Posts Tagged ‘Sydney’

New Year’s resolution turns into hugely successful business for Sydney woman

Friday, March 14th, 2014
Photo credit; Bradley Gordon on Flickr

Photo credit; Bradley Gordon on Flickr

Amy Ta from Sydney just marked her one year anniversary as a business owner.

“I really wanted this year to be different,” she says. “I wanted to do something that I loved.”

A fan of buying and selling online, Ta’s New Year’s resolution for 2013 was to create her online store, Seventh Tree Soaps. She now produces handmade soaps for customers worldwide.

“One third of my business is in the United Arab Emirates,” Ta says.

Agents for brick and mortar stores are also flocking to get a piece of the quality products she produces.

“People want products that are unique and well crafted,” she says.

Now her full-time job, Ta’s online store has performed so well she is considering expansion.

“I am already thinking of putting on staff to help,” Ta says. “It’s amazing. For now I have unofficial help from my husband.”

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Napa Valley girls move to Sydney to start online fashion boutique

Monday, October 14th, 2013
Photo credit; Naomi King on Flickr

Photo credit; Naomi King on Flickr

In a reversal of sorts, two women who hail from Napa Valley in California made the move to Sydney to open an online fashion boutique.

While Silicon Valley might seem like the obvious choice for the women, Tessa Mini and Natalia Nowak, moved to Australia instead and were inspired by what they consider Australian women’s fashion consciousness to create Passionista Boutique, run out of their Sydney apartment.

“We package everything, we write all the slips, it’s our baby,” Mini said.

“At first we couldn’t afford a model,” she recalled, so Mini and Nowak modeled the clothing themselves. “I did the entire website myself,” Mini said, and “we do all digital marketing mainly from Instagram and Facebook.”

“We get a steady flow — about five orders a week,” Mini said. Their goal is to grow the business, selling closer to 20 items a week, she said.

Passionista sells a range of clothing including jackets, dresses, tops and accessories. Prices range from $25 to $65 in U.S. dollars. The business ships internationally.

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Brisbane businessman turns disaster into dollars

Monday, September 30th, 2013

Brisbane businessman Michael French turned the raging floods in that city in 2011 into a successful online business by filling a niche that so many people don’t know they need until it’s too late.

Photo credit; johndal on Flickr

Photo credit; johndal on Flickr

While he watched flood waters near his home, French worried about the state of his office, which held his digital marketing company only a few kilometres away. That’s when the idea for his Bizeo app hit him.

Essentially a dashboard app, Bizeo monitors all available data from servers to engines on key machinery, to temperature to exchange rates and social media for a business that is experiencing an emergency like a flood.

“Business owners spend a lot of their time running around checking on things, but this does it for them, and gives them a single indicator that everything is alright,” French says. “Bizeo monitors the status and data across your whole enterprise, and watches everything at once.”

As many Brisbane businesses struggled in the aftermath of the floods, French realized he could add even more functionality to the app.

“Our cashflow was struggling as our debtors blew out and our sales pipeline struggled as many Brisbane groups went under,” French says. “Bizeo now plugs into your CRM, accounting and social media systems.”

Bizeo received a $200,000 grant from Commercialisation Australia last year and French used those funds to hire a business development manager, and file for intellectual property protections such as trademarks and patents and is currently working with clients in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Mexico and London.

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Australia’s Freelancer.com subject of takeover bid

Friday, September 27th, 2013
Photo credit; David Beyer on Flickr.

Photo credit; David Beyer on Flickr.

The Sydney-based online job outsourcing website Freelancer.com has received a $US400 million takeover offer from a Japanese company.

Adelaide-born entrepreneur Matt Barrie, who owns 50% of the company, is currently mulling over the takeover offer.

The business has gone through massive growth since Barrie bought it as Getafreelancer.com in September 2007, when it had already signed up about 500,000 freelancers and fulfilled contracts worth about $US23 million.

Barrie said he had fielded several offers for minority investment by ­private equity and venture capital funds over the past four years.

“You name it and there’s a fund out there that has pitched to us,” he said.

He has also fielded offers “in varying levels of completeness” to sell the entire company, but has so far declined.

The company, with offices in Manila, London, Buenos Aires and Jakarta, says it has 8.8 million registered users and has facilitated $US1.2 billion worth of projects.

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Award winning website promises to pamper

Wednesday, September 4th, 2013

Pamper Hamper Gifts, which won an Australian Small Business National Winner award in 2012, was established way back in 2004 by Bianca Kristallis.

Based in Sydney, Kristallis had the vision for her business after seeing that hampers were hampered by an inherent tackiness. Believing she could do better and bring the ‘wow factor’ back to hamper gifts, and Pamper Hamper Gifts was born and is still going strong today and winning business awards along the way.

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Erica Fanning Interior Styling fans the flames of fortune

Friday, August 30th, 2013

Erica Fanning established the self-titled Erica Fanning Interior Styling in Sydney in 2012 with the intention of being able to provide interior decorating services to anyone in Australia and beyond via e-decorating. E-decorating sees people send Fanning their room dimensions via email and getting a complete room design package back, complete with places where clients can purchase everything needed to complete the room’s proposed look.

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William Hill buys Australia’s biggest online gambling site

Tuesday, August 13th, 2013

United Kingdom online betting giant William Hill has agreed to purchase Australian online betting firm Tom Waterhouse for at least A$34 million.

The online betting site has agreed to pay A$34 million up front and assume A$6 million in debt for tomwaterhouse.com.

It will pay up to A$70 million more on a sliding scale based on tomwaterhouse.com achieving earnings growth between A$10 million and A$30 million in 2015.

Tomwaterhouse.com was established in 2010 and is one of Australia’s fastest growing online racing and sports betting businesses.

It is a privately held company owned by managing director Tom Waterhouse and others and has around 80 employees based in Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin.

“We are pleased to have secured this acquisition,” Ralph Topping, CEO of William Hill. “International expansion is a key part of our growth strategy and making Australia our second home is a priority. Acquiring tomwaterhouse.com gives us a rapidly growing business that appeals to a complementary customer base.”

Australia has the world’s biggest gambling habit per capita.

To read more on this story, click here.