How three Australian founders grew their businesses

25 August 2026
Business Banking 

• Business leaders from Mimi Haircare, St Remio and Premier Fresh discussed the challenges of scaling successfully.
• Three Australian founders shared practical lessons for small business owners looking to grow.
• Sustainable growth requires discipline, trusted partnerships and long-term thinking.

Growth was the goal, but discipline was the theme for three founders speaking at the NAB Business Summit.

NAB business customers Julia Tink, Anthony Di Pietro and Emma McKenzie said sustainable growth came from knowing when to back an idea, when to say no and when to draw on the right people around them.

Early discipline 

Mimi Haircare founder and CEO Emma McKenzie said the business started with a problem she understood personally: tangled hair and tears while her children were in the bath or getting ready for school.

 After nearly 20 years working in cosmetics, including with global brands such as L’Oréal, Elizabeth Arden and Revlon, Ms McKenzie saw a gap in children’s haircare.

 Rather than rush to market, she spent 18 months working with cosmetic chemists to develop a product designed specifically for children’s hair.

 “It’s a highly competitive market, you really get one shot but if you can find an underserved need in the global cosmetics market and create a product that meets that need, it’s like striking gold,” Ms McKenzie said. 

 That early discipline helped Mimi Haircare move quickly after launching in 2022. The business is now stocked nationally through Chemist Warehouse and has expanded into the United States through CVS, with Target to follow in 2027.

 But with scale came new pressure, a challenge familiar to many small business owners. Moving from direct-to-consumer sales into major retail meant learning the mechanics of pallets, production runs, inventory and funding. 
 
Ms McKenzie said one of the biggest challenges was not the demand itself, but building the structure around the business fast enough to meet it.

Choosing the right partners

St Remio co-founder and director Julia Tink said growth had required a similar level of clarity.

The Melbourne-born coffee brand is built around a simple idea: that coffee should create value for everyone in the supply chain, including growers at origin. 

But Ms Tink said purpose did not remove the hard commercial choices. At times, St Remio had to step back from revenue that did not serve the long-term brand.

For Ms Tink, saying no was one of the most important disciplines in building the business.

"The art of saying no is so empowering," she said.

That meant finding partners who were aligned on values, quality and what the business was trying to build. 

Trust through growth

Premier Fresh Australia Group CEO Anthony Di Pietro said trust was the foundation of every partnership, particularly in a fresh produce business that works across farming, manufacturing, distribution, retail and export markets.

As Premier Fresh grew, he said the challenge was keeping the closeness of a family business while building the systems needed to operate at scale.

In fresh produce, trust matters when labour shortages, freight disruption and higher energy costs put pressure on supply chains. 
 
For Mr Di Pietro, good partnerships meant understanding each other’s objectives and working together when conditions changed.

The discussion reflected what NAB bankers hear from business customers every day: growth takes focus, discipline and trusted relationships. 

These themes were echoed throughout the NAB Business Summit, including discussions about productivity, adaptability and long-term growth.