Meet the small business gunning to be the next “My Family” sticker craze

When Carlo Lowdon arrived for a pitch meeting with Australia Post, he was wearing boardshorts and felt unconvinced that the conversation would go anywhere.

Lowdon was pitching his sticker business, Postcode Stickers, and he’d been trying find a way in with the mail carrier for years.

“I went and pitched at them five or six years ago, and I just didn’t end up hitting the right contact person,” he tells SmartCompany.

The radio silence from his first pitch meant he was more than surprised when the retail arm of the postal service contacted him five years later, asking to stock his products.

“They just came to me and said, ‘we want to stock it’. I went in there in my boardshorts,” he says.

The beachy image fit with the image of his product, however, and the meeting ultimately resulted in the Postcode Stickers brand securing a deal to sell products through 300 Australia Post stores.

Lowdon is hoping to ride the wave of consumers’ affection for the hyper local with his bumper sticker products: customisable stickers designed for punters to place on the back of their vehicles to signify the suburb they’re from.

Growing up in the Victorian surf town of Torquay, Lowdon says he grew up waving at “every car that went past”, but now the speed with which people trade up rides, and the distances they travel, it’s hard to recognise when someone else if from your community. Read more

Emma Koehn - Smart Company - 8 Dec 2017