BRISBANE DISTILLERY Company has not only performed a highly useful community service in turning its manufacturing capabilities over to producing hand sanitiser, it has also consequently boosted local employment.

While thousands of businesses have been repurposing their capabilities to create valuable services to their communities during the coronavirus pandemic, Brisbane Distillery Company joined other distillers in pausing production of their alcoholic goods to add in a new product line: alcohol-based hand sanitiser.

Brisbane Distillery Company founder, Jon Atherton was nevertheless astonished to see sales grow exponentially.  

Mr Atherton not only chose to temporarily change the whole operation of his business, but also took on the challenge of establishing a new supply chain for hand sanitiser amidst national shortages of bottles, pumps and even raw ingredients.  

To be able to meet the local demand, Brisbane Distillery hired more employees and grew the business workforce from six to 34 in a single month. Additionally, in this past month, the factory fulfilled 15,000 hand sanitiser orders – a production total of 165,000 litres. 

DIVERSE EXPERIENCE PAYS OFF

Having served in the Australian Army and worked across various industries over the last 30 years, Mr Atherton said he had been fortunate to have had diverse experience in running multiple businesses, establishing new networks and scaling teams. That varied knowledge has allowed him to pivot quickly, he said, and transform the distillery into a hand sanitiser factory – in turn becoming one of the largest producers in the region. 

“There is a little bit to making a really good gin that, if you focus on the details with gin, you can focus on the details with hand sanitiser as well,” Mr Atherton said. 

The sanitiser Brisbane Distillery sells is suitable for use in medical and health services, has 80 percent alcohol content that is said to kill 99.99 percent of viruses and bacteria. It is also a non-gel formula, so does not leave residue.

The product can be utilised in health care facilities – such as hospitals, aged care and other residential facilities – as well as for general consumer use. 

Supplying to federal and state police, ambulance and fire services, the team at Brisbane Distillery has been working harder than ever to keep the stock ahead of demand.

Prices for the hand sanitiser start from $10.50 per 600ml bottle with pump and from $57.50 per 5 litre bottle.

www.bstill.com.au

ends  

By Leon Gettler >>

LONGTAIL UX, an Australian start-up that improves website ranking and ad performance on Google, has just secured $5 million in new funding from Investec Emerging Companies Fund to expand into the US and UK markets.

The big question, is how did they do it when businesses are finding it hard to raise cash when the economy is contracting because of COVID-19?

According to the company’s co-founder and co-CEO Andreas Dzumla, it didn’t happen overnight. It followed extensive negotiations with Investec before the outbreak of the pandemic. 

“It had been a process of almost three years, of us knowing each other, they know about our business. There was a long relationship,” Mr Dzumla told Talking Business.

He said serious discussions about the funding started in August and got serious in November.

Mr Dzumla said the COVID-19 situation at the beginning of this year changed everything.

“I think everyone in February still saw this as a Chinese problem and even in early March, and then from one week to the other, things changed dramatically,” he said.

DEAL TIMING CHALLENGE

The onset of the pandemic  meant Investec had to look at what it meant for them and Longtail had to assess what it meant for its own business.

Mr Dzumla said there was a period of two weeks where no-one really knew what the impact would be. However, in the end both sides had done sufficient due diligence to go ahead with the deal.

Longtail has an extensive client base including Woolworths Group’s Dan Murphy’s, Adore Beauty, Kogan, Booktopia and Yellow Pages. 

It’s broad and, as Dzumla says, it’s a good thing it’s not limited to the travel industry.

“It’s so broad, which is why we both felt confident that while it was uncertain times, we could go forward,” Mr Dzumla said.

He said Longtail UX was already expanding overseas with teams in the US and Europe.

The company’s overseas teams had given the company good insights into the impacts of the pandemic as they were more acutely felt in markets such as Spain and the US.

PROFIT FROM LANDING PAGES

Longtail’s software helps companies profit from their landing pages. Its software makes websites more relevant and creates a better user experience.

The software uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and focuses in on key words and search intentions. The company also hosts the systems on its own,

He said Longtail UX had also been at the forefront of remote work and, with its plans to expand overseas, remote working in sales and account management in different time zones would become a key part of its business strategy.

The headquarters, however, will remain in Sydney.

Sales, for example, would be done with video calls and client service is done remotely

The company also had a remote work policy right from the start.

“We are quite well-prepared comparably for the situation” Mr Dzumla said. 

“Before this, everyone in the team, every two weeks, could work from home.”

www.longtailux.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.

ends

By Leon Gettler >>

GREG MCLARDIE runs a company, Two Hands, that exports hundreds of millions of lobsters into China. He is in a very challenging situation.

Mr McLardie runs the risk of the Chinese wet markets, which notoriously helped create the coronavirus through unhygienic conditions.

However, the business will now be supplying Chinese restaurants, by-passing the wet market system. The lobsters go straight to the restaurant.

The Two Hands business model tags each lobster and uses blockchain. 

Two Hands hasn’t been supplying restaurants in China since January 27, since they have been closed. The restaurants opened three weeks ago but haven’t yet started buying lobsters because things in China are still slow.

People aren’t yet going to restaurants because they need to keep their social distance and they have to wear face masks. Mr McLardie said the chefs are telling him they won’t start ordering until May.

“I’m in constant contact with the executive chefs in Shanghai and the executive chef for the Waldorf Astoria said to me last week the whole world knows that coronavirus started in a fish market. He thinks that makes the Two Hands model very compelling because we avoid the fish market,” Mr McLardie told Talking Business.

His company was now being encouraged to bring in even more lobsters, when the restaurants start trading again.

“We connect fishers and farmers directly with the restaurant, with the chef. And with that direct connection, we have been able to reinvent the supply gain and eliminate middle men,” Mr McLardie said..

GOING DIRECT TO THE CHEFS

The way the Two Hands system works is that the fisher or farmer puts a smart tag on the product which cannot be removed until it gets to the chef. The product is weighed and the quality information is assessed.

That information, together with the fisher and farmer information, along with the pricing, is uploaded into the marketplace and made available to the chef in the restaurant. They place the order and the order is aggregated in Australia.

The lobster is packed in Australia, it arrives in customs in China and goes straight to the restaurant, avoiding the importer, the wholesaler and last mile distributor.

“So we avoid the fish market and because we’re using smart tagging with blockchain technology, we can guarantee the provenance of the product and we can guarantee the ethics of the journey the product went on,” Mr McLardie said. 

The critical part, he said, was to have all the information provided on the blockchain.

“Every time there is a change in the custody of the product, that change in custody, or any activity that affects the product, needs to be uploaded to the blockchain,” he said.

“We have spent an inordinate amount of time and effort making sure there are no gaps.”

Mr McLardie said there can no longer be any case for ‘business as usual’ with coronavirus.

He said what Two Hands is doing resonates with restaurants in China. People want to know they’re eating safe food.

Mr McLardie said the model has the potential to expand into other Asian markets.

“That’s what we’re pursuing. That blockchain is of great beauty that can expand globally at a very rapid pace,” he said.

“With a public curated register, you can expand globally very rapidly. This is the first time we have a technology that can ensure all the participants operate ethically.

“I think we can move quickly to that world, thanks to blockchain.”

www.twohands.world

www.leongettler.com 

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.

By Leon Gettler >>

TIFFANI BOVA, global customer growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce, has written extensively about the Growth IQ for companies. She talks to many businesses about it.

Ms Bova travels around the world helping companies grow in the face of stiff competition and a fast-changing business environment.

As she describes it, a company’s Growth IQ comes down to simple steps. But it’s also about being honest about where the company is heading.

“The one thing about growth is it’s not one thing and starting with the context that a business is in – what  industry, what region, what sector, whether other things are going on around them and within their own business – you need to know that first,” Ms Bova told Talking Business.

She said if companies did not know the context of their business, they might end up just replicating what their competition was doing. 

“If you just go for replicating what someone else is doing, that’s their context, that’s their culture, that’s their capabilities, not yours. That’s always super dangerous,” she said.

“You have to know your business, you have to know your employees, their capabilities, you have to know you customers.

“You have to know your ability to absorb change internally. You can’t throw a bunch of ideas out to your employees and expect them to respond accordingly and everything to be executed perfectly. There’s a lot that goes behind those things that need to be done.”

WHAT GROWTH DO YOU WANT?

Ms Bova said the key question that businesses needed to ask was what kind of growth rate they wanted to have.

“Is it 2 percent, 5 percent., 10 percent, 50 percent? Each would have a different context for that business.”

One of the things Ms Bova does when she gives keynote speeches around the world is ask people how many want to grow their businesses? How many want to double their business in the next 12 months? How many want to grow at 50 percent? Or 25 percent? While everyone wants to grow, they want to grow at different paces.

“Then it goes back to that context. What can you handle as a business when it comes to growth?” Ms Bova said.

FIND COMMON STARTING GROUND

Tiffani Bova said when she talked to executive teams, there could be differing views within the company about how much growth they wanted, who their main competitors were and whether their company could handle innovation at a rapid pace.

Until everyone has a common starting ground, which is not easy to do, but at least the leadership teams need to have it, they can tackle the important issues facing the business, she said

Ms Bova cited a Bain study which found that 95 percent of businesses turning over more than $5 billion a year felt that internal inertia, not external forces, was what kept the business from growing profitably.

She said companies wanting to develop their Growth IQ needed to accept that growth is a thinking game. How much growth does the company want? Are their leaders aligned?

“It isn’t necessarily about having the best products, or the best strategy or the best execution,” Ms Bova said. “It’s about, did we come up with the right plan to begin with?”

www.salesforce.com

www.tiffanibova.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.