For the last seven years, Bon Maxie founder Clare Spelta has been working tirelessly on her life’s mission to solve pesky everyday annoyances with handy accessories.
Spelta’s solutions to life’s typical daily annoyances, which include earring holders, bags, wallets, and organisational, beauty, travel and home accessories, have seen the Brisbane-based online fashion retailer grow from just a hobby to a seven-figure business.
The Bon Maxie team is made up of a range of contractors and five people who work remotely, which includes Spelta and her husband. The business also has a warehouse company located in Banyo, Queensland.
Spelta sat down with SmartCompany Plus to talk more about growing her business on Instagram and the importance of finding niches in the market to solve customer problems.
It was in 2015 that Spelta realised she’d lost her creative outlet after having her baby Max and spending eight years working in corporate advertising and marketing.
Spelta says having ‘dabbled’ in painting, she decided to start a business painting portraits and selling nursery art prints on wooden wall hangers.
“I ended up with a bit of time on my hands, so I decided to pick up the paintbrushes again and started creating custom portraits of babies and toddlers. I then decided to expand into selling nursery art prints,” she said.
Bon Maxie’s lilac perfume atomiser. Source: supplied.
“I did that for a while, but once my son started to get more active and mobile, I didn’t have as much time as I used to. The custom portraits could take up to at least 10 hours to complete and time quickly became more precious.”
It was when Spelta returned to work that her baby son started having seizures, then later, brain spasms. She quit her job to care for him and he was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition.
With no time to spend painting detailed portraits, Spelta says she was looking for more efficient ways she could work while caring for Max at the same time.
“The idea for Bon Maxie really came about one day when I was getting frustrated and stressed while searching for a matching pair of earrings. I searched through at least three dishes of jewellery trying to find some,” she said.
“So, I created my own earring holder.
“I realised that there wasn’t anything like it on the market. I saw a gap and a need for a stylish earring holder that covers all bases, could hold lots of earrings of all shapes and sizes and keep jewellery organised. No one else was doing earring storage at the time and I wanted to tap into that market niche.
“I did some research, I drilled 200 holes into a piece of wood and painted an intricate design and shared my creation on Instagram.”
Spelta says the response was overwhelming, and Bon Maxie quickly became synonymous with earring organisation.
“The overwhelming initial reaction was ‘oh WOW, I need this!’ — I didn’t realise just how big the earring market is in Australia — and how big the earrings (or collections) can get!” she said.
“We’re sitting at around 80,000 earring holders now over the years, so that’s both handmade and manufactured combined.
“We made multiple seven figures last year and with 25% year-over-year (YOY) growth previously. We are on track to surpass that this year.”
Bon Maxie currently has an Instagram following of almost 76,000 followers and Spelta says Instagram Stories proved to be a real game changer for the growing business.
“Instagram was at the height of its success in 2015 when we started the business and we were able to build a customer base organically right from the very start,” she said.
“We did giveaways and cross-promotion on Instagram as well. We’ve since expanded onto other social media platforms like TikTok, but we have the most followers on Instagram at the moment.
“Instagram stories were a real game changer for us. Businesses really need to listen to their customers, so Instagram stories were a great opportunity to connect and engage with customers, ask for feedback, run surveys and build our reputation. You can ask questions and customers can ask questions. We really wanted to connect with real people.
“I would get daily questions about where I got my bag from or another customer would say that someone chased them down in the store to ask where they got their bag from. Which would lead to a new follower or customer.
“Instagram is a fast-growing environment, especially for small businesses.”
Spelta says Bon Maxie has come a long way since it launched, with the business branching out to bags with special features, such as their Kiwi Sidekick Crossbody Bag, and wallets. Their earring holders are still as popular as ever.
“We want our products to be effortless, aesthetically pleasing, sustainable and reduce the stress of everyday life. Imagine how much easier it is to be able to open up and pull the key clip to get your keys, instead of opening your bag and spending time trying to find them, especially when you’re in a hurry,” she said.
“Or if you prefer smaller bags, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice carrying the essentials, like your phone or a water bottle.
“When I create something, I want to do it differently. If I have a problem and I can’t find anything to fix it and I know my customers have the same issue, I want to solve the problem.”
Spelta says she encouraged mums who wanted to start their own businesses to go for it.
“Starting is half the battle. Everyone tells you no, but if you have the determination and passion you can overcome the obstacles.
“We have grown quite quickly and now Bon Maxie is now focusing on utilising social media platforms like TikTok, starting conversations and how we can reduce delivery times for our customers.”
As for Spelta’s son Max, he’s now seizure free and is his mum’s daily inspiration.
“He was the reason why I started the business and now, he’s the reason why we work so hard in it,” Spelta said.
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