This week’s Founder Friday hears from Ann-Maree Awad on how she built Amaree Collection from her living room.
I focused heavily on building relationships with my customers which in turn helped build trust, encourage repeat purchases and gave me valuable feedback that helped shape my business.”
Ann-Maree Awad was teaching kickboxing to kids and adults six days a week when the idea for Amaree Collection began taking shape. The days were long and physically demanding, but the frustration that would eventually become her business had nothing to do with fitness. It had to do with fragrance.
“Amaree Collection started from a growing frustration that fragrances didn’t last,” she says. “They were either overpowering, smelt artificial and didn’t live up to what they promised.” When she could not find fragrance products she genuinely enjoyed, she decided to make her own. She had always loved fragrances and flowers. Combining the two, she says, felt natural. “I wanted to create a product that not only smelt beautiful but looked beautiful too. I wanted customers to feel like they were purchasing a decorative piece for their home rather than just another fragrance product.”
She knew nothing about fragrance formulation. She searched online for courses she could enrol in and learn from scratch, buying raw ingredients locally and online and spending her spare hours experimenting, mixing, measuring, and documenting everything. “There’s a skill and an art to it, but deep down I also found it very therapeutic,” she says. “I spent countless hours in my spare time experimenting, testing, learning and just documented everything until I found my perfect formula.”
Started in frustration
The first people to try her products were friends and family. The feedback surprised her. “Surprisingly the feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive. That was the moment I realised this could become something bigger than a hobby.”
What distinguishes Amaree Collection in a crowded market is immediately visible. Each bottle contains real preserved flowers, hand-filled, making no two products identical. The fragrance performance backs up the visual. Reed diffusers last between nine and twelve months. Car diffusers last up to three months, significantly longer than comparable products from major brands. “When I first tell customers how long our products last, there’s often a level of disbelief,” Ann-Maree says. “Many people simply haven’t experienced a fragrance product that performs that well.” Once they try it, she adds, they come back. And they tell people.
All products are made using locally sourced, IFRA-approved Australian ingredients. Every bottle is hand-filled. Refill options were added in response to customer requests, making sustainability a practical feature of the product rather than a marketing claim.
Markets as market research
“Growth doesn’t happen overnight and consistency is better than perfection.”
Her first attempt to get the brand in front of customers through markets did not go smoothly. She faced rejection after rejection for almost a year before finally getting accepted. “My biggest lesson was don’t give up,” she says. “Growth doesn’t happen overnight and consistency is better than perfection.”
When she did get into markets, she treated them as something more than sales events. “These market events became my form of research to help better understand my customers, which products they kept coming back for and which fragrances were performing the best.” She had started with around 25 fragrances. Customer feedback gradually helped her reduce the range to 12 core scents that consistently performed well. That discipline, cutting what did not earn its place and doubling down on what did, became central to how the brand grew.
Balancing the fragrance business with a full-time kickboxing career added another layer of difficulty. Manufacturing, attending market events, and building the brand happened in the margins of an already full schedule. “The fragrance industry is highly competitive and standing out in an oversaturated market wasn’t easy,” she says. She bootstrapped from the beginning, reinvesting every dollar back into stock, packaging, market events, and growth opportunities. She also invested in mentorship through programs like she.com to build her business knowledge alongside her product knowledge.
The no-ads growth model
“Don’t wait until everything is perfect because it’s only when you start, you’ll really learn along the way.”
Amaree Collection has never spent money on paid advertising. That decision was deliberate and rooted in the nature of the product. “Being a fragrance brand, I knew it was something customers needed to experience for themselves,” Ann-Maree says. Instead of advertising spend, she invested in relationships. Happy customers became repeat customers. Repeat customers recommended the brand to friends and family. Word of mouth, supported by online sales, email marketing, pop-up events, and markets, became the engine of growth.
When demand grew enough to give her confidence in which products would translate to retail, she moved into wholesale. The brand is now stocked in more than 80 retail stores across Australia. Amaree Collection has also been named a finalist in the Australian Small Business Champion Awards in the Arts and Crafts category and is a finalist in the Beam Awards for Product of the Year.
For other founders considering a similar path, Ann-Maree’s advice is practical and direct. “Don’t wait until everything is perfect because it’s only when you start, you’ll really learn along the way. Build something you’re genuinely passionate about because running a business takes a lot of time and energy and your passion will be the driving force that makes all the difference.” She also encourages founders to find community. “Running a business can feel scary and lonely at times and having people around you who understand the journey can make a huge difference.”
Amaree Collection recently moved out of the home setup that served it through its early years and into a warehouse space, a milestone Ann-Maree describes as an exciting next chapter. The goal from here is continued wholesale expansion across Australia and, eventually, taking the brand international. “Long term, I’d love Amaree Collection to become a recognised Australian household fragrance brand known for beautiful flower design, long-lasting fragrance and exceptional customer experiences.”
She built the first version of that dream in a living room, between kickboxing sessions, with no advertising budget and almost a year of market rejections behind her. The next version, she says, is just getting started.
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