Business Timeline – Part 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

2006:

Manufacturer Issues We Did Not Want

Though not all was rosy at DBV.com.au, we did come across some manufacturer issues and our major one caused a lot of headaches for us, which we did turn into an advantage for us. One of our manufacturer’s paddles started to show signs of defects and we did not notice it until customers informed us their paddles were “popping”. It was a very peculiar occurrence and we eventually found the manufacturer had changed their processes and materials that changed the way the paddles were produced. Hence causing these paddles to “pop” and it was important that we had to recall these paddles. It became a mass recall to collect a few hundred paddles from the Australian market which helped our branding and showed that we cared and could provide good customer service. As each paddle we recalled, it was an opportunity to market our company brand and website to people who didn’t purchase paddles from us previously. Even though it did cost us time and money to recall these paddles it was considered to be our advertising expense. DBV.com.au did grow at the same time amongst all these issues and we had increased our sales by 200% compared to the previous season of 2005.

Major Changes To My Life

In late 2006 DBV was growing so I decide to put my resignation from my full time job as manager. I had learnt what I needed as a manager and knew that my dream was to run my own business. I took some time off and during this period I made a life changing decision: to move out of home. I felt very comfortable living with my parents and had the luxury of having most chores and food preparation done for me. I felt it was time for a change and to start living my own life. I rented out a four bedroom house and started to share it my partner and a few other people. The best thing was that I could run DBV from home and I could store all the stock in the big garage. Systems were all ready to go and I settled down in my new lifestyle by end of October.

Two Chinese Aussies Backpacking In Tasmania

Tasmania Trip At the end of November, my partner and I took a trip down to beautiful Tasmania to spend two weeks travelling across the state. We stayed in various backpacking hostels and hired a car to drive around. Our journey began in Hobart and for the first week we travelled up the east coast of Tasmania driving up to Launceston. I also celebrated my birthday at one of the hidden gems of Tasmania – on top of a mountain in South West National Park. Why was it special? It was not only because it was my birthday, but this mountain gave us a 360 degree view of the whole National Park and all the surrounding mountains of Lake Pedder. It was a spectacular site and definitely worth the drive out there. We took a video clip which you can view of South West National Park.

The day after celebrating my birthday we drove up towards Cradle Mountain and stumbled across this beautiful resort. It was located at Tullah and the name of the place was called Lake Chalet Resort. This stop was not originally in our itinerary and because we loved the location so much we decided to make a pit stop there for two nights. This resort was ideal because it was close to Cradle Mountain and also had lots of fun activities to do such as horse riding, archery, and bush walks by the lake. The resort was really quiet because no one knew about it and peak season hadn’t kicked in as yet. So I took the opportunity to sit in the lounge room by a chimney log fire looking over the lake. The peace and tranquillity was so good, that I took time to reflect and look back at 2006. There were many memories that I wrote down in my trusty journal and it was a moment I will never forget. My thoughts flowed freely and I remember it was a turning point for my life seeing that 2007 will be a great year.

Kangaroos Are Not Car Friendly

Our second leg of the two week journey turned out to be very eventful. We were recommended to try the walking trails at Mount William National Park which meant taking another route from our planned itinerary (It became the norm for us to change our plans each day if we were given a great place worth going to see). Most of the roads in Tasmania were quite narrow and quite distant from each town and if you had not filled up your tank at the last stop you would be expecting trouble. Additionally if you had a car accident you would be stuck on the road with no mobile reception until the next car or truck comes by, being hours away. A very scary incident happened to us, we ran over a kangaroo! (It was dead in the middle of the road) I was behind the wheel driving on average of 90 – 100km per hour and couldn’t suddenly stop with enough room to not crash or drive off to the side. Originally I thought it was going to be okay to drive over it since the road was too narrow to steer off. Unfortunately when the car went over the kangaroo, it made two loud thump noises beneath us. My partner’s first reaction was “Oh no… we killed a kangaroo!”

It looked as though the previous night a truck ran into the kangaroo as it was trying to cross the road and that’s why the body was lying there. I stopped the car immediately and got out to check if the car was damaged and to my amazement we had lost a plastic cap on the bumper! It was a definitely an “oh no” moment for both of us. We decided to back track and have a look to see if the cap had popped off when we ran over the kangaroo. We found nothing. So we decided to drive back further to a point where we drove up a ditch to make a U-turn and luckily for us that’s where the cap had popped off. In many ways we were grateful for the kangaroo, not because it was dead, but it triggered us to check the car before we had driven hundreds of kilometres to our destination with a missing bumper cap.

We continued our final days in Tasmania with minimal hassles. On our last night we decided to get spooked out from the ghost tour at Port Arthur. It surely was creepy hearing some real life stories of ghosts in the places we visited at night. I don’t want to give away anything just in case you decide to visit Port Arthur, but it is definitely a ghost tour worth doing.