A Very Merry Breakfast inspires Leongatha business community

A SELLOUT audience enjoyed hearing from Merry People founder Dani Pearce (nee Holloway) who grew up on a Nerrena dairy farm that is still run by family, and attended St Laurence O’Toole Primary School and Leongatha Secondary College.

She was introduced to the audience by Marty Reidy, president of the Leongatha Business Association (LBA), which organised the event as part of its focus on creating more networking opportunities for businesses in the area.

“You’re not alone whether you work in a business or run a business,” he said, conceding the challenges businesses currently face are as tough as he has seen.

LBA vice president Christie Nelson interviewed Ms Pearce, leading an informative and entertaining discussion.

“I never thought of myself as someone who would start a business,” the entrepreneur said, but a music festival she attended in her early twenties got her thinking about a gap in the gumboot market.

“I thought there really needs to be a gumboot that’s somewhere in the middle,” she said, having explained people were either wearing expensive designer gumboots or PVC ones from places such as Bunnings.

After time spent in a corporate job in Melbourne, she took the leap to bring the product she envisaged to reality.

In an indictment of Australia, Ms Pearce was unable to find anyone to manufacture the boots locally, getting them produced in China instead.

While Ms Pearce’s popular boots are now sought after in Australia and overseas, she said it took five years for the business to become profitable, with a lot of sales in the early days taking place at farmers’ markets.

The business has evolved to such an extent that she now has an advisory board she meets with every two months, giving its members an overview of the business’ performance and receiving constructive feedback.

She spoke about Merry People’s largely online nature and the recent establishment of a store in the Melbourne CBD, as well as the use of an AI agent to simplify various tasks, with that technology now handling about 20-25 per cent of emails, and the fact it is an AI response acknowledged.

A platform called ‘Gorgias’ channels social media content and emails into one queue.

AI also proves handy for salary benchmarking and creating images such as one used on the Merry People home page. Other AI uses have so far proved less successful, such as one to measure people’s boot size.

Audience member Chloe Bailey, a Wonthaggi-based marketing freelancer, asked Ms Pearce about her philosophy of never putting her boots on sale.

“I didn’t want to train the customer to expect that we would go on sale, and I think it brings discipline internally around creating a good product we feel confident in,” she said, noting “You want to do something you’re proud of and can sell at full price.”

At the end of the financial year, product that has been sitting there a bit long is donated to charity.

Asked what makes Merry People boots stand out, Ms Pearce said it is the colour and the merge between function and fashion.

While the boots don’t usually make it into the cow shed on the family farm, they are worn for various farming tasks.