Pleasant State Winners Sian Murray and Ami Bateman are co-founders of Pleasant State: We create ethical products that make home care a form of self-care. We developed Australia’s first single- use, plastic-free, just-add-water cleaning solution. Think Berocca but for cleaning! What motivated your expansion across the Tasman? We expanded to New Zealand early in the Pleasant State journey, just a few months after we began shipping products. This decision was driven by our customers. We knew from a combination of market research and customer requests that customers in New Zealand wanted sustainable, healthy and well-designed home-care products. Getting our products to those customers was fast and reasonably inexpensive. We have global ambitions for Pleasant State. Expanding across the Tasman was an obvious and relatively seamless starting point. What opportunities does the New Zealand market offer a small business? Expanding to New Zealand gave us the opportunity to consider what a global strategy could look like. It also gave us access to a larger audience. In comparison with the US and UK, the Australian market is small, so the New Zealand market is really helpful. Expanding across the Tasman has allowed us to continue growing our impact, providing us with the opportunity to help even more forward-thinking people switch to our better-for-you products. W hat advice do you have for other Australian businesses looking to trade in New Zealand? Do your research. Before expanding, conduct third- party market research to really understand your potential offshore customers. Left: Pleasant State co-founders Sian Murray and Ami Bateman at a warehouse facility. Image courtesy of Pleasant State Above: Seer Data & Analytics co-founder and CEO, Kristi Mansfield. Image courtesy of Seer Data & Analytics Right: Seer Data & Analytics’ Drag & Drop Data Storytelling Dashboard. Image courtesy of Seer Data & Analytics
Seer Data & Analytics Winner Kristi Mansfield, founder of Seer Data Analytics, outlined the background to the company’s success. Tell us about your company. Our mission is to make data accessible, usable, and shareable for people of all skillsets. We work with not-for-profits, government agencies and policymakers, and local businesses in more than 35 Australian communities, and we are expanding into New Zealand. What challenges did you overcome? Developing data access, sharing and storytelling solutions that are scaleable into new markets is a challenge. We co-designed the platform with our customers to establish Seer Data &Analytics as a trusted data sharing platform that enables ease of use for people of all skillsets. It also enables government and business to share closed data assets with not-for- profits and local communities, to improve decisions and outcomes. What are your business goals? There are many opportunities for cross-border learning, particularly on data access, sharing and data sovereignty. We see good opportunities for alignment with our customers to share learnings and practice models through the platform and our Seer Data Learning Lab. In 2023, we are committed to scaling in Australia and New Zealand. This will set us up to expand into the United States and Europe in 2024.
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Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
business envoy
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