OVERVIEW

Body Sync Group Pty Ltd (BSG) is a small privately-owned company based in Brisbane Australia with ten employees at time of writing.  BSG has five stand-alone businesses, with extremely diverse interests in retail, manufacturing, distribution, business services, IT, and media.

Incorporated in July 2006, the company was born of the internal restructure of three sole trader businesses, Body Sync, Angel Beach, and Keppel Net, to allow for future growth. 

A fourth business, Body Sync Wholesale developed from that restructure, and in November 2008, Irukandji VW became the fifth member of the BSG family.

STRUCTURE

The company is owned by Andrew Thompson, based in Brisbane and Gold Coast, Australia.  Before BSG, Andrew spent much of his adult life in the cut-throat tyre industry, in sales, marketing, and management, servicing clients in Australia and overseas. 

Having been the principal therapist at Body Sync from 2001 to 2007, his primary involvement in the Body Sync business nowadays is training new staff. 

Margaret Asker, Andrew's Executive Assistant, is based in Brisbane, and is the first point of contact for most people.  Her business involvement with Andrew dates back to the late 1990's when they worked together at Fairfax.

Margaret joined BSG in February 2008.  Her particular skills are in procedures and organising, and she is popular with staff and clients.  Margaret's appointment has freed up a great deal of time, and has enabled Andrew to focus on building the Angel Beach and Keppel Net businesses.

We keep the management team small and defined to maintain a family atmosphere for staff and clients, to keep expenses trim, and to provide a clear chain of accountability.

STRENGTHS

We consider ourselves cutting-edge and entrepreneurial, and are driven by success, not money.  While that approach has its risks, we are aware of them, and always stay focused on further developing our core strengths and identifying potential weaknesses before they arise.

Our competitors find us difficult to comprehend because we're not traditionalists and don't care much for glitz and glamour or conventional business thinking.  We believe that business should be fun and it should be different, and that staff should finish work each day feeling great. 

Our underlying credo is "Why churn out more of the same when you can create something that's never been done before?"

Another strength we've learned is to keep a tight hold on quality, through training, and perhaps more importantly, by resisting the common urge to outsource when a) we have the expertise to do it better ourselves, b) the cost savings are substantial, and c) it produces an opportunity to spawn a new business. 

New divisions are constantly emerging within BSG due to this habitual process of organic growth and expansion, and that diversity helps ensure future stability.  And harking back to fun, each new division presents us with another opportunity for artistic expression and reinvention of the industries in which we're involved.

It's never dull at BSG.

THE BUSINESSES

Body Sync began operations in Tarragindi, a south-side Brisbane suburb in 2001.  In 2003, it morphed from its Natural Therapies beginnings to Hair Removal. 

Other specialised beauty treatments have been added over the years, but hair removal remains the mainstay of the Body Sync brand. 

After several years of healthy growth, we opened a second Body Sync studio at Toowong in 2006, then Mt Gravatt and Brisbane CBD in 2007, and Clayfield and Labrador in 2008.  Tarragindi has been converted to Head Office and no longer has treatment rooms.

Despite requests, we've decided that franchising isn't in the best interests of the business, our clients, or intended franchisees at this point in time, and thus all stores to date remain company-owned.  We will look at franchising in Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, and Adelaide in 2009, and retain the other state capitals as company stores.

With 74 consecutive record months at time of writing, and consistently high sales growth each year, we believe that we've found the right balance between service, price, product, professionalism, and customer satisfaction.

While staying conscious of the global economy, we'll continue to expand throughout the rest of FY09, with a hopeful opening in ACT and Perth by mid 2009.  We plan to reclaim our place in the health and fitness arena in the third quarter of FY09.

Angel Beach took form in late 2002, from a need to source natural massage oils for Body Sync.  With a view to our businesses remaining as self-sufficient as possible, Angel Beach has continued on as a small scale manufacturer of specialty skin care products. 

Nowadays, Angel Beach produces several products including the popular Melaleuca range.  With very little marketing, it has also become a favoured staple of therapists, who are looking for mid-priced naturally derived products free of the usual chemical nasties.

Angel Beach's manufacturing facility will move to Southport on the Gold Coast in late 2008, and we will focus on launching Angel Beach "officially" as a stand alone business in 2009.  The range is presently marketed in Australia and the US by BSG's trade division, Body Sync Wholesale.

Angel Beach is also the name of our mobile massage division which services the Brisbane CBD. 

We will look at promoting the massage division on the Gold Coast during coming months, with a view to launching across Australia during the 2009 calendar year.

Keppel Net is undoubtedly the most important business in the group.  The greater company would survive without its interests in health and beauty, but not without its business services division. 

While largely neglected as a separate entity due to Body Sync's rapid expansion, Keppel Net has been actively involved in designing corporate identities and strategies since the early 1990s.

Keppel Net handles 100% of BSG's marketing, IT, and business planning, and aggressively flies in the face of tradition.  It has quickly gained a reputation for "building better businesses", as its slogan proclaims.

Today, Keppel Net has a twofold role, as a separate business working with clients outside the company, and as the internal business mechanism for BSG.  Keppel Net has recently expanded its capabilities with the acquisition of the latest digital sign writing equipment.

With that acquisition, we can now build new businesses from start to finish - from a fledgling concept drawn on a napkin over coffee, to the grand opening - without any need to outsource whatsoever.  We believe that this combination of services is an Australian first.

The Keppel Net business will be relocated to Gold Coast from January 2009, bringing it under the same roof as Irukandji VW, while our servers and software remain at BSG Head Office.

With the integration of Irukandji VW's technologies and real-time media options, Keppel Net's versatility, presence, and capabilities will be enhanced beyond anything we've yet imagined.

Irukandji VW ("VW" is tech-speak for "Virtual Worlds") is the newest member of the BSG family, having been born from a hobby with the release of private simulators on the Second Life VW platform in early 2007. 

After eighteen months, while watching thousands of other simulators go broke, Irukandji VW survived through constant reinvention, most notably by changing to a USD pricing model to attract US clients, until finally in the midst of the world economic crisis, it turned around and made a profit.

The devalued AU$ was an unforeseen bonus to Irukandji VW in October 2008, when it debuted in BSG, generating 12% of our total revenue, and 15% of our net profit. 

The infrastructure and marketing advantages that Irukandji VW will bring to BSG will be enormous, from media production and walk-through interactive stores, to 3D modelling, architecture, and mock up constructions of real world products and buildings. 

All of that without even touching on the implications of marketing real world products and services to an in-world population exceeding 20 million people globally. 

In eighteen months, "The Kingdom of Irukandji" or just "Iru" as its known to locals, has grown to 22 simulators, making it the largest Australian-owned VW on the planet - 3 times the size of ABC and Telstra combined.

Its residential and role-play arm, Xay Tomsen Estates (XTE), takes up 98% of the Irukandji landmass and has 240 paying tenants from 56 countries.  By happy design, XTE lays claim to being the largest gay and lesbian residential estate on the entire Second Life grid, and is widely referred to as the gay continent.

In late 2008, it was decided to open an in-world store for  Body Sync to test its appeal to traditional internet users, just as Toyota, Telstra, and other multi-nationals were doing.

While the concept of in-world stores is in its infancy, we've had an impressive response to the store and have begun receiving requests to build a dedicated commercial district for other real world businesses to set up shop in Irukandji.

Some of Body Sync's real-world clients have even become residential tenants of the estate, creating yet another circular loop in BSG.

But most exciting for Irukandji VW, is that it integrates seamlessly with Keppel Net, providing a great deal of in-world photography and animations for Keppel Net's marketing campaigns.  It also provides sandbox space to construct 3D virtual projects to show their clients mock-ups of the finished job that they can actually walk through, from any computer with internet access. 

Irukandji VW also uses out-of-world 3D technologies such as Maya and Poser to enhance its visual media, and has its own AV mixing and recording software - Yes, developed by Keppel Net.  :)

On the absolute cutting edge of digital technology - coupled with Keppel Net's commercial infrastructure and BSG's high profile in the lucrative gay and lesbian market, Irukandji VW is destined to play an enormous part in BSG's future.

CONTACT US

Mail:
Body Sync Group Pty Ltd
PO Box 3170
TARRAGINDI 4121 QLD
Australia

Phone:
Body Sync: 07 3342 4424
Keppel Net: 0422 276 202
Irukandji VW: +61 7 3847 4297

Email:
info@keppelnet.com.au