Fox Wood Co. is a sustainable kids play equipment brand that was established by life-long friends Jess, Wayne and Mick in the midst of the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. A combination of two Australian families with young kids, they decided to extend their passion for making quality Australian products and locally based manufacturing into launching their own business.
The founders want to see beautiful Australian products on the market that will stand the test of time. They proudly wear the Australian Made Logo, which means you can rest assured all of their products are built in Australia, using the highest quality Australian sourced materials.
We recently chatted to the trio about starting Fox Wood Co and the journey to date.
On what led Jess, Wayne & Mick to start Fox Wood Co
Wayne: It all happened rather quickly actually. With the sudden onset of COVID restrictions, I lost my job almost overnight. As a tradesman cabinetmaker, I started working for myself and picking up what work I could. I was building a study area for Michael and Jess (long term friends of mine) and we got chatting about the future, and I indicated that I would love to own my own business one day; ideally using my CNC programming skills to make flat pack furniture or similar. Jess immediately got excited about this prospect and expressed interest in doing the same and brought many great ideas to the table such as the kids’ climbing equipment and Montessori inspired furniture. We all agreed it was now or never to give the dream a go, so 2 days later we got started by getting an ABN and got stuck into it (Wayne designing and building products, Michael building the website, Jess building social media pages). Only 6 weeks later, we had launched our online store with 20 products, shipping nationally. Within 12 weeks, based off of sales growth, we had made the decision we needed to obtain our own factory space (initially we were renting a friend’s machine/factory a couple of days a week). We secured a factory in Helensburgh and got to setting it up. And the rest is history, this space has been increased in size and extra machinery brought in to aid with production since then also.
What were you doing prior to the business?
Jess: Prior to starting Fox wood Co., I had just gone back to work for the first time after having my first two children. I was a few months into my new career as a swimming instructor at our local indoor pool and I was absolutely loving it. Unfortunately, when the first lockdown of 2020 hit, the pool had to close indefinitely and my new career as a swimming instructor was looking short lived. It was then with all this extra time and a driveway chat with Wayne and my husband Mick, Fox Wood Co. was born.
Wayne: Prior to starting the Business I was working as a Production Manager at a successful exhibition display company based in Sydney. Covid brought that all crashing down almost overnight. I am a qualified Cabinetmaker/Joiner with experience in various fields prior to this (Stair building, exhibition display building, carpentry and house building work, kitchen designing/building).
When the business was initially started, what hurdles were there?
Probably our biggest hurdle was not having our own space to make our products. We started out by hiring part of Wayne’s previous employers’ factory and machine a couple of days a week. We then carted the products back to our home garages to do all the finishing and boxing.
However, in reality, pretty much everything has been a hurdle really. Other than Wayne’s experience in cabinetmaking and joinery, none of us had really done anything of this nature before. So pretty much everything we did had to be ‘learnt’ along the way. From how to build the website (we did all this ourselves), to how to work out costings and pricings for products, to how to advertise effectively or where to even advertise, to building of social media pages, and how to organize/manage packaging and shipping for all the products nationwide, as well as learning how to become visible on google and use SEOs to become more present in google searches etc. Pretty much everything was new to us, so I’d say probably just stepping out into the unknown was the greatest hurdle. Collectively, we probably input about 120 hours per week for the first 12 months of business just to get it off the ground, and this was all unpaid. So, it has been a lot of hard work so far. Being able to start taking some sort of wage at the 12 month mark was a source of great pride for us and something we had worked really hard towards. Doing all this while all having young families made it all the more difficult to juggle the work too.
Who or what was integral to overcoming these hurdles?
Finding our own space as soon as we could was integral to growing our business as it was getting increasingly hard and very time inefficient with all the travel between our houses and the factory we were renting space from. We quickly set out in search of our own space. As we have young families, finding a premises close to home was important to us.
Jess: Mick and Wayne and I live in Helensburgh and Wayne is only just down the road so options were limited. We got very lucky with a factory coming up in Helensburgh only a few months after starting out. At first, we thought we were way out of our depth with the size and cost of the factory but after only 6 months we were doing our first extension, and very happy to have our home garages back.
Between the three of you, approximately 120 hours a week of unpaid work went into the business to get it started. Were there times when you wanted to give up or did your vision for Fox Wood Co push you through?
Yes, absolutely we had our days in the very beginning when we wondered if we had done the right thing as it was a very big investment both time wise and financially. However, we slowly got more and more orders and the feedback we were getting back from customers was amazing. Giving up was never an option as we knew we had products that parents would love and be life changing for themselves and their kids. The hardest part was getting ourselves out there and seen, this is something we are still working on today.
One of your points of difference is that all your products are Australian made from locally sourced sustainable materials which has resonated with the market, in December 2021 alone you had an increase in sales of 40%. Do you think more people are wanting to buy high quality Australian made, but there just are very few options?
I think people are slowly starting to realise the importance of buying and supporting Australia made and the quality that comes with it. It’s difficult, as there are many options on the market, a lot of which are made overseas for minimal cost and imported and sold as an “Australian Owned” product, there are still a lot of people who see this and assume that means Australian Made.
These are usually a much cheaper option that we simply can’t match when making it all here in Australia from Australian grown timbers. We are constantly getting feedback from customers saying they are so glad they spent the extra money and purchased Australian Made as the quality of the products and service has been so much better. We have had multiple customers come to us having previously had bad experience with the ‘imported’ competitors’ products, all of them having given us glowing reviews on our products and service and have been thrilled with their decision to try our amazing Australian made products.
What does having the Australian Made logo mean to you and your business?
This is something we are very proud of! It can be quite hard these days to find quality products that are 100% made in Australia. Having the Aussie made logo is something we are really proud to display so people know straight away that we are a great Aussie made and owned business.
What have you enjoyed most about starting Fox Wood Co?
Jess: It has been a very big learning curve since starting out and something that we are still fine tuning every day. For me the old saying “Do what you love, love what you do, and you will never work another day in your life,” comes to mind. I think I can safely say that the three of us have a huge passion and belief in our products. All our products have been created from items we needed at home for our own kids to encourage their early learning and development. It is such a fantastic feeling knowing our items are loved and used every day by so many Aussie families.
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