Sweet Smell Of Success

One of the most celebrated start-up gurus of recent times wasn’t nurtured in a tech hub and had no financial support from high-flying investors.

- Alan Deans

In fact, Cedar Anderson says he grew up in the belief that money was the root of all evil. His primary drive is to do good in the world. That seemingly paradoxical situation grounded him while he took the invention that has revolutionised the production of honey from his workbench to global success. It still does.

Anderson’s Flow Hive became a hit two years ago when a crowd funding campaign to raise $US70,000 ($91,000) hit its target exactly 477 seconds after launching online. Orders for the beehives were so strong that the funding website crashed. When the campaign ended, 38,500 orders worth $US12.2 million had been notched up. People in distant corners of the world loved the idea, and they wanted to become hobbyists. Months later, Anderson snagged Australia’s most prestigious accolade for innovation, the Good Design Award of the Year.

Today 38 people work for Anderson’s company. Most are based in Byron Bay and two are centred overseas where most of the orders originate. The company out sources manufacture of its quaint Swiss chalet style of hive from two factories in Brisbane and one in Portland, Oregon. The sourcing of suitable wood for the frames is critical to their location. Then there are seven warehouses around the world run by a third-party logistics company, Shipwire. When an order is made online, a hive is shipped anywhere in the world on the same day. Flow Hive has come a long, long way in a short time.