Michael Duregon has personally bootstrapped Bring Back Australia to help consumers more easily understand what's Australian-owned when shopping. He talks about the personal challenges of starting up, and then his ongoing dedication to the movement knowing there are huge flow-on benefits if we can all get on board.
Show Notes
@MichaelDuregon founded www.bringbackaustralia.app to help current Australian consumers better understand what products & services they buy are Australian-owned, and not just Australian-made.
The highly successful #australianmade campaign was his prompt and he couldn't walk past what he saw as a big gap and lost opportunities for local #makers and #manufacturers. He had to do something about this!
Michael trained as a fitter and turner (trained in Port Augusta), worked in the #familyhardwarebusiness and also ran (and sold) a couple of his own businesses (signage industry). In our discussion we talk about;
- getting fascinated with #IT in the #familybusiness
- progressing to #apps
- his #covid19 #silverlining - a sustained exposure to and frustration from lots of stuff on social media saying how they were supporting Australia but confusing consumers on what's Australian owned and what's not
- the #australianowned movement and getting people onboard to embrace Australian-owned and to understand the importance of Australian-owned
- his fear that as a nation if we don't own anything then we're going to be renting everything from offshore
- lost national identity
- doing a better job of commercialising what we invent
- #foreigninvestment
- #bobhawke and the 1986 Australian-made campaign
- #multinationaltaxavoidance
- @MichaelWest
- michaelwest.com.au/revealed-australias-top-40-tax-dodgers-for-2021/
- how his app overcomes the difficulty consumers have when trying to read the packaging on some items
- Australian barcode and perception that any bar code starting with 93 means, it's Australian and that's not the case
- #bootstrapping
- self funding a startup through #covid
- #mvp (minimum viable product)
- @taxjusticenetwork
- #manufacturingsovereignity
- #supplychains
- the need for education about business ownership
- using an advisory board
- #howyoushopmatters
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