Meet the Winners of the 2024 Zeller Regional Small Business Grant

Walking along Military Road in the Lower North Shore village of Mosman, you’ll be stopped in your tracks by a sweet smell of freesia and hyacinth, or by a friendly Italian shouting your name. Either way, you’ll know you’ve arrived at The Floral Craftsman. The man behind the craft is Matt Bisaro, a stalwart identity of the busy shopping strip, who’s floral arrangements have been gracing the homes, weddings, and offices of Sydneysiders since 2003. Taking to customer service like he does to a delicate orchid, Matt’s warmth and careful attention is a large part of what’s kept the business thriving for so long. And in an industry that’s not only physically demanding, but also fluctuates with the ebb and flow of discretionary spending, perennial success is hard to come by. Matt spoke to us about the changing face of floristry, the importance of relationships, and how updating his payment technology helped him navigate a challenging economy. A business rooted in relationships. “Hi Jenny! They’re $15 a bloom!” Matt’s voice booms across the shop. Mid-way through explaining what he believes is the key to The Floral Craftsman ’s long-running success, this interjection says it all. “It's just relationships,” he affirms. “Mosman is a village… they're very community and family focused. I come from a really big family, so it's normal for me. I like it, I like knowing people.” His infectious laugh and exuberant energy make it no surprise that people like knowing him too. And it’s not just his customers: “Staff love it. I do tend to keep them for a good five years or more… They might go away for a few years but all of a sudden I'll get a phone call and they want to come back! That has happened a lot with multiple staff. We always say there's a revolving door here. ” Investing time into training and supporting his staff while also building a strong rapport with his customers has fostered a supportive community that has helped propel the business through more than one economic downturn . Passion, hard work & quality. Reflecting on the tougher moments in the business’ history, he recalls the global financial crisis: “We survived the GFC. I thought we would go under,” he says. “That day that everything crashed, the phone rang and rang and rang. It was corporate clients and regular customers saying ‘cancel my credit card’, ‘cancel my order’, ‘cancel the flowers’... in one day, everything went.” Matt’s tenacity kept The Floral Craftsman afloat in 2007, as it did again when multiple seasons of drought and flood plagued the industry, and again when the global pandemic put a stop to all his event orders. “You just have to work hard,” he says, “I've always had that instilled in me.” But he insists it's also about passion, “I love what I do. They say if you love what you do, it doesn't feel like work. It does. But I still love it. 20 years later. I still love it.” Matt’s dedication to his trade doesn’t go unnoticed by his customers. The Floral Craftsman has become a trusted institution by individual and large corporate clients alike. “It's got to be about quality… these people know quality,” he says of his customers. “Even if I receive stock that’s not as great as what I’d wanted, I’ve just gotta wear it and try and use it elsewhere or buy something else. I cannot give that inferior product,” he says. The changing face of floristry. While Matt’s passion for floristry hasn’t changed, the industry has. Having started out as a “lackey” doing deliveries and cutting his teeth in the workroom, Matt’s initiation was starkly different from those entering floristry today. “Now, everyone does a course and then becomes a freelancer,” he explains. “Back in the day, we all had portfolios. Now, it's all on your social media feeds.” The younger cohort are bypassing the experience of working in bricks-and-mortar florists, which is not only making it difficult for Matt to find staff, but he believes it’s also not equipping them for a long-term career, “There are only a few freelancers in Sydney that have been around for a long time… they might last a couple of years, but the burnout rate is pretty big.” The other significant change is cost. Twenty five years ago, the Sydney Flower Market was the meeting place for hundreds of independent growers, today, it is largely a wholesale market. “Wholesalers put a markup on whatever they buy from the little guys,” Matt explains. “The other thing that's happened is that 60-70% of that stock in the flower market is all imported. From Holland, India, South Africa, Asia, New Zealand… so the costs have gone up again because of freight.” Add inflation into the mix, and you can understand why the bunch of tulips you were buying for $35 a decade ago now costs $65. “They should be about $70-$75 but I can't do it.” Matt adds, “I just can’t do it. For 10 stems of tulips, $75 dollars… It’s kind of laughable. They’re just flowers at the end of the day!” Fresh cut costs. In response to rising overheads, Matt says he’s always looking for new ways to cut costs. “But it's hard,” he adds, “I've had to increase some prices and then I've just got to bear the brunt.” One area, however, where Matt has managed to make considerable savings is through his payment process. Since using Zeller Terminal , he has not only reduced his merchant fees to zero through surcharging , but he’s also been able to welcome back customers using American Express “My favourite thing with Zeller is that I get the same merchant fee for AMEX. Because they do use AMEX more here. I used to have to refuse AMEX payments, and I lost people over it.” What’s more, being able to track his cash flow using Zeller Dashboard, and Zeller App on his smartphone when he’s on the go, has aided Matt in maintaining steady income, “What I love with Zeller is that I can just check in on my phone and see how the sales are going,” he explains, “For example, if we’re getting close to Thursday, I check how much we’ve done so far to make sure we’re on target. It's been the best merchant facility I've had over the years.” Coming up roses. “The one thing about this shop is that it’s got my name on it,” says Matt, “It is me, so it’s quirky and unusual and it changes all the time and there are no set rules.” Indeed, putting his name, as well as his pride and passion, behind the business has been The Floral Craftsman’s biggest strength. Having never relied on any traditional marketing, the business has instead invested in care: for its product, its customers and its staff. In conjunction with a lot of hard work and savvy decisions around cost-cutting and tech upgrades, Matt Bisaro has ensured that even in the most difficult of economic climates, The Floral Craftsman has always come up roses. To read about other Australians growing their businesses with Zeller, head to the Zeller Business Blog and sign up to our newsletter to receive stories straight to your inbox.

When an architect and a banker met while volunteering at a charity raising money for cancer, it set in motion a friendship and a project that has helped rehome over 1,800 families in need. We sat down with Renuka Fernando and Ben Stammer of Sydney-based not-for-profit,  ReLove , to talk about addressing a social problem with an environmental solution, and how Zeller is facilitating new revenue streams for the organisation. For the past six years, power duo ‘Ren and Ben’ have been active participants in the not-for-profit sector in Sydney. Having met running and volunteering at  CanToo , they quickly realised their heads were in the same place. After accompanying a fundraising group to the New York Marathon, they went on to set up a social running group that offered participants practical ways of giving back to the community. The Run for Good Project kicked off at the end of 2019, connecting runners with local grassroots organisations that help people in need and address important social issues including homelessness, asylum seekers, domestic violence, mental health, and First Nations causes. Home truths. When COVID lockdowns scuppered their social running plans, Ben and Ren held steadfast, finding new projects and initiatives to mobilise their community. While the stay-at-home orders were a good impetus for some to spring clean their homes and replace outdated furniture, for others less fortunate, it exacerbated a housing and domestic violence crisis. “We just connected the dots,” explains Ren. “We had gone out to visit one of the women's refuges in Sydney, and realised that, while people could still access social or transitional housing, they lacked the resources to set up a home,” she says. The duo began collecting donated furniture and homewares from friends and family with the goal of helping set up five women. Three years later, their initiative has evolved into ReLove , a registered charity and critical support service in Sydney that has helped rehouse over 1,800 families. “We thought it was a COVID problem, but it turns out it's actually a really critical problem that continues today,” says Ren. Recycle, reuse, ReLove. Since it began, ReLove has saved over 2,250 tonnes of furniture and homewares from going into landfill. “We've created an environmental solution to a social problem,” explains Ren. ReLove collects commercial grade furniture and homewares at scale from corporate relocations, companies with excess stock or return stock, hotels, film sets, property stylists, and individuals. Thanks to an army of volunteers, donations are sorted, stored, and distributed in the charity’s warehouse in Sydney’s South East, also known as the ReLove Free Store. It’s here that people who have been referred to the organisation by caseworkers can walk around and pick out everything they need to set up a home, for free. “We want to give people this really joyous experience… and allow them the opportunity to picture a new life the way they want it,” explains Ren, who says that 75-80% of the people they support are women who have experienced homelessness or domestic violence. Keeping the lights on. While ReLove is well on track to reach its goal of supporting 1000 families this year, the founders’ dream to scale the organisation nationally, starting with Melbourne and Brisbane, is at the mercy of funding. “It costs us half a million dollars a year just to pay the rent,” explains Ren, "but we can’t do what we do without a warehouse.” With the exception of six professional removalists and one operations manager, ReLove is entirely volunteer run, but it can’t stay that way long term. “We can't maintain and scale and make this national until we get funding to pay some staff,” says Ren. Philanthropy, grant rounds, and corporate sponsorship account for the majority of the organisation’s current funding, but Ben and Ren are actively building out alternative revenue streams that can generate income and help keep the lights on. In the past year, ReLove has begun running fundraising events and corporate volunteering programs, selling merchandise, and launching its Shop for Good – a store offering a selection of donated furniture pieces, which can be purchased by the public online or from the warehouse. Tap to pay it forward. Keeping costs down while also streamlining and maximising opportunities to take payments was what led Ben and Ren to Zeller . “We watch every single dollar,” says Ren, “and Zeller’s fees were way lower than what we were paying with the bank.” When they launched their first event in November last year – attended by 220 people – they needed a solution to accept payments for raffle tickets, merchandise, donations, and silent auction purchases, without footing the bill for dozens of EFTPOS machines. “We had our 20 volunteers using their phones to accept payments with Tap to Pay ,” explains Ben, “the ability to scale it up really quickly was fantastic.” Rather than paying for a single EFTPOS machine, the group simply had to download the Zeller App on each of the volunteers’ phones and enable the function. “That flexibility has been brilliant,” says Ren, “We also use Zeller to take payments at the Shop for Good and because we have so many volunteers, it needs to be simple. Zeller is so user friendly. I love it.” Lower fees and flexibility. Ben, who has spent over thirty years in investment banking, including a 17-year stint at Deutsche Bank, is no stranger to the financial sector. It didn’t take him long to recognise the shortcomings of the big four banks in providing not-for-profit organisations with the support they require. “The monthly fees, the ongoing transaction fees, and just the lack of flexibility were the reasons we switched to Zeller,” he says. “At the bank, for something as simple as switching on or off surcharging , you have to make a phone call, you can’t do it on the app… or when we needed to roll over an existing term deposit into a new one, we had to provide board approval. It’s just too much,” he explains. ReLove settles funds into Zeller Transaction Account and sweeps any excess funds into a high-interest-bearing Zeller Savings Account . “Setting up our Zeller Account was very very easy and straightforward,” says Ben, “Plus our team also uses Zeller Debit Cards as fuel cards, and they work really well for us.” The missing link. Working with limited financial and human resources, charities and non-profit organisations have a pressing requirement to identify and mitigate inefficiencies or profit leaks. As Ben and Ren have uncovered in their work, one missing part is enough to undermine a whole. “There’s a lot of funding that goes into crisis programmes around mentorship and trauma recovery… but none of it works when you're sleeping on the floor,” says Ren. Finding the missing links – in society, as in business – is the key to success, and so far, the founders of ReLove have demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for doing just that.

Starting your own business is a daunting undertaking for anyone, but arguably more so when you’re doing it solo, in a foreign country, at just 24 years of age. But Sebastian Fernández Mackenzie has done just that, launching a mobile car washing venture after noticing a gap in the market. Turning to Instagram, Airtasker and Zeller to market his business, find customers, take payments and manage his finances, this digital native is setting the tone for a new generation of app-wielding entrepreneurs. Where others may have seen red tape, prohibitive overheads and an unknown market, Sebastian Fernández Mackenzie saw an opportunity. The young car enthusiast moved to Melbourne from his native Chile in 2021, following his partner who was relocating there to study. “I wanted the time that I have here in Australia to be spent doing something I really like,” he explains. “I love cars. When I was younger, my dad was always restoring cars, I used to help him clean them and polish all the parts,” he explains. Having learnt how to detail his own car from YouTube videos, he began offering the service to his family. It wasn’t until he arrived in Australia, that the hobby evolved into a business idea: “I realised that there were a lot of mobile car detailing businesses, but very few that also provide water and power. That's where I saw there was an opportunity. So I thought, “I’ll just go for it.” Shoulder to the wheel. And go for it he did, at full throttle. He worked for two years as a food delivery driver and a labourer on construction sites and unloading shipping containers to finance the business, then bought a car and sourced all the materials, “I had to buy the hoses, the air compressor, the generator, the water tanks, the cleaning products… all that came to about $3000.” Eventually he registered his ABN under the new name, Seb’s Mobile Car Wash . Then he started building his network, through word of mouth and by applying for jobs on Airtasker – an online platform that connects people who need tasks done with skilled workers. But he wasn’t in a hurry to recoup his costs just yet, he was prepared to work for free simply to help him build up his content, “I just wanted the opportunity to take photos that I could post to Instagram,” he explains. Rather than a website, he plans to use Instagram to build his following and drive new business to his online booking system. “I want there to be a lot of communication with clients through social media,” he explains, “Eventually I’d like to start sharing car detailing tutorials as well”. Premium service down to the last detail. While Seb is still growing his social media presence, his dedication to premium quality service is what has already gained him a steady stream of loyal clients, including a team of Albert Park real estate agents. When they entrusted him with a 2023 Porsche Cayenne GTS, Seb couldn’t pass up the opportunity to give it the full detailing service, for the price of a regular wash. “They were stoked with the service,” he says, “They knew I’d given it the attention it deserves and cleaned it the proper way.” For those less automotively informed, the “proper way” to wash a car is to use cleaning products specifically fit for purpose. “You have to use a pre-wash to remove the dirt, then a soap, a special cleaner for the wheels, for the glass, for the seats,” says Seb, “When you go to bigger commercial hand car washes, they buy their products in bulk, and most of the time, they’re made with strong chemicals that can be really harmful for the paint,” he explains. For Seb, attention to detail also extends beyond just the car; he leaves his customers small gifts such as bottles of water, mints and lollies, and ensures his clients never receive the same gift twice. Driving positive cash flow. To complement the seamless customer service, Seb adopted Tap to Pay with Zeller App as soon as it was released in Australia. He knew that this technology – that lets you use your smartphone like an EFTPOS machine – had been available in the US for a while, so when Zeller announced its launch in October, 2023, Seb signed up immediately. “I’d already spent thousands of dollars on setting up my business, I didn’t want to have to pay for an EFTPOS terminal . I’d rather spend that money on cleaning products, plus it’s not convenient for a mobile business” he explains. Before using Tap to Pay, Seb was receiving payments in cash, via bank transfer and via invoice, but none of them gave him the security or the convenience he was looking for, “Back then I didn’t have my regular clients, I was sending invoices to people I’d just met. I’d have to send reminders, and one person took three days to pay me,” he explains. “I don’t like to carry cash, and I don’t want to have to send people to an ATM.” Now his clients simply tap their card or mobile wallet to his phone, and the payment is processed instantly. Meticulous money management. Having signed up for Zeller on his phone while on a lunch break, he knew that managing his finances through the platform was going to be simple: “I just followed the link and started signing up. It was really easy. It wasn’t a headache with lots of details and IDs and stuff, it was really quick.” Now he manages all his business finances from his phone using the Zeller App . “I settle funds into the Zeller Transaction Account , it means I don’t have to wait for them to be transferred to another account. It’s really convenient,” he says. Being a foreigner, he’s extra cautious about declaring his income, and ensuring his finances are in order: “I don’t want to have any issues with taxes. I want to keep a clear record of all my transactions,” he says. As such, his Zeller Debit Card is loaded into his mobile wallet, which he uses for all business-related expenses and to which he can upload notes and receipts to help his monthly reconciliation. For sole traders and entrepreneurs like Seb, modern apps are removing the barrier to entry to launching a business. Where once it would have been near impossible to open a business bank account without extensive paperwork and branch visits, Zeller now lets you do it from your phone in a matter of minutes. And while it would have once been inconceivable not to have a website, online platforms like Instagram and Airtasker are proving more than sufficient at driving awareness and finding new clients. As is the case with Tap to Pay, more tech tools are still emerging that are changing the way we approach doing business, paving a new frontier for entrepreneurs and business owners of the future.