It was a personal — and horrible — experience with procuring some simple blinds for his parents, plus a dose of entrepreneurial curiosity, that inspired Evan Montero to quit his job in superannuation and, along with his business partner Liam Dobson, launch what is now Australia’s fastest growing window furnishing retailer.
With its unique business model, DIY Blinds has made good on its mission to make it easy to buy Australian-made window furnishings online, allowing homeowners to virtually design and purchase premium blinds, shutters and curtains, removing the need for the traditional bricks-and-mortar showroom space.
DIY Blinds has 120 staff across the board, with the majority of team members working in Collingwood, Victoria. The retailer has also opened up offices in Sydney and is looking at opportunities in Queensland.
In October 2022, DIY Blinds secured a $15 million investment from the Australian Business Growth Fund (ABGF) for its plan to reboot the window furnishing sector — a deal that valued the business at $100 million.
It’s easy to see why the ABGF was attracted to the fast-growing business. In the 2019 financial year, DIY Blinds recorded sales of $5.4 million. By 2020, that figure had grown to $9.3 million, by 2021 it was at $22.5 million and last year, it more than doubled to $46 million. According to DIY Blinds, the company has been profitable through this growth phase and has only spent 3% of revenue on marketing.
Six years after quitting their superannuation jobs, Montero and Dobson have seen their business go from strength to strength, soaring through COVID and beyond.
Montero, who is also the CEO and came from quite humble beginnings — a migrant family of 11 living in a 2-bedroom apartment in Footscray — spoke with SmartCompany Plus about what it takes to disrupt an industry, and what’s next for DIY Blinds.
Key takeaways:
DIY Blinds’ mission is underpinned by a commitment to supporting Australian manufacturing, jobs, and the economy, by selling Australian-made products and delivering quality, custom-made craftsmanship at affordable prices.
Montero is clear that DIY Blinds deliberately has a disruptive business model to eschew the traditional bricks-and-mortar showrooms that dominate the home furnishings industry, and that model has fuelled the company’s growth because of its relevance to Australian customers.
“So our competitors will have 30 to 40 brick and mortar showrooms. It’s similar to that Netflix and Blockbuster example, where with Blockbuster, they had a lot of retail stores that you had to go into,” he says.
“By removing that entire cost or overhead, we’re able to have substantially lower operating costs, which allows us to offer our customers substantially lower prices without compromising on quality and service.
“It’s about making window furnishings, blinds, curtains and shutters more affordable to the Australian public, as well as more accessible because they’re buying it online rather than having to go out to your traditional brick and mortar showrooms. You can just order samples on our website, have them delivered to you by express post at your own convenience.”
By offering their services online, DIY Blinds can provide better value for money without compromising the quality of their product offering, says Montero. It’s also the reason the company grew during COVID at a time when many other businesses were forced to stand still.
“People could have the convenience of [ordering online] from their own home, especially during those lockdown times,” says Montero.
The fact that DIY Blinds offers Australian-made products also held it in good stead during the pandemic, says Montero.
“During lockdowns, the import time for Chinese-made or anything that was made overseas just really kind of grew. So whether it was normally six to eight weeks, it went to 12 to 18 weeks. The whole building industry suffered the same pain. But by being Australian-made, we were still able to get things out faster. We were still able to maintain our exact lead times and it’s something that really resonated with everyone.”
The pandemic transformed buyer behaviour at the pace of 10 years’ of change in the space of two, says Montero, and this meant Australians quickly became “more receptive to buying things online that are usually a little bit more complex or at a higher price point”.
“Post COVID, during February last year, a lot of the online retailers started to go backwards or go back to re-calibrate to their pre-COVID numbers because during COVID you had so much tailwind that everyone grew exponentially online,” says Montero.
“Something that we’re really proud of was post COVID we still continued to grow and we never experienced the post COVID bubble effects, which I think spoke to the value that we’re providing customers with better pricing, better lead times, better quality, all while delighting them through that customer experience. “
“The other thing that helped us out during COVID to grow and maintain that growth really is our people. They care so deeply in terms of the impact and the value we’re creating for customers as well as the Australian economy.”
Montero says being strategic is important when it comes to growing a disruptive business like DIY Blinds.
“The business strategy is an important one and it’s not unique, but it’s something that we have such strong conviction in. So by having a disruptive business model in knowing that we’re going to be selling online — it’s allowed us to have substantially lower prices as opposed to having 30 to 40 showrooms and high foot traffic areas with 10 by 10 year leases — that allows us to have lower prices and not compromise quality and service.
“That’s why we believe that we’ll get to 10% market share and become a category killer. But on the back of that we haven’t had to spend that much on marketing because the customer value is there. During COVID, we couldn’t even answer all the phone calls and emails and all the inquiries.
“So I think it’s now about letting more people know about us. Because buying window finishing is a considered purchase. It’s not an impulse purchase. You’re either buying a house you’re renovating or you have a real need to furnish windows. That means for us what helped us grow in terms of strategies is leveraging a lot of word of mouth, leverage and making sure that we were in a position of authority when it came to customers buying, so establishing trust and integrity.”
DIY Blinds has chosen to build out its product offering with extra services and add-ons, and Montero says this is key to the company’s fairly aggressive growth and diversification plans.
“We’re looking to future-proof the online customer experience and expand our business operations nationally,” he says.
“We’re already operating nationally, [but], when it comes to our website, something that a lot of people may not know or realise is that we actually offer measure and install services already in Queensland, Sydney and Victoria.
“We’re more of an e-services than an e-commerce business and I think that’s one of the things that’s going to really unlock a lot of our growth.”
“A lot of people are comfortable with DIY, but then there’s some people who aren’t comfortable with DIY or they don’t have time to DIY, but they still want to go through us because they see the value in saving a lot of money.”
“So if we offer that installation service, it ladders up to our strategy in terms of being more disruptive to your typical brick and mortar showrooms.”
“The other one is that we’ve already got a little over 60 design consultants and people probably unaware of so that you can actually book a time to speak to one of our design consultants, send them your floor plans, and talk through all your different options.”
And finally, the third part to the plans is the launch of the Home Pro, which crafts window furnishings for discerning designers, architects and developers across Australia.
“I think that’s going to be one of our third pillars in terms of unlocking a lot of growth moving forward,” says Montero.
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