{"id":423,"date":"2022-08-06T21:42:41","date_gmt":"2022-08-06T11:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/?p=423"},"modified":"2024-08-12T08:56:58","modified_gmt":"2024-08-11T22:56:58","slug":"scott-ellice-flint-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/?p=423","title":{"rendered":"Scott Ellice-Flint journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

nookworkspace.com<\/a><\/h3>\n

The entrepreneurial journey told by two students<\/h4>\n

Story written by Erica Sabbah<\/h5>\n

Growing up, my father preferred giving me Richard Branson audiobooks to listen to rather than Dr\u00a0 Seuss\u00a0 books.\u00a0 Both\u00a0 my\u00a0 parents\u00a0 are \u00a0entrepreneurs,\u00a0 so\u00a0 becoming\u00a0 one\u00a0 myself\u00a0 was\u00a0 a\u00a0 natural evolution, not necessarily a decision I made.\u00a0 Being brought up by two people who work for themselves,\u00a0 I\u2019ve\u00a0 always\u00a0 seen\u00a0 entrepreneurship\u00a0 as\u00a0 a\u00a0 norm.\u00a0 When\u00a0 most\u00a0 little\u00a0 boys\u00a0 wanted\u00a0 to become firefighters, I was set on entrepreneurship, learning as much as possible about anything and\u00a0 everything.\u00a0 But\u00a0 then\u00a0 came\u00a0 the\u00a0 time\u00a0 to\u00a0 build\u00a0 up\u00a0 credibility\u00a0 in\u00a0 my\u00a0 career.\u00a0 I\u00a0 worked\u00a0 as\u00a0 a management consultant at Deloitte and did a Master of Commerce at the University of Sydney.Five or six years ago, I’d seen that my friend who was working at Atlassian had these awesome booths in at work. I told my manager about them as I wondered whether we could get them in our office at Deloitte. But they were too expensive. They were made in Scandinavia and were about $16,000 each. That\u2019s when I knew that I had finally found the problem I wanted to solve. I told my friend Will about the booths, and we immediately got to work. We built prototypes in our garage and talked to potential prospective customers about their requirements. It wasn’t a\u00a0 grand\u00a0 strategy\u00a0 to\u00a0 begin\u00a0 with,\u00a0 it\u00a0 was\u00a0 more\u00a0 about\u00a0 resolving\u00a0 this\u00a0 one\u00a0 small\u00a0 problem.\u00a0 We identified a need for more of these booths within Australian offices, so we tried to make them at a more affordable price. That is how Nook was born. Over time, through talking to more customers and learning about the problems they face when buying office furniture, we discovered that the problem Nook is trying to resolve is part of a larger\u00a0 narrative\u00a0 in\u00a0 the\u00a0 Australian\u00a0 office\u00a0 furniture\u00a0 industry.\u00a0 Traditionally,\u00a0 office\u00a0 furniture\u00a0 in Australia has been sold between middlemen who all take a cut along the way. With Nook, we flipped that model on its head and cut the middlemen out. One\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 greatest\u00a0 challenges\u00a0 I\u00a0 face\u00a0 as\u00a0 an\u00a0 entrepreneur\u00a0 is\u00a0 the\u00a0 constant\u00a0 stream\u00a0 of\u00a0 new\u00a0 ideas coming out of my brain every day. Whilst staying on track can sometimes be difficult, I know I\u2019ve entered an industry with strong potential. The booth was the perfect entry product for Nook to get to know the market whilst enjoying strong margins, but my vision spreads much further than that.\u00a0 More to come shortly. Watch this space…<\/p>\n

Story written by Jack Manley<\/h5>\n

Cast your mind back to primary school. For those of us who grew up in Australia, it likely elicits fond memories of fruit roll-ups, handball, and the repetitive drubbing of \u2018no hat, no play.\u2019 Whilst many of us at that age aspired to be doctors, astronauts, or fighter pilots, I was a little bit different. I was eager to run my own business, a journey I recently embarked upon, and one of which I hope my ten-year-old self would be proud. Although, he\u2019d be more excited with a few more zeroes! Having been raised by entrepreneurs, \u201cI have always seen it as the norm,\u201d and with a father who nurtured my curiosity through Richard Branson audiobooks, it was hardly a surprise when I made the leap.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d seen that my friend … had these awesome booths at Atlassian,\u201d they were the software behemoth\u2019s latest investment in productivity; Scandinavian sound-proof booths to increase focus. Working for Deloitte at the time I thought they\u2019d be an ideal solution for our raucous office, but \u201cour manager basically said, \u2018no, they\u2019re too expensive\u2019\u201d. My manager wasn\u2019t being unreasonable though, costing in excess of $16,000 each, they constituted a significant investment; a price I attribute to the simple fact that in Australia, \u201ca lot of the office furniture is sold between middlemen.\u201d I began to realise, the whole office-supply industry was overpriced and underdelivering, and nobody seemed to care.<\/p>\n

Sensing an opportunity, I approached my friend Will Chambers in 2019 with a simple proposition, \u201cthere\u2019s a need for more of these booths within Australian offices, can we make [them]?\u201d It was an ideal partnership, \u201cI’m not as passionate about the logistics side of the business, but Will is, that’s what he\u2019s really passionate about.\u201d Whilst Nook\u2019s booths, manufactured from recycled plastics and priced at $6,500, are a viable business, they are just the beginning; \u201cthe booth was always our beachhead market\u201d in our ambition to shake-up the office-supply sector. We chose the booth because it was novel, had Nook entered the market with a desk or a chair we would have \u201cgotten lost in a lot of the other stuff.\u201d By selecting a niche and listening to our millennial market, we\u2019ve built relationships we can leverage as we expand beyond the office. For Will and I, it comes to one motivator, \u201cOfficeworks is a $1.5 billion company. There\u2019s no real competitors to it.\u201d Yet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

nookworkspace.com The entrepreneurial journey told by two students Story written by Erica Sabbah Growing up, my father preferred giving me Richard Branson audiobooks to listen to rather than Dr\u00a0 Seuss\u00a0 books.\u00a0 Both\u00a0 my\u00a0 parents\u00a0 are \u00a0entrepreneurs,\u00a0 so\u00a0 becoming\u00a0 one\u00a0 myself\u00a0 was\u00a0 a\u00a0 natural evolution, not necessarily a decision I made.\u00a0 Being brought up by two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-cohort-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eos-business.sydney.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}