A new wave of Burleigh-based brands are capturing slices of the global market.

Capitalising on innovation, a growing company-founder community, and the Gold Coast lifestyle that has given Burleigh trending status among international and inter-state migrants, the businesses booming in Burleigh range from fashion to wellness, logistics, health and dental and even niche vintage.

35mm Co founder Madison Stefanis, 22, said she moved from Melbourne to Burleigh at the start of 2022 for the beach lifestyle and immediately connected with like-minded business founders.

Having famously started her business after listing a vintage camera on Facebook for sale in 2019, only to be inundated with offers that revealed a huge hidden appetite in the digital age for old-fashioned film cameras, Stefanis is now turning over more than $2 million a year in sales – all through savvy social media marketing.

She used the profit from the $250 sale of that first camera to create a new sustainable film camera called The Reloader, investing all of her savings into the first stock shipment of the product.

Stefanis has now launched The Reloader in the US, with plans to break into other overseas markets on the highly successful direct-to-customer model.

“The Reloader is a brand-new product, based on a vintage concept,” Stefanis said.

“I think social media is the best place to be promoting any type of business in 2022. Whilst 35mm Co is based around living in the moment and reliving memories later, social media is the perfect place to share your film photos with your friends.”

She said shooting film in the digital age was tapping into nostalgia and the unfiltered appeal of single-moment memories.

“It allows you to live in the moment and relive memories later – all via your film photos,” she said.

“I think there’s a lot of appeal residing in the fact that you only get one photo. Unlike your iPhone where you can snap 200 photos trying to take the perfect picture, you only have a limited number of exposures per film roll. 

“We’re often more forgiving of film photos and embrace the blurry, grainy results. I recognised the demand quite early on. It’s definitely been a huge benefit for me that I’m the same age as our target audience.”

3 Burleigh businesses making global waves: 

35mm Co

Listing a “clunky old SLR” for sale on Facebook that sold for five times the asking amount gave 22-year-old business student Madison Stefanis her lightbulb moment. 

She started flipping vintage cameras, but quickly ran into supply issues. 

The young Burleigh-based entrepreneur then created The Reloader – a small, compact film camera that is completely reusable. 

Offering the nostalgic joy of film, without the waste of a disposable camera, sales of The Reloader are growing rapidly in the US.

Hismile

Building on the worldwide success of its teeth whitening business – helpfully given a global jolt with ringing endorsements by billionaire influencer Kylie Jenner – the Burleigh-based business has now turned to revolutionising toothpaste.

The founding duo of Nik Mirkovic and Alex Tomic have now launched toothpaste packed with flavour onto the market.

After 18 months of development, and intense taste testing, at the Burleigh research and development facility, Hismile is expanding beyond the teeth whitening brand that helped Mirkovic and Tomic become two of Australia’s youngest self-made multimillionaires.

Cultivating an original palette of 250 flavours down to the launch five of coconut whip, mango sorbet, watermelon, peach iced tea and smooth mint, the toothpaste is available online and – most recently – through stockists.

Already the pair have secured major deals to put the toothpaste on the shelves of more than 800 Coles supermarkets in Australia. A deal with Walmart will see the toothpaste in over 20,000 stores in the US.

Burleigh Drinks Co.

With its flagship lemonade so healthy you can ‘literally drink it for breakfast” Burleigh Drinks Co. is at the forefront of the demand for Australian-made wellness-enhancing beverages.

Using all-Australian ingredients that are all-natural and locally sourced, as well as the packaging of environmentally friendly cans, the Burleigh-based company is riding the ever-increasing drink-healthy trend.

Co-owner Michael Paull said Burleigh Drinks had begun producing juice in cans, which was rare in the domestic market, as well as the lemonade.  Burleigh Drinks currently supplies all-natural orange juice, orange and mango juice and a Bloody Mary mix in cans.

“A few years ago, people weren’t looking at or weren’t really aware of what was in the ingredients or how things were made. But now there is, and our lemonade is just lemon juice, lime juice and honey, so there’s no colours or preservatives flavours.  It’s all natural, all healthy, you can literally have it for breakfast,” he said.

He said consumer desire for healthy specialty products made manufacturing more economical. Locally-produced – or produced in a location renowned for its healthy lifestyle – was also driving sales, he said.

“It’s a lot more accessible for people now to come up with professional products that can rival the big companies,” he said.

“To do the sort of set up that we’ve got 10 years ago would have taken three or four times the amount of space and at least four or five, if not more, amounts of money.

“Until a few years ago, you didn’t see small brands in cans.  Only the big companies could afford it.  Now a lot of smaller companies can start up and roll with the bigger ones.”