If you had told me a couple of years ago that an idea I sketched at my kitchen table would one day win an international business award, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.
I wasn’t a product designer. I didn’t have a background in manufacturing or product development. I was a stay-at-home mum with three busy boys and a very ordinary frustration: wrapping Christmas presents and sticking tape strips to the side of my table.
The actual moment the idea of Tape Zoomie was born was a few nights before Christmas. My third son had been born just a few days earlier and I felt really overwhelmed by the mountain of gifts in front of me that still needed to be wrapped.
My husband and I jumped in and started wrapping the presents together, and I was doing what I always did, cutting pieces of sticky tape in advance and lining them up along the edge of the table so we could grab them quickly. Except he was using them faster than I could cut them, and then it hit me.
“I am the tape dispenser!”
I started searching online for something easy to use that could prepare multiple pieces of tape at once, but I couldn't find anything. So, I sat down at my kitchen table and sketched it.
That very rough drawing is now Tape Zoomie.
Since launching in November 2024, Tape Zoomie has grown in ways I never expected. It is now sold in 13 countries, our content has accumulated more than 160 million views on social media, and this year we won Gold at the Stevie Awards in the International Business Awards.
The award is an incredible milestone, but when I look back at everything that has happened between that kitchen table and now, I think the bigger story is everything I had to learn along the way.
And I am definitely still learning.
Start before you feel ready
If I had waited until I knew how to build a product business before starting Tape Zoomie, there would be no Tape Zoomie. I didn’t know anything about manufacturing or how patents worked. I didn't know how to sell on Amazon or how to build a Shopify website. I didn't know about freight, customs, international fulfilment, barcodes, packaging requirements or retailer systems.
You can spend forever convincing yourself you need to learn everything before you start, but you don't and you can’t, because you won’t even know what you need to know until you start.
There are so many tools available now to help you figure things out. I watched videos, researched constantly, used online resources, asked questions, found people who knew things I didn't and followed other small business owners who were already doing what I wanted to do.
I also followed social media accounts I loved and paid attention to what made me stop scrolling, to understand what connected with people and think about how I could apply those lessons to my own brand. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by it all, but just start with figuring out one thing, then move on to the next. You really end up learning what you need to learn when you need to learn it.
Demand told me where to go
I didn't originally have some grand plan to take Tape Zoomie global so quickly. The decision was actually driven by the people watching.
Three of my social media posts went viral very early on, and suddenly I had all this data showing me where people were watching from, where the comments were coming from and, most importantly, where people were asking if they could buy Tape Zoomie.
That gave me the confidence to launch in three countries instead of one. I was simply following the demand.
That has been another huge lesson for me. Listen to your customers, but also look at the data in front of you. Sometimes your customers will show you where your business should go next before you've even considered going there.
Recognition matters when you're still proving yourself
I had always known about the Stevie Awards from seeing major brands participate and win over the years, so they were one of those awards that carried real weight for me.
When I saw the International Business Awards were open, I thought, why not give Tape Zoomie a chance?
The business was still under two years old and I wanted independent feedback. I thought even if we didn't win, having judges feedback at what I had built could only be useful.
I genuinely never expected to win Gold.
When the result appeared privately in the finalist portal, my first reaction was complete disbelief, followed by tears and then panic that I had somehow interpreted it incorrectly.
I called my husband and told him he needed to come home because I needed someone else to look at it and confirm I wasn't reading it wrong.
It wasn't until the following day, when the winners were officially published and I saw Tape Zoomie listed as a Gold winner, that I truly believed it.
More than 3,400 nominations from organisations across 82 nations and territories were submitted to the 2026 International Business Awards.
Then I saw Tape Zoomie among the honourees alongside global organisations including Cisco, IBM, EY and Tata Consultancy Services.
That is just crazy to me.
I'm a mum from Perth who started with an idea, no product development experience and very limited funds.
And now I'm heading to Paris in October to formally receive a Gold Stevie trophy.
That still hasn't quite sunk in.
Sometimes you have to say yes, then figure it out
One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that you don't have to know the whole path before you start walking down it. When I started, there was so much I didn't know. I sometimes think that is a good thing, because you can’t feel overwhelmed by all the things you don’t even know you need to know yet.
At times, that was terrifying. When Good Morning America wanted to feature Tape Zoomie, for example, I could have looked at everything involved and thought, I'm not ready for this.
There were systems I had never used, shipping integrations I had to understand and processes I had never dealt with before, but it was a great opportunity, so I said yes. Then I figured it out.
There have been plenty of moments like that.
I don't mean blindly saying yes to everything, but I do think there is a danger, particularly when you're new, of waiting until you feel qualified or perfectly prepared.
Sometimes the opportunity comes first, and your job is to catch up.
That can be uncomfortable, but some of the biggest steps forward for Tape Zoomie have happened because I said yes before I knew how I was going to make it work.
Small beginnings aren't something to hide
There is pressure on businesses to make everything appear bigger and more polished than it really is.
This year has made me appreciate the opposite.
Tape Zoomie genuinely started at my kitchen table. My first customers came from our local school community, and I was selling Tape Zoomie out of the boot of my car. It was all self-funded and I had no background in product development and no idea if people would really buy it.
For a while, those things felt like disadvantages. Now I see them as resilience. This is the story people connect to.
Small businesses can move quickly. We can listen closely to customers, change direction quickly and learn as we go. When you're building something yourself, you also become incredibly resourceful because you have to be.
Protect what you're building
One thing I am incredibly glad I did from the beginning was take protecting the product and the Tape Zoomie brand.
I started the patent process very early, before I knew whether Tape Zoomie would become what it is today. Since then, I have built patent and design protection across multiple countries, as well as trademark protection for the brand.
At the beginning, it can feel like an enormous expense, particularly when you're self-funded and every dollar matters, but once your product is online, it can be seen anywhere in the world, and unfortunately that also means it can be copied.
I've had to deal with copies of Tape Zoomie appearing online and learn far more about intellectual property enforcement than I ever expected to.
If you've genuinely invented something new, protecting the product and the brand from the start is something I would absolutely recommend investigating. Don't wait until your product becomes successful to decide it is worth protecting. My early actions realuted in patents, design IP and Trademarks in 8 countries.
International recognition changes how you see your own possibilities
Winning Gold hasn't suddenly made running a business easy.
There are still problems to solve, decisions to make and plenty of things I am learning as I go.
What it has changed is my sense of what might be possible. It made me realise that a small brand doesn't need permission to participate on a global stage.
We can create products that solve universal problems, and we can get recognition amongst big names. We can tell our stories internationally. Most importantly, we don't have to wait until we feel "big enough" to do those things. I certainly didn't feel big enough. I still don't, but I took a chance. I just entered.
Winning Gold has given me a new level of confidence to keep going and to dream even bigger. It has made me want to do more outreach, put Tape Zoomie forward for bigger opportunities and see just how far I can take it.
More than anything, it has made me look back at that first scary step I took towards creating Tape Zoomie and realise it was worth it. The hard times were worth it. All the times I hit a wall and had absolutely no idea how I was going to get past it, were worth it.
I still don't know exactly where Tape Zoomie will go, but I am excited to find out.