How to Build a Billion-Dollar Business

CHAPTER 15GAME ON

By late 2009, the business was humming and we were hungry to expand. We worked hard to innovate and come up with new products, new campaigns, and new initiatives. We were never complacent. Our mission at Swisse was to make people healthier and happier and so we worked hard to develop a product for everyone, from toddlers to pre-teens, pre-natal to post-natal, from the over-50s to over the hill. We wanted to have something for everyone.

A winning team

Off the back of the success of our cricket campaigns it was time to double down and move into winter sports. If we wanted to reach the widest market possible, we'd need to find a way to connect with the games Australians loved to play all year round. Australian Rules Football (AFL) and Rugby League were the obvious choices as they covered most of the populous mainland states. After much discussion, we chose AFL over Rugby League as the latter was being hit with so many controversial issues. (We wanted to de-risk as much as possible, and, while no sport was quarantined from the vicissitudes of daily life, we felt AFL was the safer route to take.)

The next question we had to address was, ‘What team or which player do we approach to be our ambassador?’ I would have loved nothing more than to have Hawthorn as the face of our brand as I was a die-hard Hawthorn supporter and wanted our captain, Sam Mitchell, or the mercurial Cyril Rioli, but I knew that it had to stack up as a business case. Stephen felt the same ...