Long gone are the days when women stayed in the shadows, forging a career in ironing, cooking and childbearing. More and more women are developing their own business empires, and some are even leaving the men trailing far behind.
Helen Logas
Travelcorp
It’s not often you hear of a high school teacher making the big bucks, well, not if they stay in education. A passion for travel coupled with a strong desire to be her own boss saw Helen Logus leave the teaching ranks and join the madness of entrepreneurism.
In 1994, Helen started her corporate travel business Travelcorp and within a year was in the position to employ commission-based staff and undertake a targeted advertising campaign. In 2003, Travelcorp was awarded ‘Best Corporate Travel Agent’ at the National Travel Industry Awards for Excellence, and by 2010 the company had a recorded revenue of $65 million, with an average annual growth of 38 percent.
Her obvious knack for negotiating and seeking out a deal played a key role in the growth of her business, but so too did the technology behind Travelcorp’s booking system, which was customizable to each client. This allowed corporate clients to not only retain a certain amount of control of their travel plans, but also analyse their costs and spending patterns over the year.
The biggest deal of her life was to come when, in 2010, Helen was approached by Corporate Travel Management (CTM) with an offer for the company. By the end of that year Helen was a whole lot richer and freed up to pursue her next venture, which should be due to launch any time soon.
Catriona Pollard
CP Communications
With such an established career in developing and managing public relations and marketing programs, it was only a matter of time before Catriona would utilise her diverse skills to go it alone. In 2001, she set up CP Communications, a Sydney-based boutique PR agency, and hasn’t looked back since.
Part of her repertoire is to manage public relations and social media for both small and large businesses, which must provide a few challenges, to say the least, and she regularly authors articles on PR and marketing for a number of business journals. Catriona is also tipped as one of the top 100 people in PR to follow on Twitter, where she is active most days, and she is co-founder of Social Media Women – an online networking group that assists and encourages women to get more involved in social media.
Clare Lancaster
Women in Business
As Clare says: “When most people think of the words ‘women in business’ they think of women in 80?s power suits, or women climbing the corporate ladder while figuring out the balance between work and family.” But things have changed, and Clare is key to that change.
Putting her background in Communication Design and SEO to good use, partnered with her experience in affiliate marketing and search and domain monetisation, Clare founded Dot Marketing. There, through strategy workshops, online business owners and bloggers with a business model learn how SEO, social media and marketing can benefit their business.
Helping online business owners is something Clare is passionate about, and her new venture Women in Business reflects that. It stemmed from wanting a life where work, home and play mingle easily, where women can have it all, do what they love, without having to give up too many things to be successful. If Clare’s success is anything to go by, she seems to know what she’s talking about.
Claire Moffat
Connected Women
While the term ‘tech head’ is usually reserved for men, Clarie Moffat has knocked the idea firmly on the head by starting Australia’s only technology site for women, Connected Women, and it’s a big hit. Of course being CEO of Connected Media, which is responsible for Australia’s leading online news service for the consumer electronics industry Connected Australia, would have helped.
Spanning a publishing career of 30 years, Claire has created and managed a number of leading magazines, electronic newsletters and websites across various industries, but Connected Women is closest to her heart. Her insight into the women’s tech market niche is sought after by many in the industry and she relays her knowledge and expertise through a range of online editorials, her blog and presentations and events within the business and technology industry.
Emma Isaacs
Business Chicks
Emma Isaacs is a busy, busy woman, and loves it. She is a long time entrepreneur, having never worked for anyone else – apart from a few coffee shops during her teens – and manages to juggle mommyhood with business quite nicely.
At just 18, Emma started her first business, a recruitment company, and by the age of 28 had bought four other businesses and sold one. One of her companies, Business Chicks, is an online community for business women in Australia wanting to connect with likeminded career women. Their ethos is to empower working women, whether from small home-based businesses or a large multinational corporation, through sharing ideas, knowledge and skills. Competitiveness is shunned – although that must be hard with a group of strong-willed women – and peer encouragement is embraced, with the aim of achieving better business results, while trying not to take it all too seriously. There are chances to meet up in real life, too, during national events programs, fundraising ventures and other initiatives. Ranging from the ages of 25 to 65, around 25,000 business women have joined the community so far.
When not in the throes of organising Business Chicks, Emma is an Ambassador for 1 Million Women, writes a regular column for Latte, the Business Chicks magazine, and has only recently given up the Presidency of the Sydney-based Entrepreneur’s Organisation.
Charlotte Vidor
Toga Group
Joint owner of the massive Toga Group, Vidor has her finger in a lot of business-flavoured pies. Valued alongside her husband at $440 million, Vidor’s company is involved mainly in the hospitality chain, but also fund management, the environment and property management, and includes the Medina and Vibe brands.
Spanning 45 years, the company hires almost 2000 people and has exported the brand to Europe and elsewhere. The business portfolio includes hundreds of hotels, apartments and businesses, including Travel Lodge Australia and New Zealand, and many others.
Given the companies interests, it’s no surprise that Vidor has a heavy interest in the Australian tourist industry, and is a strong advocate for the development of the sector. She played a prominent role whilst a member of the New South Wales Tourism Board, and developed the concept of fully-serviced business apartments way back in 1982.
Unfortunately for Charlotte, a pitiful net worth of $440 million means she just scrapes into fourth position on Australia’s rich list.
Caroline Treacy
CORE Architecture
Caroline Treacy is the managing director of successful and much in demand architecture firm CORE, based in Queensland. Despite being pestered by government, property developers and businesses alike, who all vie for Core’s cutting edge building designs, Caroline also manages to support local women looking to find their way in the male dominated world of business, and is part of the Women in Business Network. She also mentors young up-and-coming architects in an apprentice scheme, and still has time to generate $9 million per year through CORE’s innovative designs, including some of Australia’s highest profile public buildings.
Caroline has been pivotal in the direction of the growth of the business, and now manages over 50 staff across the company’s various locations in Australia, and is instrumental in the growth of the business and the management of staff. Caroline takes particular interest in the niche architectural sectors of education and care homes. She’s also mother to two young children, and proved she can practice what she preaches when she successfully renovated and redesigned her own home to a very high standard.
Iris Lustig Moar
Lustig and Moar
Director of one of Australia’s most luxurious property development chains, Iris Lustig Moar continues the vision that her late father and ex-husband had, that is, the creation of iconic and simply fabulous properties and buildings, including the Hyatt Hotel chains. Pulling in a cool $150 million dollars revenue a year, the company gives Lustig Moar a nice return, and plenty of spare cash to add to her magnificent modern art collection. Famously spending a whopping $5.5 million in a few months on some collectors items, including an $840,000 Albert Tucker Painting, Iris and ex-husband Ted are prominent movers in the art scene.
Iris takes an active role in the running of the property business, which has expanded to the development of high specification luxury apartments, fancy hotels and top of the range villas.
Jo Horgan
Cosmetics Cubed
London born and bred Jo, like Franklin, learned the tricks of the cosmetics trade whilst working for an industry giant (L’Oreal) in the UK and Australia. Whilst abroad, Jo realised there was a gap in the Australian cosmetics market for high quality, niche products, and thus her company Cosmetics Cubed, which incorporates the Mecca Cosmetica brand.
With 30 stores across Oz and New Zealand, Mecca Cosmetica leads the way in women’s cosmetics. Like many of the successful women on this list, Horgan keeps herself to herself, but her products, which include her own branded ranges, are known to women and teenage girls throughout Australia.
Jo claims most of her business planning was done on long haul flights, but it turned out the ideas were more than just pie in the sky fantasy. Having built her business up and successfully passed the 10 year mark, Jo remains grounded, quoting her best achievements as her family, and speaking at industry conferences in front of some of the world big names in the beauty world. She also enjoys travelling and meeting her suppliers and business contacts. At least she’ll have to hand plenty of creams and lotions to hide any jet lag and fatigue.
Gillian Franklin
Heat Group
Hugely successful marketer, manager and owner of the Heat Group Gillian Franklin learned the ropes whilst working for others, before taking her experience and setting up shop on her own. At 23, Gillian already had 23 juniors reporting for her, and she was Revlon’s youngest general manager in history. Her company owns exclusive rights to the retail of many of the world’s most famous brands, including Max Factor.
Originally from South Africa, Gillian’s entrepreneurial spirit has helped her succeed in one of her many goals – providing employment opportunities for women and improving the quality of their lives whilst advising them on the largely male dominated world of business.
Set up in 2000, and now employing almost 100 members of staff, Gillian is proud to have seen the business grow from a home start-up to the thriving company it is today. Now worth almost $80 million, the company is at the forefront of women’s cosmetics in Australia. Gillian’s shrewd business planning, advanced thinking and can do attitude have convinced many, including industry giant Proctor and Gamble, that her company is the way forward. And, she’s just about convinced us too.
Jan Cameron
Retail Adventures
Jan Cameron, creator of Kathmandu outdoor wear and accessories is, thanks to her empire, one of the richest women in Australia and New Zealand.
She’s notorious for her clear-head, quick-thinking business decisions, a trait that must have helped her enormously when she began her forage into the strongly masculine outdoor equipment market in the dark days of the 1980’s.
Having sold the business in 2006, Jan netted a very respectable sum of approx. $235 million. Not a bad result for a woman who started out making sleeping bags by hand.
Since the sale, although most thought she was settling down for retirement years in Tasmania Ms Cameron instead bought out Australian Discount Retail Group in 2009, who went into administration.
The chain were responsible for around 350 discount variety stores under the brand names Go-Lo, Crazy Clarks and Sam’s Warehouse, but their Tasmanian Chickenfeed stores remained profitable, and continues to do well under the management
of Cameron.
In fact, it’s doing so well, as it’s business owner, that 100 percent of profits are donated to charity. Something that is not common knowledge and will surely drive consumers to the store, and also something that goes to show many entrepreneurs are not just business people, but philanthropists too.
