Carolyn Creswell is storming supermarket cereal aisles around the world with Carman’s Fine Foods and a never-give-up attitude. Nukte Ogun discovers the ingredients for this export success include quality Aussie produce, mixed with a lot of passion.
Carolyn Creswell first learnt how to make muesli at a small bakery in Hawksburn, Victoria. She was 18 when the owners told her the business would be sold and she would most likely lose her part-time job. And so began what would become a multi-million dollar success story.
Rather than sulk, or look for work elsewhere, the young entrepreneur made plans to buy the business—or at least the recipe for the muesli—together with one of her workmates, Manya van Aken. “I thought well, I already make the product and know the product’s great. We put in an offer of a thousand dollars each, bought this little business and continued it in a partnership,” says Creswell.
They named the new business Carman’s Fine Foods, an amalgamation of their names, and it was quite a juggling act in the beginning as she ran the business while completing an arts degree. “I’d do deliveries before university and do the books at lunchtime,” she says. And while her studies didn’t include business, she believes the academic experience taught her how to think.
Within two years Creswell bought out her partner and shifted her focus, concentrating solely on the business, which will turn 15 in December. Carman’s now offers three types of muesli and muesli bars, alongside a fourth tropical flavour to meet export demands. While Coles and Woolworths have been stocking the products for years, recently Qantas, Virgin Airlines, and Lite n’ Easy joined the ranks. In this time, the company’s annual turnover has gone from $80,000 to $10 million.
Creswell attributes a worldwide soaring of muesli sales to a shift in eating habits. “The trend has moved from 99 percent fat-free and products that have lots of numbers and [unnatural] ingredients to being much healthier. People are more concerned now with what they eat and want to look at the ingredients list.”
The real change that promoted expansion came after two years, when Creswell decided to outsource the manufacturing and free herself to focus on growing the business. “At the end of the day, an oven is an oven and it’s what is in your ingredients and your process that make your product what it is,” she says. “It’s given us an amazing production capacity that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”
A natural progression into export soon followed. As a first step, Creswell applied for and received Austrade’s Export Market Development Grant (EMDG). The grant reimburses up to 50 percent of export promotion expenses. Next she signed up for Trade Start, which helps young companies to export. “[Austrade] will meet you and introduce you to buyers and take you to supermarkets, and they give you a partner in each country.” Carman’s now exports to supermarkets in 15 countries, including Park n Shop in Hong Kong and Sainsbury’s supermarkets in the UK, its biggest overseas market.
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Carolyn Creswell first learnt how to make muesli at a small bakery in Hawksburn, Victoria. She was 18 when the owners told her the business would be sold and she would most likely lose her part-time job. And so began what would become a multi-million dollar success story.
