Abigail Forsyth is one of those super women – she’s a mum, she’s environmentally conscious and she’s the founder of a multimillion dollar company.
Forsyth previously co-founded Melbourne healthy food start-up Bluebag with her brother Jamie. The pair were inspired to launch the business when they saw how much disposable waste cafes created.
They became increasingly concerned about the contribution of their own cafe waste to landfill. They tried re-filling juice bottles and selling reusable salad containers, but the biggest waste-producer was disposable coffee cups. Forsyth discovered her niche when she looked for reusable cups to be sold at Bluebag and couldn’t find any suitable options, kick-starting her KeepCup journey.
Each morning, Forsyth would give her daughter warm milk out of a sippy cup and she realised the idea of giving her daughter a disposable cup seemed “barbaric”. From here, KeepCup was born. KeepCups are the first Barista Standard reusable cup and since launching in 2009 at a designers’ market, three million cups have been sold. In the first six hours of the business, Forsythe had already sold 1,000 KeepCups and the business now generates an annual turnover of more than $5 million.
Women’s Agenda sister site SmartCompany had a chat with Forsyth about her international expansion, green living and running a family and a business.
Mornings
Forsyth doesn’t follow a set routine for the day, but she thinks it might be easier if she did.
“I wish I did, life would be easier, but I’m just not routine oriented.”
“I’m usually up between 6.30am and 7am, I get the kids breakfast and make their lunches before dropping one at childcare and one at school. After this I’m usually down to work around 9.05am,” she says.
Forsyth believes in living what she preaches, and does what she can to help the environment as part of her sustainability motto.
She cycles to work each day – from her house it takes 10 minutes and from her kids’ school, only five.
“I always cycle; it’s part of our sustainability plan. My brother Jamie also cycles to work and he lives 10 minutes in the other direction,” she says.
As with many entrepreneurs, the first job Forsyth does for the day is check her emails.
“I always use an online task system, but I also have a notebook to keep track of what I’m doing for the day. The first thing I do is check my emails to see what’s come through from last night.”
Daily tasks
Throughout the day most of Forsyth’s energy is dedicated to “marketing, networking, a little bit of sales and going to meetings”, she says.
She spends a lot of time planning and devising new marketing strategies. Currently, her attention is focused on the upcoming World Barista Championships held during May in Melbourne this year.
“The championship is a good opportunity for us to promote KeepCup and we’ve got a lot of things happening to do with it in terms of thinking about our marketing sales and increasing brand engagement,” she says.
Initially, Forsyth targeted corporations such as the National Australia Bank and Energy Australia to secure buy-in from the corporate sector. She recognised the difficulty companies faced in spruiking messages of corporate responsibility and sustainability if they continued to use disposable, unsustainable products and acted to capitalise on this paradox.
Since it launched, KeepCup has expanded internationally and now has offices in Melbourne, the United Kingdom and most recently Los Angeles (opened two weeks ago). The reusable cups are also sold across the globe, throughout Europe, Asia and in New Zealand.
After taking off in Australia, KeepCup developed an online presence and it started being noticed overseas. Forsyth began noticing mentions of KeepCup in Europe and the US on blogs and social media. The brand had gone viral and quickly she realised the brand’s international potential.
As part of building this global presence, Forsyth travels around the world for networking and promotional opportunities in order to further the brand.
“Next week I’m going to the UK and then onto Sweden to give a talk at their national barista championship,” she says.
This global expansion has always been part of Forsyth’s business strategy in her crusade to rid the world of disposable cups, and has been achieved through a combination of direct sales, distribution and agency.
KeepCup has grown from two staff members (Abigail and Jamie) to 20 in the Melbourne office, eight in the UK and two in the US.
Coming from Melbourne, it’s no surprise the cups have been received well within the coffee-crazed culture, but Forsyth says overseas its popularity is also growing.
“Its reception has been varied in different markets, but on the whole it’s been embraced enormously. In Asia, KeepCup is in Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan and these markets are growing,” she says.
In terms of business competition, Forsyth says there are now other products on the market, but KeepCup has maintained its unique-appeal.
“There have recently been some new reusable cups come on the market, but we’ve designed one really fit for the speciality coffee industry.”
KeepCups are specifically designed to be appropriate for the coffee industry, with their dimensions determined to fit under the coffee machines.
Forsyth, along with her brother, enlisted the help of industrial designers Cobalt Niche to give the cups a unique, fashionable look, but it’s the ability for individuals to design their own cup Forsythe believes distinguishes her cups from others like it.
“You can really individualise them and this makes them fun to reuse and they can be a part of yourself. We were coming up with the name and working with the graphic designers at the start. We knew they needed to be fashionable, an accessory you want to drink your coffee out of,” she says.
Forsyth is currently working on plans to expand KeepCup’s product line within the speciality coffee industry.
“There are some plans afoot, but they’re all within the speciality coffee field. We’re working on another product made from a different material and something more suitable for cold beverages,” she says.
Each day, Forsyth monitors the brand on social media and looks at web traffic and advertisement hits.
“We have Google Analytics, so we’re constantly looking at the website and analysing who is coming there and what they’re looking at. We also monitor what they’re looking at on Instagram, Twitter and have a database of 30,000 subscribers,” she says.
Leisure time
Despite trying to leave work on time, Forsyth’s day almost inevitably ends with “a flourish of people” asking questions.
Forsyth either finishes at 3.20pm or 5.30pm, depending on if she’s collecting her kids from school.
When she gets home she’s a normal mum – she cooks dinner and sits down to watch Fireman Sam with her kids.
“I also take the kids to after school activities, tennis and piano, play dates, that kind of thing.
“Then I’m cooking dinner, reading stories, bathing kids and putting them to bed and then I sit down and watch mindless TV.”
Like many who lead a busy lifestyle, Forsyth finds “mindless” TV a good way to relax while doing other activities.
“Shows are designed that way, these days you can watch them with only half your attention span focused on what you’re watching.”
Of all the programs on offer, Forsyth favours Friday night crime shows on the ABC.
But she finds it hard to completely switch off, saying “then I open the computer like a loser and do more work”.
“You have to train yourself to turn off and you do have to let a few balls drop and kick them under the couch. It’s a matter of working out what isn’t going to work and letting it go,” she says.
Future
When asked about her heroes, Forsyth says “they’re all close to home”.
She looks up to her family – her parents, husband, brother, and her friends.
In 10 years, Forsyth says “we may have done ourselves out of business”.
“We’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing; we want to be known as the brand that brought about the demise of the disposable.
“In 10 years there could be no more disposable cups. There are plenty of opportunities out there for getting rid of single use items.”
Her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to make sure their product is “something it’s worth the world having”.
“Be committed to what you’re doing and believe in the product because you have to be able to sell it. Everyone I speak to, I’m trying to sell our message in one way or another,” she says.