Rolling the ice on a ‘cool’ business idea
Billy had been in construction his whole working life, fitting fire sprinklers, the last eight years of it in Melbourne. He had also been quietly building something else. A bit of drop shipping during COVID, small gardening and pet products, and then, in his words, he thought he was really clever and bought a significant amount of ice baths and saunas to sell. He was still working full time and picking up night shifts, and the business was not getting the attention it needed.
The ice baths did not move the way he had hoped. He sold what he could through Facebook Marketplace, got some money back and kept going. Then someone sent him a video of reusable ice cubes and asked whether they would work in an ice bath.
They worked. His e-commerce coach made the point that stuck: people need ice for a lot of reasons, and nobody was really doing it in the United States.
Five days
Billy had 500 bags manufactured. Half came to Australia and half went to the US. The American stock sold out in five days.
The ads initially outperformed the stock replenishment.
“I had to tell my ads girl, you need to turn these off!”
– Billy McFarlane, Founder, Zero Ice
He refinanced an investment property in Queensland, bought a shipping container and went for it. At the end of February he left his job to more actively ride the wave of his new business growth.
Zero Ice now sells in Australia and the US, launched in the UK and Japan at the end of May, and is working towards Germany and the wider European market, with the Middle East in his sights before the end of the year.
Lessons learned
The first US order taught him what he did not yet know. Stock was sailing, ads were running, orders were landing and there was no fulfilment arrangement waiting at the other end.
“I thought I’ll get it on the water and I’ll figure it out. I’ll go to Long Beach, I’ll find somebody in California and they will be able to ship it for me.”
It was not that simple. Every bag was boxed individually, and the warehouse he found could not repack multi-unit orders the way he had been doing it himself in Australia. Customers ordering three or four bags were charged as three or four separate picks. The lesson cost him about nine thousand dollars.
“But the business didn’t fall apart, and customers got the product in the end.”
It was during that scramble that a colleague put him in touch with Rohan at AXIMA.
“Me and Rohan, we hit it off straight away, and he’s always looked after me.”
Answering the call
Ask Billy what AXIMA has been like to work with and the answer is about responsiveness before it is about freight.
“Rohan, I could literally phone him anytime, he’s going to answer. He’s emailing me at eight, nine o’clock at night sometimes when orders are landing in the UK. He’s getting it done, and that’s what you need when you’re a small business like mine.”
“He’s working the same amount of hours as me, it seems like sometimes.”
A one-person business running four time zones does not have the luxury of business hours. Neither, it turns out, does its freight forwarder.
Who are the best 3PLs in the UK?
When Billy decided to open the UK, he did not start with a search engine. He started with a phone call.
“I went to him and Mark and said, hey, I’m needing to get into the UK market, who are the best 3PLs? They put me in touch with three or four of them. I spoke to all of them, and they were all great.”
He went with one of them, Online Fulfilment Centre in Grimsby, and it has held up since. That kind of referral is a large part of what a global forwarding network is for. AXIMA is not shipping every leg of Zero Ice’s business, and it does not need to be. Knowing who to hand a founder to in a market he has never traded in is the value.
First to market
The UK taught Billy something he has since built the whole strategy around.
“Getting into the UK really taught me how important it is to be first to market.”
It is a small niche with few competitors, which means the window is open and then it is not. Billy has been told more than once to saturate one market before opening the next, and to put his whole ad budget behind a single country. He does not buy it.
“I’ve got too many people I can let into the market before me. I’ve not got time for that.”
The UK proved the point faster than expected. Barbecue culture there has changed, and the retailers came looking for him.
“I’ve got 25 retailers in the UK, all hounding me.”
One of them messages on WhatsApp every couple of days asking for even more stock, because Zero Ice sitting next to the premium cooler range lifts the coolers too. Customers walk in for an esky and walk out with three bags of ice.
Heavy product, big country, thin margin
Reusable ice is not a light freight problem. It is dense and bulky, and it goes to consumers one order at a time.
“US fulfilment is a real headache because it’s such a heavy product and it’s such a big country and it’s so expensive to ship anything there now.”
“You can’t charge the customers too much because then your sales drop, but then you need to charge enough to cover your costs.”
That squeeze is why the freight conversations matter as much as the marketing ones, and why Billy keeps going back to the people who will pick up the phone and work the numbers with him rather than just send a rate card.
Building the business behind the business
Billy hired a senior operations manager who started this month. Customer service and the email backlog are hers first, then logistics.
“She’s going to fix up customer service and then be in the group chats with me and Rohan on logistics.”
The scale up of this business is impressive on any measure, but Billy is candid about how new all of this still is to him, describing himself as ‘just’ a sprinkler fitter.
Probably not how most people would describe someone who has taken a product into four countries in about a year while learning international freight from scratch!
Why reusable ice?
The sustainability angle is real, and Billy is honest that it was not the starting point.
“I do definitely think we should be looking after the planet a little bit better, but I won’t lie, the original idea was more about providing for my family.”
Every bag sold is a run to the servo that does not happen and a single-use plastic bag that does not go in the bin. That the two things line up is a fair part of why it sells.
“Working with Billy has been great. He has always treated us like part of the team rather than just a freight provider, which has made the whole relationship really easy and enjoyable
Billy is always looking at what’s next and we have loved being along for the ride as Zero Ice continues to grow. We have been able to help him navigate different markets, using our knowledge, experience and global network to find the right solutions
We look forward to seeing where Zero Ice goes next and continuing to support their growth. It’s been great to see what Billy and the team have built so far, and we’re proud to be part of it” – Rohan Balram, Senior Business Partner
You can find Zero Ice at zeroiceofficial.com
Taking a product into a new market for the first time? Talk to AXIMA before you book anything.
