Ash Hill had been buying Sinchies for a while.
She found the reusable, plastic pouches perfect for the yoghurt her young kids were obsessed with.
Plus, refilling and reusing them was so much cheaper and better for the environment than buying a heap of throw-away packets from the supermarket.
“I’d just sold my swimwear e-commerce business and I saw Sinchies was up for sale,” Ash, 43, from Brisbane, tells WHO.
“I emailed my brother, Andy, thinking he might be interested. He owned a storage company, so I thought he could run it out of that.”
But Andy had a better idea. He suggested the pair buy Sinchies and run it together, using his logistics and warehousing know-how, together with Ash’s digital marketing and e-commerce nous.
It was a great match and, after a period of due diligence, the siblings took over Sinchies in March 2023.
“After 11 years, the woman who owned it before was ready for a change,” Ash says. “It was doing well, but she’d focused on traditional marketing, so we knew we would pivot and do more social media.”
They also knew there was more they could do to help the brand thrive.
They changed Sinchies’ manufacturer and switched to a cheaper way of digital printing the designs, like trucks and sea creatures, onto their pouches.
“A small business is not for the weak and it’s really challenging at times,” Ash says. “We wouldn’t know how much stock to order, what prints to use or timings for productions.”
But, while she adds that working with a sibling is not for everyone, she and Andy figured it out without arguments or hard feelings.
“We’re very blunt with each other, but we don’t fight. We just get on with it,” Ash explains.
And, just over a year in, they realised they’d hit gold.
“Black Friday and back to school 2024 were crazy,” Ash says. “When the amount of stock arrived in October, I was freaking out with imposter syndrome, but November to February was huge. We had Christmas Day off, then, on Boxing Day, we were packing orders again. We did it all ourselves.”
Year-on-year growth is now up 195 per cent, website traffic has doubled and Instagram has skyrocketed, with Sinchies gaining 1000 new followers in less than a week at one stage.
“The biggest thing to happen this year is the licensing deal with Mattel,” Ash says. “I knew Barbie and Hot Wheels were a global winner, and, in October 2024, I sent a cold email to the Mattel Office. It’s taken a year, but we now hold the licence, and most of what we’re selling at the moment is Barbie and Hot Wheels pouches.”
They’ve also become even more popular with the baby community, launching a plastic-free silicone pouch which is already award-winning.
And their camping community is ever-growing, with fans loving their pouches for anything from sunscreen and moisturiser, to cooking oil and sauces.
Both Andy and Ash are now working on the brand full-time and they have big plans to expand it even further.
“We want to get into Amazon and we’d like to grow our wholesale partnerships with Woolies, Coles or Aldi,” Ash says.
“We don’t have a team yet, but I think, at certain periods of the year, we’ll need that now so we can see a bit of summer!”
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