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impossible to shift. From that point on, she championed the product and OzKleen had its
first supermarket order, for a palette of Shower Power worth $3000. "We were over the
moon," says OzKleen's financial controller, Belinda McDonnell.
E
Shower Power was released in Australian supermarkets in 1997 and became the top-
selling product in its category within six months. It was all hands on deck at the factory,
labeling and bottling Shower Power to keep up with demand. OzKleen ditched all other
products and rebuilt the business around Shower Power. This stage, recalls McDonnell,
was very tough. "It was hand-to-mouth, cash flow was very difficult," she says. OzKleen
had to pay new-line fees to supermarket chains, which also squeezed margins.
F
OzKleen's next big break came when the daughter of a Coles Myer executive 1 used the
product while on holidays in Queensland and convinced her father that Shower Power
should be in Coles supermarkets. Despite the product success, Peter Quinn says the
company was wary of how long the sales would last and hesitate to spend money on
upgrading the manufacturing process. As a result, he remembers long periods of working
around the clock to keep up with orders. Small tanks were still being used so batches
were small and bottles were labeled and filled manually. The privately owned OzKleen
relied on cash-flow to expand. "The equipment could not keep up with demand," Peter
Quinn says. Eventually a new bottling machine was bought for $50,000 in the hope of
streamlining production, but he says: "We got ripped off." Since then he has been
developing a new automated bottling machine that can control the amount of foam
produced in the liquid, so that bottles can be filled more effectively - "I love coming up
with new ideas." The machine is being patented.
G
Peter Quinn says OzKleen's approach to research and development is open slather. "If I
need it, I get it. It is about doing something simple that no one else is doing. Most of these
things are just sitting in front of people ... it's just seeing the opportunities." With a tried
and tested product, OzKleen is expanding overseas and developing more Power-brand