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MELBOURNE baby skin-care entrepreneur Catherine Arfi was at a Hollywood celebrity mothers event, happily watching Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parkers nanny pouncing on creams and washes from the 24-piece Aromababy range of organic baby skin-care products.
"Im the one who bathes the baby," the nanny told Ms Arfi. "And Im the one who chooses the products." Although the businesswomans campaign to export to the US is still in its early stages, she has already taken a few orders from LA outlets.
But Aromababys bath gels, hair cleansers, nappy creams and wipes are now on shelves in upmarket department stores and hospitals across Asia - from Japan and Hong Kong to Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea.
In Australia, Ms Arfis products are supplied in VIP suites in Hyatt and Westin hotels, used in maternity hospital nurseries and sold in department stores and pharmacies.
"I always wanted my products to be all around the world and in hospitals, and I knew I couldnt mix them in my kitchen sink," she says. "So I went to the highest level of manufacturing that we have here, which is Therapeutic Goods Administration-licensed facilities - meaning white coats, masks, hats, clean rooms and stainless steel apparatus. To my knowledge nobody else does that - it gives us an edge. And it is unusual to sell a product to Myer and also to sell it to a hospital."
Certified organic ingredients and a high standard of manufacturing are key selling points of Ms Arfis products, which contain no petrochemicals, parabens, sulphates, artificial fragrances or animal ingredients. Baby powders, for example, are made using certified organic oat and soy powders, edible-grade cornstarch and pure essential oils.
Ms Arfi is coy about her annual turnover, reported as $3 million back in 2003, beyond saying that it is "under $10 million". She confirms that exports comprise 40 per cent of her business. Her export achievements, particularly in the famously lucrative but difficult market of South Korea, have made her a poster girl for the government trade body Austrade, which features the Aromababy success story on its publicity material.
As a girl, Ms Arfis aim was not to run her own business, but "to be a fabulous secretary". At the age of 10, and with some help from her father, she bought herself a typewriter and began practising typing at home. By the time she hit her teens she was perfecting her shorthand.
Leaving Huntingdale High School at 15, Ms Arfi took a secretarial job at an aluminium anodising company in Cheltenham - two bus journeys and a 30-minute walk from her Clayton home. But the fledgling secretary threw herself into the job. "I guess I had entrepreneurial flair even then," she says. "I always wanted to do more, so I quickly went from front-desk reception to working in accounts and then as a PA for the director."
By the time she was 25, Ms Arfi had worked for a South Yarra menswear company and for a magazine, where she wrote the beauty pages. She then took a job with a company that developed and sold accessories to major local fashion retailers - a position that involved regular trips to Europe to check out trends. By her fourth year there, she was developing body-care products.
Then, within a few dramatic days, her life was turned upside down. It was December 1993 and she had finally signed the mortgage on her first flat - an apartment in South Yarra. Then she discovered she was pregnant with a "surprise" first baby. A week later, she was retrenched. The company was closing its accessories division.
"I was absolutely devastated," Ms Arfi recalls. "I thought, If I dont pick myself up and move, I will fall in a heap." Within two days she had decided to start her own company, registering its business name as CAT Design (Creative Aromatherapy Toiletries). Her original plan involved toiletries for adults - the area she had been working in. But as her pregnancy progressed, a plan for pure, organic baby-care products began to take shape.
"I thought: I am the sort of woman who mixes vegetables into face masks in the kitchen. I wouldnt dream of using chemicals on my baby. So I began exploring ideas. It didnt take long to think of the name. Aromatherapy was already a big trend - and I thought baby and aroma. And off we go.
"By the time I had the baby (her son Beau), I was ready to launch my skin-care for babies." Even before the new businesswoman had made her first proper sales pitch, she had contacted the Trade Marks Office to secure product names she could use here and overseas.
"Even back then I had a global vision," she says. "I thought if I secure everything upfront I can relax and go about building the business."
This care with registering names paid off later when Ms Arfi had to take legal action to defend her product against a rival US-based skin-care brand which had launched a baby skin-care range called Aromababies and was exporting it to Australia.
"Our US trademark was lodged only days before theirs. Consequently, they were required to remove their product from Myer, and they eventually withdrew from the Australian market."
Ms Arfi chose Myer for her first local sales pitch.
"I took in the baby range with a mocked-up bottle and a mocked-up marketing folder and I remember being asked if I was in marketing. And I thought, Marketing! Wow! I left school at 15 and they thought I was in marketing. I was quite impressed with myself."
The subsequent order from Myer gave the fledgling entrepreneur an enormous confidence boost. She repeated her pitch to some other stores.
But her first visit to a bank manager quickly deflated her. She was married but her husband worked in his familys shoe business. The business was hers, so she went alone.
"I remember going to the bank with the orders - and they just said, It doesnt matter, they can always cancel (them). I was a young woman, and probably looked younger than I was, and I had this baby with me - and they were looking behind me for a man. So I needed a guarantor for the first loan and I was mortified. I was the kind of girl who had got her own car loan and her own apartment - and I couldnt even get a $10,000 overdraft."
A family member guaranteed the loan and Ms Arfi had paid it back within four weeks. "The next order was much larger. And we had much more profit and I was OK from then on in," she says.
The experience of not being taken seriously by banks stopped as soon as she began exporting, Ms Arfi recalls. Aromababys first major export deal came from Dubai, where two expatriate South African women wanted to set up a small business as exclusive distributors of her products.
A few months later, Ms Arfi was on a plane heading for Dubai, where she was the headline attraction at a huge launch party held at the Wafi Pyramids, a mock Egyptian-themed nightclub and restaurant complex featuring a full-scale model of the Sphinx.
"I was leaving my little boy for the first time, he was four, and I cried all the way to Dubai," she recalls. "There was media there - and nurses, midwives and buyers from different emirates. It was such a big event and I remember thinking: Wow, this is all for me. "
In the meantime, Ms Arfi completed a diploma in aromatherapy, "I was feeling maybe Im not good enough to run a business because I didnt study for long enough, and: Is it acceptable that I dont have a degree? I passed with a credit - and it was such a big thing to have a diploma!"
The turning point of her companys fortunes came early in 2001, with a call from two South Korean importers of baby-care products who had seen Aromababy products in Melbourne shops and insisted that they werent leaving without a contract to import them into Seoul.
Ms Arfi only had one employee at the time and drew up the contract herself. "I was alone in the office with nobody to celebrate with, thinking, Oh my God Ive just signed a contract for half-a-million dollars! "
Selling to Korea, the businesswoman explains, meant paying extra attention to presentation. "I had to invest in repackaging some of our items. I had to develop new product lines, supply individual product boxes and more."
The growing export commitments led her to relocate her business to a warehouse complex in Thomastown, closer to the airport and only 10 minutes from her home at Yarrambat, where she often works in her home office after collecting Beau, now 12, and Jacob, 6, from school.
Ms Arfi now has five employees - all part-time and each specialising in either packing and dispatch, administration, purchasing or export documentation. She is also now producing a second, less-expensive range of baby skin-care products called Pure Spa Baby.
A mens aftershave facial oil is also on her product list, while an insect repellent and a sunscreen are on the drawing board.
Next month, Ms Arfi will be celebrating her business "official" 10th birthday - counting from 1996 when she moved Aromababy into its first warehouse office in Brunswick, rather than from 1994 when she began the business at home.
In five years time, however, Ms Arfi isnt sure where shell be.
"If I keep the business, Id be looking at a having a retail flagship store and franchises."
But the idea of running a day spa still beckons.
"I developed the Pure Spa Baby range because I thought, In my next life, I will have Pure Spa - the salon. And for that I need to have my own products."
CV
Age 42.
Lives Yarrambat.
Family Single. Two sons, 12 and 6.
Education Huntingdale High; aromatherapy diploma from Australian School of Awareness.
Career 1979-1993: jobs as a PA with a mens fashion business, a magazine and an accessories business. 1994: started Aromababy.
This Article first appeared in The Age
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