If you're still finalising your Christmas gifts or seeking high-quality honey, tonight's the night. One Honey Australia just launched one hour ago, offering nationwide shipping across Australia. Fiona and Jaimi are the driven mother-daughter duo co-founders behind the One Honey Australia brand and we love nothing more than when our founders launch their products during a program. We also get pretty excited about mother-daughter co-founders [as those of you who know us well will know]. So please allow us to introduce Fiona, Jaimi and their One Honey Australia creation.
Fiona and Jaimi, please can you talk us through what sets your high-grade honey apart from others in the market, and how do you ensure its quality and purity?
Absolutely, our bees are lucky enough to call the Noosa Biosphere home and thrive off the pristine Pacific Ocean and the tranquil Cooloola National Park. They've been living happily there for over 30 years and each batch of our honey undergoes rigorous testing at the University of Sunshine Coast to confirm its remarkable potency and purity.
How does One Honey Australia prioritise sustainability and ethical practices in beekeeping and honey production?
Sustainability and ethical practices drive everything we do, and it's all thanks to our incredible bees. In our production, waste is non-existent, thanks to the dedication of our worker bees and any leftover wax goes right back to the frames, keeping things familiar for our hardworking bees and giving them a lighter load. They deserve their beach time afterall too 😝. On top of that, we're proud users of 'Heaps Good Packaging'—it's recyclable from start to finish and we’re committed to keeping our entire process eco-friendly. We have a few more exciting products to come in the future too, but we’re keeping that a little hush hush for now.
What are some of the benefits of your manuka honey and what strategies do you have in place to educate consumers about these benefits?
We're genuinely excited about the remarkable health benefits our honey offers, and it's driving our approach across every aspect, from product development to our marketing strategy. For those of you that don't know, manuka honey is a natural powerhouse and source of nutrients, minerals and antioxidants. Manuka honey supports the immune system, wound healing, allergies, digestive health and also has benefits for your skin. We communicate these benefits across all touchpoints and have planned engaging competitions to foster connections with our audience to gain valuable insights from their experiences with our product.
What have been some of the biggest challenges you've faced in developing this product, and how have you overcome them?
Like any business we’ve certainly had a few interesting challenges along the way. One of them was the unexpected cost of testing our initial raid samples at the National Measurement Institute. But like most unplanned moments, the high price was worth it because it revealed that our honey boasted an impressive 1500MGO. For those of you that know honey, will know that it's very rare to have honey this high of a grade. Learning more about our product then helped us to understand our target audience better and align our marketing strategy with the exceptional quality and our audiences tastes, punn intended. To complement this high-grade product, we then invested in top-tier labels because a product of this stature deserved beautiful design. And then, the quest for those special dark jars to protect the honey from light and temperate to ensure the MGO content was maintained was quite the adventure!
Lastly, looking beyond the launch, what are your long-term visions for the brand, and are there any plans for expanding your product line or distribution in the future?
Right now, we’re putting all of energy into releasing our current products, listening to our customers and seeing how they respond. We do have big visions for the brand and a heap more product ideas, which include upclyling for more value added products. However in this early stage, we're letting the delicious honey lead and will see how customers connect with it to steer our next moves.
Join us in supporting One Honey Australia on their business launch and we look forward to sharing more of our Charles Sturt Indigenous Entrepreneur Program founder and businesses stories along the program journey.