Bondi Sands co-founder Shaun Wilson says successful leaders obsess over every part of their business. A Deakin University Master of Business was his stepping stone to an internationally beloved brand – that eventually sold for hundreds of millions of dollars.
For Deakin’s latest Stories of Wonder podcast, we caught up with Shaun to find out what it takes to build a world-renowned brand from scratch.
Bondi Sands is the world’s most recognisable self-tanning brand, founded by Shaun (MBus(SportMgt) ‘08) with his business partner Blair James.
‘People laugh at me because I’m actually very pasty. I used to get spray tans a lot,’ laughs Shaun.
The Bondi Sands story began in the early 2010s, when Shaun and Blair realised self-tanning was ready for a shake-up.
Blair, a tanning salon operator, had to turn away clients because his books were full. And he had no good at-home alternatives to suggest. Most self-tanning products at the time would ‘smell a bit funny’ and often rubbed off in the sheets, Shaun recalls.
The road to success
In creating Bondi Sands, the pair thought about the brand as bottling the Aussie beach lifestyle.
They started with a sketch Shaun had developed for a business plan from a project he completed as part of his Deakin studies.
‘It really helped us think through how we were actually going to navigate launching the brand and how we were going to be disruptive but also ensure we had this customer value proposition that makes sense to our customers,’ Shaun says.
But first they needed to figure out why self-tanning products failed compared to salon-based tanning – while also keeping them affordable. Blair and Shaun worked with a chemist to create their formula.
‘We tested it on our family and friends – some Deakin students were on the stage as well – in our apartment. People were just walking through and tanning,’ Shaun says.
‘And then, once we were satisfied that we got somewhere with the formula, the next step was engaging a manufacturer and then producing a product strategy and brand. And that was the really early days of Bondi Sands’ beginning.’