Media mention: Smart Company
Did you know that our Aussie Postcode Stickers are stocked at Australia Post outlets?
Carlo spoke to Smart Company about how it all came about.
“I went and pitched at them [to stock my stickers] 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 is from your community.
“I guess it’s just a friendly thing,” he says of the stickers.
Carlo founded the postcode sticker business in 2005, when it first went by the name “Coastal Stickas”. “I always try to be cool, but maybe too cool, it wasn’t so great for search [engines],” Lowdon says.
When trying to decide whether he should extend his sticker offering to all Australian postcodes, he had to do the legwork to discover whether enough people would buy them.
What resulted was traditional market research: the brand surveyed a range of car parks at train stations and airports across Sydney and Melbourne, marking down when a vehicle had a sticker on the back, and whether it was likely the owner had bought the sticker themselves.
“Twenty percent of cars had gone out and purchased a sticker — whether its a footy club, purchasing a membership, a “My Family” sticker, or an “Australian” sticker,” Lowdon says.