Byron Bay refillables start-up Zero Co has announced a $4.3 million equity crowdsource funding campaign to support the expansion of the brand’s product range and plans to enter the global market next year. “We’re giving customers (and all Australians) the opportunity to invest in Zero Co and help us tackle the global plastic problem at a larger scale,” founder Mike Smith told Inside Retail. “We are hoping to raise $4 million to support this next, exciting chapter.” The ‘expression
pression of interest’ phase opened through Birchal on Tuesday. If successful in raising its target of $4.3 million it will be the largest crowdfund in Australian history.
Closed-loop model
Zero Co is determined to help solve the single-use plastic problem by offering a closed-loop, 100 per cent recycled and refillable bottle solution for cleaning and personal care products. Customers order products online, Zero Co delivers and collects the used containers to clean and refill.
“The closed looped model has been received really well by our customers. We have minimised hurdles by making it a super simple system and easy process. We say we’re like the milkman re-imagined,” Smith said.
Since launching in November last year, the e-commerce business has convinced over 40,000 households to ditch single-use plastics in their kitchen, laundry and bathrooms, and recently reached monthly sales of $1 million.
“We’re scaling at a pretty fast pace and it’s been unreal to see the impact that we’re already having on our environment with everyone’s support.”
Through its beach clean ups, Zero Co has pulled almost 1,000,000 water bottles worth of rubbish out of the ocean which is then used to create its refillable packaging.
“We use this waste to produce a material made from Ocean, Beach and Landfill bound plastic which we have fittingly called OBL, that is used to manufacture our reusable packaging that we call Forever Bottles,” Smith explained.
Passionate supporters
When starting out, Smith invested $100,000 of his savings into the business before launching a Kickstarter campaign in October 2019. It became Australia’s most funded campaign of the year, gaining nearly $750,000 worth of pre-orders from almost 11,000 Australian homes.
In January, the business closed its seed investment round of $2 million after securing major investment from Skip Capital, the private investment fund of Kim Jackson and Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar. Other investors included Koala founders Dany Milham and Mitch Taylor, former St George Bank CEO Rob Chapman, and Alex Cornish of Cornish Family Investments.
And last month, the business began a crowdfunding campaign to create the world’s first single-use plastic free body-care range.
“We’ve been rallying Aussies to support us by pre-ordering a body box which contains all four new products, so that we can kick this idea into production and have them delivered to doors by January/February,” Smith said.
Zero Co has employed Dr. Kate Forbes, ex-global head of product at Aesop, to develop shampoo, conditioner, roll-on deodorant and body lotion that’s free from SLS, silicones, parabens and EDTA.
Despite only being half way through the campaign, Zero Co is close to reaching the 5000 pre-orders needed to kick off production.
“It just goes to show that we genuinely couldn’t do this without our community,” Smith said.
“We’ve been radically transparent with them about our business from day one and I think this has created a very trusting relationship.”