Launching a product with no market and no brand name behind it took some creative marketing by one passionate Melbourne entrepreneur.
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Entrepreneur: Tracy Bialek, Founder and Owner
Company: Ripple Products
Business type: Educational and environmental awareness products
Founded: 2003
Employees: 4 (Melbourne); 5 (UK distributor)
Head office: Melbourne, Victoria
Contact details: +61 3 9329 1665
The Ripple Products Story
What could be easier than combining a personal passion with a business idea that is environmentally respectable? It's what all the business gurus and personal coaches advise ... the sure secret of success. If only it had been that easy for Tracy Bialek in 2003, when she founded the water-saving products business Ripple Products in the lounge room of her Melbourne home.
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Key learning points:
- Product security - When meeting potential new partners, make sure they aren't competitors in disguise. Make them sign confidentiality agreements and other relevant guarantees before letting them get their hands on your product.
- Grassroots marketing - Breaking into a new market with a new product requires creating a pull for the product. How can you engage charities, community organisations, schools or other organisations to support your product?
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The 2007 Telstra Business Innovation award winner can look back and laugh now. But after Tracy left a corporate job in product development to pursue her passionate desire to make and market environmentally aware water-saving products, success seemed a long way off.
Cold calls to retailers and wholesalers to spruik her first product - a shower timer - met with scepticism or simple incomprehension. She says: "The hardest part was trying to get people to buy a product that didn't exist. I couldn't show them any revenue or sales projections."
The Challenge
To create a market for a product range and concept that didn't exist.
The Solution
When cold calls to potential retailers met with a lacklustre response, Tracy knew that she needed to change strategy. It was time for some guerrilla marketing. She began to seek out relationships with environmental organisations such as the Australian Conservation Foundation and Sustainability Victoria, which had a natural fit with her water-conserving products.
The climate helped Tracy's pitch to such organisations. Australia's worsening drought and falling metropolitan dam levels were moving the issue of water usage into public consciousness and political debate. An educational shower timer made with an ethic of material and manufacturing responsibility and life-cycle analysis suddenly began to make sense to people beyond the conservation movement.
Tracy's partnerships with blue-chip conservation organisations gave her credibility and recognition as she broadened her pitch to include water companies, local councils and selected state government departments. In 2004 and 2005 she called every council and water company in Australia offering a product that would help them raise consciousness, cut water usage among their customers and provide a useful tinge of green brand image.
Advertising and promotional offers on water bills and council newsletters eventually caught the attention of retailers and others. In 2006, the Big Brother program included Ripple products in the house. Sales increased tenfold between 2005 and 2006 to more than one million units. Tracy says: "Retailers now approach us with enthusiasm for the range ... their customers now understand the need and the want the products. It is great to see that the educational programs have made an impact."
Not everyone who has approached Ripple to be a partner has had honourable intentions. Several took Ripple samples and then set themselves up making competing products. Tracy says: "Now at any such meeting we have written confidentiality agreements in place. All our relationships now have to be in writing. You learn from these experiences early on in business and make a decision to either follow legal channels or concentrate on business growth. We chose the latter."
Tracy says she can spot the knock-off competitive products easily by the tooling quality and plastic type. The competitor's products are made in China but not made with the same life cycle and consideration for environmental impact. Ripple's products are also made in China but Tracy has scoured the country to find and work with factories that are willing to maintain the integrity of the Ripple brand in their manufacturing processes.
Such brand integrity is a key selling point for Ripple, which is trying to set an example for other small businesses. Staff are encouraged to walk or ride bikes to work, Ripple's electricity supplier is a 100% green-energy provider, and Tracy consciously tries to reduce her carbon emission footprint by keeping flights to a minimum and buying carbon offsets where necessary.
Ripple's expansion to the United Kingdom in 2006 was based on the same strategy that worked in Australia: developing partnerships with environmental organisations and water companies. The next target is California. "Australia is three or four years ahead of most countries in terms of water usage awareness and behavioural change."
Rapid growth has had its personal costs. When Tracy started Ripple she did everything from cold calling and presentations to packing product in boxes and shipping it to customers. "It's hard to believe anyone who says they can achieve a work-life balance in the start-up phase. I now try to be more personal in my worklife and more businesslike in managing my personal life."
Tracy works between 8.30am and 6.30pm and keeps weekends free; the internet service has been disconnected at home ("When I'm home, it's personal time") and she has resisted suggestions that she get a Blackberry ("It has become routine in business to always be available ... but I think it's important to schedule personal time"). Monthly meetings with her mentor - a trusted family friend and professional financial advisor - help keep her focused on growth, cashflow and margins.
The Result
Ripple Products has achieved exponential growth since 2003. Tracy has moved from packing stock into boxes that progressively filled her family home (to the exasperation of her husband) to inner-city warehouse office space. Between 2005-06 and 2006-07, sales of the shower timer worldwide increased from less than 100,000 units to more than 1,000,000 units.
Ripple has entered the United Kingdom market, applying the same strategy that worked so well in Australia. In 2007 it appointed a UK distributor, which now has five staff members working on Ripple business.
In 2007, Ripple won the Telstra Business Award as Victorian micro business of the year, the prestigious 2007 Anthill Cool Company award, and Tracy also won the 2007 Telstra Business Women's award for business innovation. It has been a very big year.