Couple remortgage house for ‘crazy’ $1 million idea

A daily gut health routine led to a Sydney couple taking a big risk on a side hustle that will soon be available in 1,500 Woolworths and Coles supermarkets.

When Andrew and Kate Gordon embarked on a new wellness routine it sparked the inspiration for a million-dollar business idea.

The Sydney couple started each day drinking warm water with lemon juice, purported to help improve gut health but, finding squeezing lemons a hassle, they decided there must be a better way.

This led to the creation of Naked Rivals, frozen citrus cubes made from ugly fruit that would otherwise be pulped, which will soon be stocked in supermarkets nationwide.

Each product contains 12 cubes of frozen lemon or lime juice and is made from 'ugly' fruit.

Each pack contains 12 cubes of either lemon or lime juice, or the equivalent of six pieces of fruit, and retails for $6.50.

A single cube contains 22ml of lemon juice or 15ml of lime juice, which is the equivalent of half a lemon or lime.

Fruit for the product is sourced from the Mildura Fruit Company, which also squeezes the fruit, before the juice is sent to Melbourne where it is packaged, frozen and distributed.

To avoid market price fluctuations for the product, the price of the fruit is locked in at the start of the season.

Mr Gordon, who works in sales and marketing in the insurance industry, told news.com.au that the idea became a reality within weeks of being conceived in October 2022.

Packaging design took a mere week to be finalised, after the task of packaging concepts was outsourced on freelance platform fiverr.com at a cost of just $300.

A week later, they had secured 170 orders for the product after sharing the idea on a local community messenger group.

Naked Rivals will soon be stocked in over 1500 Coles and Woolworths stores.

Leveraging his marketing background, Mr Gordon sent a press release to a consumer goods publication, who picked the story up.

“I was gobsmacked,” Mr Gordon said. “We kept waiting for someone to tell us we were mad.”

Instead, they received a call from a food consultant who was meeting with Coles and wanted to present their idea.

When the couple learned the supermarket giant was interested in stocking Naked Rivals, Ms Gordon was in labour with their third child.

“Literally within a month we went from idea, to having one of the majors interested. It was surreal to say the least,” Mr Gordon said.

Around the same time a distributor also picked up the product, helping to get Naked Rivals stocked in 250 IGA supermarkets within six weeks of its launch, where, Mr Gordon said, it has posted sales 400 per cent above expectations.

The Coles meeting led to a deal that will see the product debut in Coles stores soon, and a deal with Woolworths that followed means Naked Rivals will be stocked in 1,500 Woolworths and Coles stores and another 300 IGA stores by March this year.

Aside from holding down full time jobs, the couple are also parents to three kids, aged 7, 5 and 1.

It’s not bad going for a side hustle that the couple, who are in their 40s, maintain while

parenting three kids, aged 7, 5 and 1, and working full-time.

But Mr Gordon is under no illusions about what it takes to grow a successful consumer goods business.

“FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) is a very low margin, high volume business and it takes a lot of time and patience to build a brand,” he said.

To reach this point required a significant investment, with the couple remortgaging their home to finance the business, which he described as “very scary and stressful”.

“To develop and launch a brand like this we needed in excess of $1 million, so it’s not for the faint hearted!” Mr Gordon said.

But he added that so far, the business was exceeding their expectations and they were “expecting to sell over one million units of the lemon and limes in Australia” this year.

As for the future, Mr Gordon said Naked Rivals has ambitious plans to expand its customer base to food services businesses and branch out into new products “all centred around helping reduce food waste at home and making access to ingredients more convenient and affordable”.

He said selling into overseas markets such as the US and the Middle East is also a priority, adding that the couple are “already in talks with distributors all over the world”.

But he added that it may take the assistance of an investor to fulfil their ambition of sales of over $120 million by 2027.

Andrew and Kate Gordon combine running Naked Rivals with full time jobs and raising three kids.

A self-confessed serial entrepreneur, Mr Gordon had previously founded a business in 2007, while living in his native UK.

That business, STABLEtables, a mechanical system that prevents cafe and restaurant tables from wobbling on uneven flooring was subsequently sold to a Swedish company.

“I was one of the first to appear on the BBC Dragons Den show so we’ve got a history of coming up with simple, crazy ideas!”