Good partnerships start with knowing what the other side needs.
Nearly four years at MECCA taught me to find out what someone is actually trying to achieve before I recommend anything. Building VESSEL put the same habit to work on a manufacturer, channel partners and a commercial model — with strangers, in another country, with real money at stake.
AI-generated concept render
The same method, whether it's a client, a supplier or a channel partner.
The first conversation is mostly listening. What someone asks for and what they actually need are rarely the same thing, and a proposal built on the first usually fails on the second.
Then it's commercial. What does each side get, what does it cost them, and what would make them walk away? If I can't answer the last question, I'm not ready to propose anything.
Nearly four years of one-to-one relationships, built on trust rather than pressure.
MECCA, client-facing, since October 2022. Repeated contact with thousands of people teaches you how to ask a question that gets an honest answer, and how to earn enough trust in a few minutes for a recommendation to land.
One customer came back after her appointment with flowers. Jo Horgan printed an A3 photo of me holding them and read the whole story out to the office at MECCA HQ as an example of what the team on the floor was doing. I'm including it because it's the clearest evidence I have that the care was noticed by someone other than me.
The relationships and outcomes are real. The job title was not account manager.
Building a supplier relationship from a cold start, in another country.
No manufacturing contacts and no introductions. VESSEL needed a factory that could build to a millimetre and would tell me when something couldn't be done.
VESSEL
PRE-LAUNCHA travel skincare system built around the routine people already trust.
VESSEL is a hanging travel case for skincare. The idea is simple: instead of forcing a routine into three identical plastic bottles, it keeps each product in the format it's meant to be used in. A pump stays a pump. A dropper stays a dropper. There's a jar for moisturiser, a tube for SPF or a treatment, and an atomiser for fragrance, plus the decanting tools to fill them without making a mess of a bathroom bench.
It's for people who travel often enough that their skin notices when the routine breaks, and who have quietly given up on the travel section of the chemist. I started it because I watched two customers hit the same wall eight minutes apart, and then went looking to see whether it was a pattern.
“Flag honestly. A manufacturer who raises real questions is more valuable than one who agrees to everything without scrutiny.”
From the screening document. Written in plain language for a second-language reader, numbered, warm in tone. It exists partly to select for a supplier who will push back.
When the first sample came back partly wrong.
Parts of the sample had been manufactured outside specification. Pocket dimensions were off and some of the test containers didn't fit. Physical testing also showed things a document couldn't.
I measured every dimension against the specification before writing to the manufacturer, documented each deviation with photos, then changed how I communicated tolerances — separating the dimensions that decide whether the product works from those where the factory could have more room.
The point wasn't fault. It was making the next sample easier to get right, with a manufacturer worth keeping.
Choosing partners is partly choosing who not to partner with.
Before VESSEL sells anything, I mapped which channel partners would actually want it, and in what order.
Luggage brands
Same customer, no channel conflict. Someone buying premium luggage is exactly who VESSEL is for, and VESSEL sells nothing the luggage brand sells.
Boutique wholesale
Smaller stockists can say yes without a sales history. That builds the sell-through data larger buyers ask for.
MECCA and beauty retailers
Buyers want 6–12 months of direct sell-through data first. And VESSEL's refill model competes with their travel-size range, so a co-branded collaboration would ask them to undercut their own revenue.
The question I ask of any partner: what do they get, and does anything we do cost them? If the second answer is yes, the partnership needs a different shape or a different partner.
Planned channel strategy for a pre-launch product. No wholesale or partnership agreements are in place.
Building the commercial model, then correcting it.
The estimate I got wrong, twice.
My first landed-cost estimate, around $28 a unit, missed what actually ships in the box: tooling, the funnel, the spatula and the mirror. The revised figure didn't reconcile with its own line items. So I rebuilt the model as a conditional range, with every assumption that still needs a supplier quote marked as such. The failed estimates stay on record rather than being tidied away.
Any model that returns a better margin than my hand estimate is treated as an input error until every line has been re-checked.
$129 with add-ons modelled better on margin. I chose $149 complete.
Selling the containers separately would have put VESSEL where four cheaper competitors already sit. At $149 with nothing sold separately, the system claim survives contact with the product page.
Planning figures. VESSEL has not launched and has no customer sales.
Planning a launch so the results can actually be judged.
Targets set before anything runs, a way to read the signal, and one change at a time. The same approach works for a joint campaign or a referral programme.
Content pillars
| Pillar | Objective | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Problem and identity | Make the viewer recognise themselves | Save rate |
| System explanation | Make the architecture legible in twenty seconds | Replays and completion |
| Build in public | Earn trust before there is a product | Comment depth, not volume |
| Before and after | Show the behaviour change, not the object | Shares and direct messages |
Reading the signal
| Signal | What it means | What I'd change |
|---|---|---|
| Views, no saves | The hook isn't creating identification | Lead with the customer's behaviour, not the product |
| Saves, no comments | Understood but not felt | Add the cost of the problem, in dollars or a lost object |
| Comments, no clicks | Entertainment without intent | Name the product mechanism inside the video |
| Clicks, no conversion | The page isn't finishing the argument | Move the proof above the fold |
Targets
No campaign has run. Every figure is a target set in advance, not a result.
| Metric | Target | Observed |
|---|---|---|
| Waitlist to purchase | 12% | Not yet observed |
| Email open rate | 45% on send one | Not yet observed |
| Content save rate | above 8% on pillar one | Not yet observed |
| Blended CAC | Ceiling $55, modelled | Not yet observed |
Ninety days, three gates.
- Waitlist above target before any production commitment
- Hook language tested before the landing page is written
- Sample passes every quality gate before anyone is paid
- Container fit confirmed on the production jar, not a proxy
- Waitlist-to-purchase target of 12%
- Feedback specific enough to change V2
Testing with a small audience before spending anything. When I put the hygiene pouch concept back to the same group, 83% said it was worth including.
Directional response from a small, self-selected group — not validation of demand. The pouch is designed, not manufactured.
Before VESSEL, I wrote social, email and web copy for a careers-coaching business inside its existing brand voice, and kept a recurring content calendar running around what the audience actually responded to.
Same instinct, different problem.
Three prototypes I built to find out whether something I'd noticed was worth pursuing. None has been validated with users.
SOURCE IT
PROTOTYPECan a retail product be traced to its actual maker, or only to something that looks like it? SOURCE IT searches live web and marketplace sources and keeps lookalikes, supplier claims and supported connections apart. It's the same discipline as checking a partner's claims before relying on them. Tested in bounded live cases; no original manufacturer has been verified.
Relay
PROTOTYPEUseful conversations disappear an hour after they end. Relay transcribes a recorded conversation and turns it into the output you actually need — decisions, actions, follow-ups — with a review step before anything is kept.
OFFLINE
PROTOTYPEDating apps are good at producing matches and bad at producing actual meetings. Most matches never leave the phone.
So the prototype only works when you're already out: check in to a venue, become visible for that window, opt in on both sides before anyone can talk, and keep the chat short enough that the only place left to go is across the room.
AI speeds up the research and the business case. It doesn't make the call.
It means I can read more, model more and build more on my own. It doesn't tell me whether the answer is right, so I check.
What I'm after.
I'm 25, based in Sydney, and I deferred university to build VESSEL because I wanted to find out whether I could do the thing rather than read about people who had.
The work I want sits close to people and close to the commercial side — partnerships, business development, go-to-market. Early-stage environments where someone has to go and find out what a partner needs, then build the arrangement around it.
I'd rather be told early that I'm wrong than be persuasive about it later.
If that's the kind of person you need, get in touch.
Open to partnerships, business development and go-to-market roles. Sydney-based.