Sign & Seal
Video Entry
Business Information
Female Founder:
Christine Foate
Links:
How has the business been funded to date?
Bootstrapped
Tell us about your business:
My core business is wax seal stamps and I have the only 100% Australian-made stamp. My real passion, however, is wax. There are only two sellers of quality sealing wax – both in Canada. The rest is cheap Chinese faux wax7. I knew quickly how toxic the cheap wax is because it gave me heart palpitations and headaches. You can see the fumes in the air. The main users of the wax are women in the stationery industry and crafters. It made me so mad that women are breathing in this wax that I made it my mission to offer a safe, cheap alternative.
How would $5k or $10k enable you to create more profit and impact in your business?
The grant would get me over the line and into sealing wax manufacturing. I expect to increase my average order value for 90% of my orders and I will wholesale the sealing wax in the Australian and USA markets. Sealing wax manufacturing is a very, very tightly held industry. The quality wax manufacturers treat customers with contempt because they have near zero competition. I plan on taking on the big guys and eradicating toxic wax from Australia. I am working with the largest paper manufacturer in Australia to colour match the wax to their papers (a world first).
Please outline what you would spend the grant on:
The 10K grant would get me into production. It pays for the final round at the lab as well as in-person training on how to safely blend and colour the wax in-house. It gets me the moulds for creating the wax sticks for sale and the ingredients. I’m dealing with multiple waxes, polymers and resins that can only be purchased in huge quantities. The ingredients aren’t sold in 1kg bags to the general public, but in barrels and pallets. The 10K, however, would get me 100% over the line for letter sealing wax AND a bottle sealing wax recipe.
