Posts Tagged ‘small business award’

OneShift founder defies odds, wins awards

Monday, November 25th, 2013
Photo credit; Epic Fireworks

Photo credit; Epic Fireworks

Although just 22 years old, Genevieve George can count herself as the CEO and founder of a successful online start-up.

George runs OneShift, an online jobs platform which matches employees with employers.

“I know it’s not that common for a 22 year-old female to run an online business but I had an idea and I had a strong feeling that this idea would work out,” George said.

And it’s even more uncommon than George lets on. A report conducted by the government’s Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research revealed 68.5% of small business operators were male and 31.5% were female. It also found that the lion’s share of business owners are aged 25 to 54 years old (28.2%). In 2007, business operators aged 20-24 years represented just 2.5% of all owners.

“Obviously one of the difficult challenges for a younger business owner is finding the funding to back your idea and to prove that your idea can really work. OneShift started off as a free WordPress site and was embraced predominately by restaurant, bar and caf?? owners in Sydney,” George said.

OneShift now has 217,000 users in a wide variety of businesses all around Australia.

OneShift is doing so well, it has been awarded the 2013 Winner of the Australian Business Award for three different categories:

  • Innovation
  • Enterprise
  • E-Business.

George was the 2013 Winner of the Anthill 30Under30, which recognises entrepreneurs under the age of 30 for their outstanding entrepreneurial endeavours. She was also a finalist for Australia’s Small Business Awards.

“I do think that many young, business-savvy individuals lack the support and assistance to launch their ideas into the real world of business but it’s not impossible,” George said. “You do need a strong idea and you need to be able to let this idea go wild – change it, shape it, develop it. Finally you need a lot of motivation and persistence.”

To read more about this story, click here.

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.

To read more on this story, click here.