‘We could do a better job’: The father-son duo taking on Koala

Under Daniel’s direction, the product offering was streamlined: a range of 10 bed bases was reduced to two. The elder Ibbitson found a way to pack all the parts into one box. Daniel got to work creating a website, taking the bricks-and-mortar company online for the first time.

“[We got a] huge response straight away,” Daniel says. “We couldn’t believe how many beds we were making, so we had to quickly hire more people.”

The brand got a makeover: Quokka Beds is less wordy and much simpler than Brett’s Beds + Futons. It is also a small nod to its better-known mattress competitor, Koala. “We definitely took inspiration as a little cheeky play on them as well,” says Daniel.

The pandemic helped to accelerate Quokka’s momentum. People were spending much more time at home, with online sales for furniture ballooning during that period. Quokka Beds raked in nearly $2.3 million in revenue for the 2022 financial year, compared to $380,000 in 2019.

They can back up their claims of being loved by customers, too: Quokka Beds’ timber base has been the winner of ProductReview.com.au’s annual awards in the bed category two years in a row.

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According to the Ibbitsons, Quokka’s biggest point of difference is that the beds are entirely Australian-made. Where Koala received some backlash for its 2020 decision to move its manufacturing to China, Quokka’s bed bases are made with sustainable timber from certified Australian plantations and then hand-built in Perth.

Brett observes that furniture manufacturing has declined significantly in the last two decades. “We can make it here. Even though our costs are higher, we can still compete with these imported products,” he says.

The father-son duo want to prove they can operate like a start-up, while rejecting ‘fast furniture’ in a commitment to quality. “There’s pretty much nothing out there made in Australia from solid timber – that’s definitely a big gap in the market we entered there,” Daniel says.

Meanwhile, their mattresses are made from organic Sri Lankan latex. “We need to find the best product, and that’s where it is,” says Daniel. Only four companies in the world supply organic latex, and three of those suppliers are in Sri Lanka. Its production is considered carbon negative, Brett adds.

The pair is still trying to keep up with demand. The Ibbitsons have started an equity crowdfunding initiative on the crowdfunding platform Birchal to move into a factory twice the size of their current facility and hire more people, though they acknowledge the labour market is particularly tight.

They also plan to increase their marketing spend. Despite the younger Ibbitson’s digital marketing prowess, they say most of their growth has been the old-fashioned way.

“The product kind of sold itself,” Daniel says. In the last three or four years, they have only spent about 1 or 2 per cent of their revenue on marketing. “Word of mouth, more or less,” Brett adds.

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