The super woman title really doesn’t do Abigail Forsyth justice. Forsyth is a mum, she’s environmentally conscious and she’s the founder of a multimillion dollar company.
Forsyth was previously the co-founder of Melbourne healthy food start-up Bluebag with her brother Jamie. She was inspired to create the business alongside her brother when the pair saw how much disposable waste the cafes created.
Forsyth discovered her niche when she looked for reusable cups to be sold at Bluebag and couldn’t find any suitable options, kick-starting her KeepCup journey.
KeepCups are the first Barista Standard reusable cup and since launching in 2009 at a designers’ market, three million cups have been sold. In the first six hours of the business, Forsyth had already sold 1000 KeepCups.
But Forsyth told SmartCompany the ultimate business plan is for KeepCups to be so popular that in 10 years “we may have done ourselves out of business”.
Each week it seems that another manufacturing business in Australia has collapsed, but Textor Technologies in Melbourne is defying the trend.
The business manufactures high tech fabric used in fibre fluid management which trap and transfer moisture in nappies, tampons and wound dressings.
Textor turns over around $20 million a year and makes a quarter of a million square metres of fabric a day.
But despite this huge output, walking around the gleaming high tech factory floor is a shock as there are only eight workers on the factory line and the whole line is driven by computer.
Butler told SmartCompany the business operates 24 hours a day, and out of its 50 employees, it has 13 employees and two have PhDs.
“This company is an example of modern manufacturing; modern manufacturing is not dirty and bashing metal things, it’s about productivity and sustainability and material science,” he says.
“We are a family business committed to a long-term concept. It is capital intensive and technology intensive, but it is not labour intensive.”
Butler is one entrepreneur redefining Australia’s manufacturing sector.
Freelancer’s initial public offering has turned the global outsourcing business into a $600 million company.
It’s all the work of founder Matt Barrie, who describes the site as “the eBay for jobs”.
“It’s actually a category killer and I was just frankly surprised that no one had done it before,” Barrie told SmartCompany.
“When I looked into it there were some companies that were having a go at it, but weren’t really aggressive enough, and they didn’t really have enough technical skills behind them to actually execute it properly.”
Barrie says it is his technical background which has really made Freelancer thrive where others have failed.
“You can be a good chief executive in the technology industry without an engineering background or engineering degree, but you’ll never be great,” he says.
“You need to have a deep, deep, deep knowledge of technology in order to be able to hire the right people.”
Gelato Messina, the Australian mecca of gelato stores, is a booming success, but it hasn’t always been this way.
Founder Nick Palumbo went through the roller coaster ride of selling his business, seeing it fall into financial mismanagement and then getting the company back when it was placed in administration two years later.
Coming from a background in the restaurant and café industry, in the late ‘90s Palumbo realised he didn’t like “the economics” of cafés, but loved the idea of a gelato business.
He started up Gelato Messina but sold out of it. When the new owners went into administration, as a major creditor, Palumbo was able to take the business back.
“I started from ground zero again, and at the same time my brother moved from Adelaide to Sydney, and I got him involved in the business,” he says.
After taking Gelato Messina over again, it has gone on to flourish through the help of word of mouth and social media.
Now the business is turning over $10 million and has 120 staff.
Cara Waters is a former SmartCompany editor. Previously, Cara was a senior reporter for the Financial Times’ website and worked for The Sunday Times in London.
