Rise & Fall of a Multi-Million Dollar Brand: I did it my way ...

By Stacey M. King

I DID IT MY WAY...
When a mission to help a forgotten Pacific People and an unorthodox idea is hatched in a family’s garage and turns into a multi-million dollar global brand.
This is the inspiring story of Stacey King. An accomplished Australian entrepreneur, corporate executive and philanthropist.
How it all began and how it all ended. From the remotest villages to the rolling plains of Mongolia. Stacey forges a business path that is unique. A Cause driven juggernaut that focused on a global message to seek justice, the importance of our shared humanity and what we can all do in our lives to truly make a difference.
From her first business enterprise at 15 years of age and her unending belief that anything is possible, she shares her vision and her determination that you never give up.
This is her journey—
The Rise & Fall of a Multi-Million Dollar Brand

• Language: English
• Publisher: Banaban Vision Publications
• Release date: May 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645149135

Stacey M. King

Stacey King is an accomplished author, businesswoman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. She has extensive experience advocating for the indigenous Banaban people. Over the past thirty years, she has focused on bringing traditional knowledge, historical research, and collective stories of the Banabans to a worldwide audience. She is the co-founder of Banaban Vi- sion Publications and lives on the Gold Coast, Australia.

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Introduction

This is my story … warts and all, of how I did it, my way!

My story is about developing natural products based on centuries of tradition that empowered indigenous people to believe in their abilities and utilise their inherited skills to enrich their lives. It is also about creating ethical, long-term trade opportunities for these products within western societies.

It is about the amazing people who touched my life: the people in the remotest villages; the corporate executives in the city skyscraper boardrooms; and the people from different walks of life and cultures spanning the globe; even as far as the mountains and rolling plains of distant Mongolia. The greatest gift given to me was to appreciate the value of our shared humanity.

Just like the cycle of life, creating a business and building a brand changes, grows and adapts over time. We often only hear about the success stories, but many also fail. Managing expansion and the thrill of growing a business and taking care to avoid the pitfalls is just as important as how it all began. By sharing my journey, I hope to provide some valuable insight and, above all, support to the younger generations that follow in my footsteps.

Throughout my story, a clear pattern emerges — the closing of one door and the opening of the next. I want to share how some of the most trivial episodes or experiences can open other opportunities that I never dreamed possible. I learnt how to embrace it all, good and bad, and utilise these encounters to enhance my skills and overcome my weaknesses.

I write this book from a female and mother’s perspective. To the amazing, strong, and brave women who have done it on their own, sometimes despite their partners, juggling children, and managing the family home, you are and will always be my heroes. To both businesswomen and businessmen who are also carrying the weight and responsibilities of supporting your loved ones, you have my respect. To all the partners who sometimes feel their marriage or relationships are crumbling under the pressure, this book is for you to support you and the difficult, life-changing decisions you must make along the way. Please know you are not on your own.

My years of business, philanthropy and activism have given me many insights into success and failure. I will not mislead you and tell you I can make you rich or have all the answers. By sharing my experiences, I hope to help you understand your own abilities and develop new skills and opportunities.

I have changed the names of many of the people in my story to protect their privacy. My business colleagues will know who you are. You became my lifelong friends and the people I trusted to have my back. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support, sage advice, laughs, fun and tears we shared over the years.

To the fair-weather business associates who dropped in and out of my journey, this book is also for you. To highlight your involvement, positively and negatively, as a warning to others. There are many snags, plots and hidden agendas in business, and not all things are as they seem.

The creation of a business, finding markets, expanding a brand and using profits in responsible and ethical ways can sometimes turn into great adventures and, at other times, lead you into the pits of despair. I do not have all the answers. My story focuses on the essence of what it means to succeed in today’s business world and the sacrifice it takes to make it or break it.

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1. Four generations of Stacey's family lived on Banaba early 1900s.

The Cause

Before my main business journey began, I had a cause. It started, back in 1990, with the discovery of a tin of old family photographs and documents dating back to the turn of the century. They were taken by my family, documenting their thirty years spent on a remote tropical island in the Central Pacific, called Banaba (known as Ocean Island, during Colonial times).

This discovery would lead me on a quest to uncover the truth about their lives and this mostly forgotten part of Pacific history. The phosphate mined on the island played a crucial role in Australia’s development and wealth creation as a farming nation. Banaba, only six square kilometres in area, happened to consist of one of the richest deposits of phosphatic rock ever discovered.

I grew up with an eccentric great grandmother called ‘Little Granny’ and my grandmother, ‘Big Granny’. They enveloped me with their rantings while they reminisced about their lives on Ocean Island. My mother, who had been a child during the 1920s, only added to the chorus and kept telling me that I had to write their story.

I was not a writer! I had never been to Banaba Island, but the urging of these three women meant I became both a writer and a historian five generations later. Somehow the burden of responsibility ended up in my lap. The photographs switched on something deep in my psyche, a realisation that all their stories were true. The images confirmed these people were real, they did exist, and somehow it was up to me to tell their story.

Over the years and research that followed, I wrote my first book about their lives and the impact of the mining on the indigenous Banaban people. It was during this process that I fell totally in love with the Banabans. Their culture, their ancestral spiritual beliefs, their resilience, and strength of spirit to endure all they had been through.

Finally, in 1992, I made my first trip to meet the Banabans with my mother and aunt to Rabi Island in Fiji, where Banabans were relocated after the war. From the moment I first met the people, I knew I could not turn my back on them and just walk away. Previously, every book about Banaban history had been written by ex-colonial government officials, Historians or businessmen who discovered the island’s great wealth in the rocks scattered across the ground.

It was through the elders’ request that I would work with Banaban, Ken Raobeia Sigrah. We discovered we shared the passion to seek justice and to ‘right the wrongs of the past’.

However, there was another mission the elders had planned for us. They wanted to find the ancestral skull of a Banaban warrior called Teimanaia. It had been stolen from the Banaban homeland in 1933. Teimanaia’s extraordinary feats are preserved in Banaban oral history. He is revered for his exceptional mythical powers and the protection of his people from various invasions and battles. More importantly, Teimanaia is believed to be the ancient godfather of the Banabans and represents the people's true origins and identity.

Generation after generation of Banaban descendants from the Te Aka clan had preserved Teimanaia’s unusually large skull in a sacred bangota (shrine). Sadly, after discovering phosphate and subsequent invasion of thousands of foreign workers, the island’s company doctor heard of the cultural and anatomical significance of Teimanaia’s skull. On 19 December 1933, the night before the doctor left the island for the last time, he tricked one of the Banabans to show him the skull. After getting the young man drunk, the doctor took the skull and left the island, never to return.

From that moment in history, everything is said to have changed for the Banabans. In Banaban philosophy, only when Teimanaia’s skull is returned to its rightful resting place back at Te Aka on the original island homeland will the prosperity return.

How could Ken and I ever refuse such a crucial mission? Over the years that followed, our quest to find Teimanaia would become an overriding commitment and pledge we both gave to Banaban elders in the 1990s.

Furthermore, Ken and I believed that our ancestors had somehow pre-planned our destinies. Now it was up to us, a century later, to do all we could to make a difference.

My Driving Force

My newly found mission in life, business and humanity, would bring about a pivotal turning point and change my life forever. It would also create and become the driving force for my future actions in my personal and professional life.

The motivation of what drives us can come in many different forms. Even before I was lucky enough to find my Cause in life, I had always demonstrated as a young child and young adult an inbuilt drive to achieve or make things happen. This trait really must have occurred at an early age and, unknowingly, was part of my childhood. I soon discovered and identified what I was good at and also the skills I lacked.

One of my greatest assets was my creative thinking and reasoning and being gifted at birth with two amazing parents. They supported me and all my crazy childhood ideas. But regardless of all their best intentions and support, they inadvertently influenced some typical childhood conditioning. As one of only two children in the family, my brother, who was eleven months older than me, was clever with a very high IQ. I was the creative one in the family, not the clever one. I was the one with all the ideas who took no pleasure from school, education, and who much preferred to be self-taught.

My father was a motor mechanic and a Staff Sergeant in the Australian Army and spent his spare time on weekends rebuilding our small humble war service house into a beautiful family home. I was there by his side, helping hold the end of the timber he was cutting and watching him work his magic.

My brother spent all his time with his head buried deep in books, becoming a human encyclopedia (we did not have computers in those days). My working-class father had committed a considerable amount of money to pay for a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica, and my brother was totally absorbed in knowledge.

I was only interested in specific subjects at school. Otherwise, my mind shut off, and I spent my school days daydreaming about things I could make or all the new ideas that came into my head. I was sent to an exclusive all-girls catholic college run by nuns, where I was assessed as not being academically minded. Instead, I was put into the Commercial Class, which unfortunately had the letter ‘U’ assigned to it. This step added to my mental conditioning with the academic classes given the letter ‘A’.

I found science interesting because it questioned my thinking, and history suited my inquiring mind. I hated English but loved writing essays as it let my creativity run wild. How could I ever have known then that my commercial learning would provide me with lifelong skills that would hold me in good stead for my future business ventures?

I left high school with high marks in science and home science, good touch-typing skills, and basic bookkeeping.

At the age of fifteen, I set up my own business in my final year of high school, crocheting shawls and tiny bikinis to sell in fashion boutiques under the desk during Bible class. Demand grew for my items, and I worked late into my school nights to keep up with orders. My father was a well-disciplined professional soldier and a proud working man. He was concerned I would ruin my eyesight, and I would not keep up with the demand.

He made an interesting comment one night that has stayed with me all my life. He said, 'You know to truly make good money, you cannot do it on your own, with your own hands. There are only so many hours in a day, and you can only really make money out of this business if you get other people to do the labour for you.'

I was taken aback by his words. At the time, he was a dedicated trade union man who was at total odds with the business world. I just assumed if you worked hard, the money would flow.

My parents were worried I was too trusting. I loved everyone. I did not like to speak ill or see bad in people. I must have lived in a bubble. Over the years growing up, I was often told, 'You know you could make a fortune just out of your ideas. I was happy as I was making money, using my creative skills and my own hands.

My mother, God bless her, became my agent, the marketing person selling my crafts amongst her friends. I was too busy working and creating goods for sale to think about anything else, except for one new idea that came to the fore.

I wanted to buy a block of land. I turned my dream into reality when I found a newly developed housing estate on Brisbane's southern outskirts. I never realised how my previous negotiations with clothing boutiques for my goods would hold me in such good stead. I had confidence well beyond my years, and at fifteen years of age, I did look and act a lot older.

The poor real estate agent I was negotiating with had no idea of my age until it came time to sign the contract. Legally I was underage, and my mother had to sign on my behalf. My dream had just become a reality and one of my first successful investments.

I assumed that running my own business and owning a suburban block of land was a normal part of growing up as a teenager. My final school results divulged to everyone's surprise that there was a scientific brain hidden in there somewhere. I gratefully left high school, ready to take on the world!

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2. Stacey and Ken were asked by the Banaban Elders to work together to write their history in 1996.

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I Wish I was Clever?

The word clever has so many meanings and is a term that I believe can be confused and give mixed messages. For example, it can also have a more negative connotation, such as cunning and calculating.

It can also embed our thinking with a label, that in my case, was not easy to shake. Was it my idea of not being the clever one in the family that provided the drive for me to work hard and achieve with my own hands?

Clever can also relate to more positive words such as resourceful, imaginative and people who are good at problem-solving.

Why am I putting such an emphasis on being or not being clever? I now find being told I am clever makes me feel good about myself. It makes me think that I can problem solve and create a business from just an idea.

More importantly, it removes the negative label of ‘not being clever’, which only limits my capabilities, ideas and decision making.

It is incredible to look back and realise that a simple word like clever can have such an impact on our thinking, our confidence, and our self-belief.

Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy shrouded in self-doubt with the labels we put on ourselves. Everyone is different and unique.

Indeed, we are not all cut from the same cloth. Not all of us will become mathematicians, scientists or find the cure for the common cold. However, we may accomplish equally important achievements in other areas.

In business, we often hear the phrase that we can achieve anything if we put our mind to it. While I agree with this statement, I also believe that we need to clear our minds first from the negativity and labels we carry.

More importantly, we need to believe in ourselves and our own capabilities.

Acknowledge what we are good at and know what we are not good at. Build on our strengths and accept we are not perfect. This valuable analysis will help us build inner strength and confidence.

It will provide us with the essential armour we can carry in the business world and hold us in good stead in both the good and challenging times ahead.

By doing this self-analysis, we can find that the labels we inadvertently carry can become an asset, not a liability.

3. Stacey with her father in their first shop in Lido Arcade, Orchid Ave, Surfers Paradise.

A ‘Light Bulb’ Moment

When I was nineteen years old, before I was married, I moved to Sydney to be with my fiancé. It took me weeks of effort trying to find a job in such a large bustling metropolis. I went for interviews every day, travelling kilometres across Sydney to some of the most industrialised areas I had ever seen.

I was prepared to do whatever it took to get an office job. I soon found myself getting knockbacks every day. I had never experienced this before. What was I doing wrong?

I was feeling very frustrated when I saw this fantastic job in the newspaper. It sounded just like my dream job in one of Australia’s leading advertising agencies. So, with nothing to lose, I applied. I could not believe it when I was contacted to attend an interview.

The woman behind the advert was Catherine, an eccentric woman in her fifties, who looked like she had stepped out of a 1960s David Jones catalogue. Yet her modern office was totally at odds with her old-world business glamour, hand gloves, and bright colours and other objects d’art adorning her desk and walls.

She also happened to be deaf and managed production on the creative floor of J. Walter Thompson, Australia’s largest advertising agency. She advised me she had lost most of her hearing after contracting Scarlet Fever as a child and relied on lip reading and written notes to communicate. We immediately bonded, and I could not believe it when she gave me the job as her assistant.

I had just landed my dream job. For the first time, I found myself surrounded by some of Australia’s most wonderfully talented, eccentric creatives, and I had Catherine.

She was so well respected and loved in the industry, and she was my mentor. The whole creative team embraced being different, were totally unpretentious, and I absolutely loved my time working with Catherine and the rest of the team!

By 1981, I was twenty-five years of age, had left the wonderful career filled life of Sydney behind, been married and was now living on a farm in the Gold Coast hinterland, surrounded by a myriad of animals.

In the last week of January, my first daughter, Riagan, was born. Four weeks after her arrival, I took up a new challenge in life. Not only was I adjusting to being a mother, but I wanted to learn to defend myself and, at the same time, keep fit. I started karate classes. I was still breastfeeding, so my mother came along with me to my twice-weekly classes at the local Police Youth Club.

I didn’t know what drove me to do all this, but I was hooked and looked forward to the challenge. Over the next five years and now with another child, a son, I spent my time raising two babies, looking after the farm, training, and achieving my black belt in karate in the process.

I cannot tell you how hard it was to juggle it all, but the feeling of self-achievement was just amazing. Thank goodness for babysitters. Growing up, I had always been self-conscious of people staring at me or being the focus of attention.

I much preferred to stay in the background working hard. I felt uncomfortable if I had to speak or appear on a stage. I was such a nervous wreck my knees would knock so badly I could hardly stand up. Karate changed all that for me. It provided me with excellent techniques to learn how to concentrate and stay focused. How could I ever have known then just how beneficial this would be in the years ahead?

When my son was two years of age, my isolated and busy life on the farm changed.

One of those ‘light bulb’ moments was about to come into my life. This time it was an equally creative cousin, Brian, who lived in Sydney. He had studied stage and set design at the world-renowned Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. He returned to Australia to take up a role as a theatre set designer in Sydney and Brisbane.

He went on to work in the film and television industry as a creative director with Australia’s famous Kennedy Miller Productions. I loved his visits and hearing about all the projects he was working on. It also allowed me more time to unleash all my ideas on him.

Brian was a kindred soul who seemed to understand me. But during one visit, I told him about another business idea to market the orchid flowers I was growing on the farm. He stopped me dead in my tracks. 'Stacey, whenever will you stop talking about it and just do it!'

His words shook me to the core as I questioned myself, ‘yes Stacey, when will you go ahead and just do it?' So, I did. I immediately stopped talking and did it.

‘Dial an Orchid’ was born. It was a simple idea marketing boxed orchid blooms that I was growing on the farm. This idea led to the establishment of Anastasia’s - the florist with a difference. I operated three shops in Orchid Avenue, Surfers Paradise, over the next seven years, turning over $270,000 annually.

These seven years of running a rapidly growing retail business provided me with many experiences and life skills. I was unprepared for the speed and growth of the business, as everything I touched seemed to work, and as the old saying goes, ‘turned to gold’.

I had never employed staff before, signed a lease, and knew nothing about company and business structures. I was good at ideas and building relationships with people, and offering them personal customer service. But the rest of the skills I needed to manage staff and overall finances were lacking. I had never experienced such high levels of stress and did not realise the toll it would have on my partner at the time and our children.

When I eventually discovered my flamboyant manager, Kelvin, was stealing from me, it was a devastating shock. There was an estimated $90,000 unaccounted for.

In the 1980s, we didn’t have eftpos machines and debit cards. Unfortunately, it was a cash business that provided a lot of temptation, especially when I didn’t have the necessary checks and balances required for this type of business.

This financial setback made me a nervous wreck, but above all, I was hurt to the core when I realised I was being taken advantage of. I soon learned that when the wheels on the bus start to loosen up, the wheels will fall right off unless you act quickly.

Just as I discovered the depth of my loss, Kelvin had quickly exited the scene. He had a nice nest egg he helped himself to and all my customer records. He then added more hurt to my damaged soul and business by taking over the lease on the flower shop I was negotiating with at another location.

The whole episode was catastrophic and led me to levels