Tim O’Sullivan is the founder of Bae Juice, a Melbourne-based company that aims to cure all hangovers in Australia and soon overseas. The company launched in 2019 rapidly growing its distribution to over 3000 stores nationwide without $1 of investment.
For more details about Bae Juice, visit their website here.
Here we sit down with Tim, to know a bit more about his journey as an entrepreneur.
Q. What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
Tim: I think the core reason behind starting Bae Juice and other businesses I have started from scratch was the overall journey and brand build. Pioneering an idea, taking a risk, working with family/friends, and sharing some successes are all reasons why it’s worth the struggle and grinds. I love what I do, the challenges and problem solving are addictive and something I would really miss if I wasn’t in the start-up world.
Q. How did you get started?
Tim: It all started with taking a leap to buy a cafe with my family. My dad Peter wanted to do something different as he had success in the IT sales world he decided to take a risk with my mum, brother Ben and myself. We turned the cafe from a 33 seated venue into a fully licensed one with a capacity of 137 doing on our best week 80kg of coffee and 1000 meals. This gave me confidence in what we had created. I had run the socials, asked Dad 100 questions about the margins in products, the ordering, managing staff so essentially I just shadowed him until my own journey started when discovering Bae Juice in South Korea.
After discovering 100% Korean pear juice helps your hangovers, we decided to launch our own company Bae Juice. We had to find manufacture, build a brand, divide equity and determine our roles. It was truly a crazy experience and was months of working it out.
Once we had our final design and product in hand it was all going stations, hustling into independently owned stores until getting our first major retailer Dan Murphys. We are now in about 3000 stores and doing shipments of stock monthly. So an exciting time for all the years of hard work and building the brand.
Q. What was your biggest startup challenge? What steps did you take to overcome it? What did you learn?
Tim: Wearing multiple hats is honestly extremely challenging. It’s not the workload of it all, but the constantly having to learn and adapt to different parts of your business you have no prior experience in. This usually results in stress and frustration so it’s always been a huge challenge and how I combat it is as simple as telling myself it all works out, I have a great network of support and that more often than not it’s just a minor problem. I could go on about all the supply chain issues and cash flow but I think for people in the start-up world this is something you must balance and take on.
Q. What is the Most Memorable Thing You’ve Done Since you Started your Business?
Tim: Getting our product into 987 Woolworths stores is no easy feat. For us this was the biggest win ever, it proved our concept and built our credibility as a brand. We still pinch ourselves walking down aisles seeing our product nice and chilled, neatly in a row next to Remedy Kombucha and in some stores Coca-Cola.
We have bootstrapped our business since day one so these wins are super special.
Q. What is one book you recommend, and why?
Tim: I sadly don’t read books, or ever have! My mind races and I can’t remember the last paragraph I read.
Q. What are your top 3 favourite online apps, tools, or resources and what do you love about them?
- Instagram – I use this to help menu ideas at the cafe, branding for new products, tattoos I love. It’s just a gallery of content and ideas if your’e not just following influencers. Its a very creative space and I use it to its maximum not getting lost in scrolling.
- LinkedIn – This is an obvious one but if used correctly it has opened so many doors for me personally, I have equity in a number of businesses from people seeing my presence online and wanting me to be apart of there company.
- Whatsapp – Any agency we work with, business partners, colleges or just other start ups I’m involved with has a group chat where we bounce ideas, send screen shots of cool marketing and discuss things at speed. It’s efficient and I have one for each sector of my businesses.
I don’t use Slack, Trello, etc – A bit more of a simple tech user
Q. In terms of legacy, what is the mark you’d like to leave on the world?
Tim: I must say I just love building brands, and if the products and brands I work with and create have a positive effect on people and the world then it’s a win/win.
With Bae Juice I think people underestimate the impact the product has on consumers, we get crazy thank you DM’s and emails from people and it’s pretty special. I fully understand were just assisting hangover prevention but the ripple effect is you can get more from your day and get more done so it has a great impact on people.
Q. In one sentence, what’s the best advice you’d give to someone just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey?
Tim: If all my businesses were to fail tomorrow and I would be left with nothing financially, I still would have set up my life with the networks and learnings I have had along the journey.
To keep up to date with Tim and ‘Bae Juice’, connect with them on Instagram.
