australian kitchenware brand dreamfarm has furthered its reach into the global market with the opening of its san francisco office.
despite being a registered company in america since 2008 its us office has only recently opened its doors.
managing director and founder alex gransbury says the move is about ensuring dreamfarm’s own team can enhance the brand.
“we needed to have our own people on the ground rather than leaving the success of our brand in the hands of others,” he says. “the us is the biggest marketplace for quality kitchenware and homewares and we weren’t able to reach our target audience with the distribution model we had.”
the overseas demand for dreamfarm products isn’t a surprise to gransbury as consumers are always looking for quality kitchenware.
“whether you’re in australia, the us or aruba, people are always looking for innovation. dreamfarm products are not only innovative, they are uniquely useful and different for a reason. dreamfarm products aren’t country specific because the problems they solve aren’t country specific,” he explains.
it is only early days for the company’s us push with much of its time taken up opening the office and getting established, but is likely to make a big splash when it appears at one of the country’s major trade shows. “opening the us office has been a full-time job in itself but we now have sales staff on board and are looking forward to attending our first new york gift fair at the end of this month.”
while dreamfarm is eager to establish a greater presence internationally it is taking things one step at a time.
“we would love to have more overseas offices and really take the world by storm but these things take time and we don’t want to spread ourselves too thin. while we want to keep expanding into new markets, we also want to make sure that our existing customers are being taken care of properly.”
it’s a far cry from the same time last year when the queensland office and warehouse were filled with half a metre of mud during the brisbane floods. gransbury says he and the team fared much better than a lot of others and is thankful for the volunteers who helped in the clean up and the clients who offered their support.
“people lent us their time, tools and talent to get the physical side of the business back to normal but our retailers were also a huge support,” he adds.
“we were getting calls on our mobiles throughout the flood just to see how we were and a lot of our customers made a special effort to pay their invoices early, despite doing it tough themselves, as their way of helping.”
