Kailo founders bring Goop to Australia with new wellness event
Kailo founders Kristy Morris and Kath Merlo transformed Queensland’s wellness landscape. Now the pair is taking the next step with a holistic health summit.
It’s funny where the conversations you strike up at the school gate can take you. For Kristy Morris and Kath Merlo, it was bonding over their kindergarten sons’ health challenges that brought the Brisbane mothers and Kailo co-founders together.
“My [now] 15-year-old son Nicky is on the autism spectrum, and Kristy’s son was dealing with the challenges of OCD, so that’s what first drew us to one another,” explains Merlo. “When we met, Kristy had just come back from the US where she’d been for four months seeking treatment for him. And from the age of two, our doctors had said our son would need lifelong support, but my husband and I didn’t think that approach was good enough. We wanted clearer answers. So, within two weeks of meeting Kristy, we, too, headed to the US to investigate other treatments for him.”
The experts they met in the behavioural space in Los Angeles were pivotal to overcoming their sons’ challenges. “We worked with Dr Julie Buckley, a pediatrician. We engaged in a 12-week neurology program, and as a family, we worked with an incredible behaviour specialist, Aaron Deland,” adds Morris. “Kathy and I were adamant our sons wouldn’t be victims of their DNA.”
Regular trips to the US and a brief stint living in LA for Morris and Merlo ensued: on one occasion, the two women found themselves in a coffee shop, lamenting why they couldn’t access the same wide range of health, wellness and skin treatments they encountered in the US at home. “We knew there was a gap to offer this in a one-stop shop.” The year was 2015 and, although neither had worked in the spa or wellness space before (Merlo’s skill set centred on marketing and PR; Morris’s experience was in HR/operations and building family businesses), they set about developing the concept they wanted.
In 2018 Brisbane’s Calile Hotel opened and the pair pounced. “We’d purchased a small medispa in the Valley with a clientele database and took on their therapists, but knew we needed to secure this space,” says Morris. “The Calile has been a key part of our success.”
The pair started out offering facials and high-level dermal skin treatments before then taking on a doctor to offer cosmetic treatments. The list of available services grew according to clientele demand and the issues with which they struggled. Sleep, gut health, immunity … “In 2024, our clientele is highly informed – they just want more – so now we have 35 practitioners working in the business from nutritional coaches to dermal specialists because everyone wants to treat both the internal and external,” says Merlo.
That’s also spilt over to product development. Their three food supplements – Feel Well, Look Well and Sleep Well – entered the US market earlier this year through Neiman Marcus. There’s also Kailo Skin, which comprises a crème and cleanser product. And plans for an additional Brisbane space called Kailo Well, devoted entirely to longevity offerings, is in the pipeline.
The demand is there: the pair estimate they’re seeing about 1200 clients a month, “but from October to January the numbers double, with our treatment rooms booked from eight in the morning until eight at night”, says Morris. “Clients are more educated than ever before and seeking more tailored options.”
To satisfy this demand, Merlo and Morris have just announced the 2025 Kailo summit, a four-day wellness event from May 1, 2025 that will cater to up to 1000 attendees at The Star, Queens Wharf, Brisbane. The summit will include panel discussions, a Live Boldly brunch curated by Goop for 100 guests on May 2, and a two-day Rest and Reset retreat (May 3-4) for 30 people at The Calile Hotel.
For wellness nuts, Goop needs little introduction, thanks to its famous founder, actor Gwyneth Paltrow. The brand, which is in its 16th year, now encompasses a publishing and production arm (including a Netflix series, and a podcast that’s approaching its 500th episode); beauty and fashion brands (Goop Beauty and G.Label); a wellness and vitamin supplement shop; five bricks-and-mortar retail stores plus clean eating-focused takeaway chain Goop Kitchen; and In Goop Health – its in-person and at-home virtual summits.
“We’re inspired by what their team does,” says Merlo, adding the Hollywood star won’t attend, but her editorial team will. “We like that nothing is off limits.” It’s a philosophy that resonates with the pair. “Ten years ago, no one talked about sexual health and menopause, and Goop’s work in that space has made that mainstream. That’s why the brunch with them is titled Live Boldly. We want to be bold and ask the difficult questions.”
Hence why the Kailo summit has already signed up sexologist Chantelle Otten and her partner, Paralympic gold medallist and 2022 Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott; celebrity trainer Jay Cardiello; Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr Jane Caplan; reproductive gynaecologist and fertility expert Dr Devini Ameratunga, Human Design practitioner Krystal Woods and Spinal Energetics founder Dr Sarah Jane, to share their perspectives.
“We’ll also have readings with the renowned Melbourne psychic/clairvoyant David Stevens (David The Medium) whose live shows constantly sell out,” says Morris. “We’re empowering people to take control,” says Merlo. “The days of just going to a doctor and getting a script for something – that quick fix – is changing. Now it’s about taking greater control of our health.”
Tickets on sale now at kailo.com.au.
This story is from the August issue of WISH.
