Online store Wired and Wonderful, run by Christina Cridland in Perth, imports handmade African gifts, homewares and jewellery.
Established in 2011 after Cridland felt unsatisfied by her career as a journalist, the store has allowed her to spend more time at home with her young son.
Prior to starting her importing, Cridland visited the shop she was doing business with to ensure it was a fair trade workplace.
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Naomi Simson, founder of online gift retailer RedBalloon, says people wanting to start their own business should be detailed and visionaries.
“I usually defer to businessman and entrepreneur Jack Cowin who puts it better than I ever could,” Simson says. “I saw Jack present at the EY Entrepreneurs workshop, where he opened with the quote ‘an entrepreneur needs to be a cross between a microbiologist and an astronomer’. He believes that true entrepreneurs are special in that they can be both detailed and visionary.”
Simson says great entrepreneurs are curious, persistent, are searching for better ways to do things, endlessly positive, focused and have exemplary people skills. While entrepreneurs can be born with these traits, she says some can also be learned.
“Curiosity and positivity are hard things to teach — you either have them or you don’t,” she says. “But characteristics like focus and persistence can be learned, and need to be — without them you’re unlikely to make it as an entrepreneur or business owner.”
Simson attributes the success of her own business to tenacity and hard work. “It was almost three months before RedBalloon made its first sale,” she says. “People used to ask me ‘when were you going to give up?’ but the thought never crossed my mind. I never, ever thought that it would not work and I never contemplated throwing in the towel.”
Perth, Western Australia’s Natalie Long spent years in the fashion industry before setting off in a new direction and creating her own homewares brand and online store Bowerhouse.
She designs her own homewares for Bowerhouse, which has been in operation since 2012.
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Started by Melissa Lichocik in 2012 in Perth, Western Australia, The Baby Emporium sells modern and innovative baby products online.
Having her own children inspired Lichocik to stay home and start her own online business. An avid online shopper, Lichocik appreciated the variety of the baby products she was able to find online and decided to bring them all into one convenient online space.
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Young entrepreneurs Mitchell Harper and Eddie Machaalani are making eCommerce easy for small businesses.
Founded in 2009 and with offices in Sydney and Texas, BigCommerce revealed last year that the company now powers more than 20,000 online stores for retailers, who have processed sales of more than $350,000,000.
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Google yesterday announced Australia’s most web-savvy towns with its second eTown Awards, celebrating cities and regions whose small businesses make the best use of the web to connect with customers and grow.
Australia’s winning eTowns by state and territory are:
Claire Hatton, Head of Local Business, Google Australia, told Dynamic Business that business operators who successfully integrate digital strategies are simply more competitive.
“We see through our research that small businesses that actually use digital are more successful — they grow revenue and employ more people,” Hatton said. “This web advantage also extends to towns and regions which need no longer rely on a single local resource or industry to prosper. A town’s real assets are now their small businesses owners and employees,” Hatton said.
The link between digital engagement and commercial success has been firmly established, and a recent report by Deloitte Access Economics published in April this year found that Australian small businesses with high digital engagement are twice as likely to be growing revenue, and earn twice as much revenue per employee. They are also four times more likely to be hiring additional staff.
“The location of your shop front or size of your workforce doesn’t matter online. Every business has the opportunity to engage customers and grow,” Hatton said. “Whether you’re a boutique hotel, beautician or surf school, if you’re not online you’re missing out on a direct line to thousands of potential customers.”
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The Winning Group’s online sales have notched $150 million in annual sales, meaning its combined sales is a record $350 million for the company, Australia’s leading kitchen and laundry appliance specialist.
The 25 per cent jump in sales was propelled by a massive 35 per cent year-on-year growth in the firm’s Appliances Online and Big Brown Box internet offerings, and 17 per cent rise in Winning Appliances’ bricks-and-mortar sales.
“The retail stores were just over $100 million probably five years ago and now it’s $150m. The websites this year reached just over $150m,” group chief executive John Winning told The Courier-Mail.
“The debate between online versus offline is over – Australian retailers must perfect their business formula across all platforms to earn the trust and repeat business from savvy shoppers,” Winning said.
“We think that if the market turns, our growth could increase significantly, even more than 25 per cent. We’ve ridden out a couple of pretty tough years very successfully and now we’re looking forward to the many customers that we have talking positively about their experience with us.”
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Established in 2013 by Leah Bridge and stationed in Central Coast, New South Wales, Navy Crockett is an online boutique to buy gifts for the hard-to-buy-for man in your life.
Navy Crockett is actually the second business for the busy Bridge. She also has a design studio that she operates. Thankfully she embraces the chaos and variety of running the two very different businesses.
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After taking note of the dearth of functional unisex clothing for kids being sold in Australia, Katie Brannaghan of Melbourne, Victoria started Hipkin in 2012.
Going back and forth to Europe with her husband, Brannaghan noticed that a lot of the cool, functional brands of children’s clothing weren’t filtering through to her home country and she decided to do something about it. A year later and Hipkin is going strong.
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