available from:
https://www.smartcompany.com.au/lists/top-female-entrepreneurs-2018/katie-page/
[Accessed: 16/12/2018].
Harvey, S., Voelker, D.K., Cope, E. and Dieffenbach, K. (2018) Navigating the leadership
labyrinth: barriers and supports of a woman collegiate coach in a 20-year leadership
role. Sports Coaching Review, 7(1), pp. 45-62.
Mehta, S. and Silva, D. (2018) Training methods used at Harvey Norman [online].
available from: http://researcharchive.wintec.ac.nz/6239/1/AMCVol1%20Final.pdf
[Accessed: 16/12/2018].
Psaros, J. and Seamer, M. (2015) Ranking Corporate Governance of Australia's Top
Companies: A Decade On. Australian Accounting Review, 25(4), pp. 405-412.

Entrepreneurship
6
Cavusgil, S.T. and Knight, G. (2015) The born global firm: An entrepreneurial and
capabilities perspective on early and rapid internationalization. Journal of International
Business Studies, 46(1), pp. 3-16.
Lee, C., Hallak, R., and Sardeshmukh, S.R. (2016) Innovation, entrepreneurship, and
restaurant performance: A higher-order structural model. Tourism Management, 53, pp. 215-
228.
Harvey Norman (2018) Harvey Norman Global [online]. Available from:
http://www.harveynormanglobal.com/ [Accessed: 16/12/2018].