Ben Porter's business Cuffed is online only and it works for him, as it keeps overheads very low. However, every now and then, he leases a pop up store to raise brand awareness.
Cuffed has over a thousand unique cufflink designs. Source: SBS
At around a thousand dollars a day, renting a pop up at Sydney's Royal Easter Show certainly isn't cheap, but Ben Porter says it's definitely worth it.
"900,000 people came to the show last year so you do get a lot of people through the doors," he says.
He and his wife Priscilla sell more than two thousand pairs of cuff links during their fortnight-long appearance at the show... and online sales get a boost of about ten percent.
the couple usually do four pop-ups a year, carefully considering when and where.
"We tend to focus on corporate areas like Chatswood, North Sydney, and the city. And we've also done well at train stations."
"It's a really tough application process. they want to see a very visually appealing stand."
Cuffed was sparked by a desire for a shift from the corporate world and a gap in the market.
Ben says, "I would suit up and wear cufflinks every day and what i found was that it was really hard to find any good cuff links in the Australian market. you'd go to Myer and David Jones and they'd all be really expensive and they were all silver and black."
The first step was finding cufflinks off the shelf, and ordering samples to test the quality. The next step was producing their own cufflinks... so Ben and Priscilla teamed up with an Australian designer... and started looking for a factory in China.
"Our first order, we used six thousand dollars of hard earned savings and we put it into twenty designs. Each of those designs we ordered a hundred pairs each because that was the minimum order to create the mold, and we've slowly grown that. we now have over a thousand designs," he says.
Despite its success, Cuffed has had challenges over the years, with suppliers and, like most small businesses, cashflow.
I think that's one of the biggest challenges for small business - cash flow. and four years ago we were lucky enough to get an overdraft with CBA which really helped."
Ben says their bank's automatic alerts system has also helped him speed up customer delivery, and encourages Aussies to buy from local businesses.
"We try to get stuff in customer's hands as fast as possible. we use Australia Post Express Post for all of our orders, and we find that really makes a difference. Especially when it's comparing to something bought overseas, which is likely to take two weeks. We can have it there the next day."
Swift delivery keeps cuffed competitive, as does a hard-wired work ethic... something Priscilla thanks her parents for.
She says, "My parents have always instilled in us hard work. you're not going to get anyway in life unless you work hard and put in the hours and because it's your own business. You only reap the benefits of what you do in the business, what you sow."
The key to their success? A good partnership at work and at home.
"We have a perfect partnership. i really appreciate the way we work together, the way we can talk about things and I think that is really important to communicate about what you want not just out of life, but the business in a month, 12 months, 5 years - especially when you have a little one to think about," Priscilla says.
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