1. Flow Hive co-inventor Cedar Anderson (left) with Ty Hermans, managing director of Flow’s Brisbane-based manufacturing partner Evolve Group. Photo:
Robert Shakespeare.
When Cedar Anderson and his dad Stuart invented the Flow Hive, which lets beekeepers harvest honey by turning on
a tap, they assumed they would have to manufacture in China.
Instead, the bulk of the manufacturing and fulfilment – for 25,000 customers and counting around the world – is
based in Brisbane.
The Byron Bay-based duo made headlines earlier this year when they raised $US12.5 million ($17.8 million) on
crowdfunding site Indiegogo (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow-hive-honey-on-tap-directly-from-your-
beehive)after setting a target of $US70,000, mostly from people keen to get their hands on a Flow Hive and try it for
themselves.
The crowdfunding came after years of product development and patent applications, but it was just the start of the
business journey: they now had 20,000 orders from 148 countries for Flow Hives but no manufacturing or delivery
facility.
Cedar Anderson says he and his dad started with a “blatant assumption” that manufacturing would have to happen in
China and were delighted they had the opportunity to do it locally instead.
“We’d just assumed China would be the place and we did some prototyping there, but when it came time to step up the
actual production, we started to look around a bit more,” Anderson says.
“We got quotes from Australia, quotes from China, quotes from America, and we realised that Australia can be quite
competitive on a worldwide scale. That tickled us pink; how fantastic that we can get out there and have an
Australian-made product and support Australian manufacturing and more jobs in Australia.”
The Andersons partnered with the Evolve Group in Brisbane, which made the BRW 50 Most Innovative Companies
list in 2014 (http://www.brw.com.au/lists/50-most-innovative-companies/2014/). Evolve is manufacturing the
frames, which are made from food-grade plastic, and providing logistics and delivery support. Flow has taken another
5000 orders through its own website (http://www.honeyflow.com/) since the crowdfunding campaign and hopes to
have fulfilled them all by the end of the year, though the official deadline is March.
How the inventors of Flow Hive coped with a
blockbuster crowdfunding project and kept
manufacturing in Australia
Published 02 October 2015 16:14, Updated 05 October 2015 14:19

2. Evolve managing director Ty Hermans says the idea that manufacturing in Australia was dead was a harmful
misconception. He believes smart manufacturing that is closely integrated with product design is a key to unlocking
innovation in Australia.
“It’s good to see with the Turnbull government that the word ‘innovation’ is mentioned in every speech now,”
Hermans says. “It’s something we need to work on in Australia because we’ve got some fantastic ideas sitting on the
cutting room floor because there is no easily definable pathway or someone there to help bring these ideas through to
a commercialised product.”
HEGs, the pegs with hooks that appeared on Channel 10’s Shark Tank in March, are another example of the trend
back to Australian-made (http://www.brw.com.au/p/entrepreneurs
/shark_innovative_business_china_WsweEyxx6MtsDVE7vNyjCM). HEGs inventor Scott Boocock initially
outsourced manufacturing to China, but found it surprisingly expensive and has since moved manufacturing to
Adelaide.
The Andersons’ original plan was to use local manufacturing in each market for the wooden part of the hive to save the
cost and environmental impact of shipping, but they found a source of certified sustainable western red cedar in the
United States, a lightweight wood that lasts longer than standard pine, and all their customers started asking for that.
Rather than give their US customers a better product than everyone else, they decided to wear the cost of shipping it
back to Australia.
The complete Flow Hive made from western red cedar is $US699 ($993) and Cedar Anderson says there would be a
profit margin as long as everything went to plan.
The Andersons are a beekeeping family dating back to Cedar’s grandfather, who bankrolled the patent application
process. Cedar and Stuart Anderson had spent years trying to create a hive system that would be less time-consuming
and difficult for the beekeeper and less disturbing for the bees themselves.
Unexpected challenges
While Cedar Anderson sold some honey locally, his day job was as a paraglider instructor and he also did paragliding
jobs for Greenpeace to film illegal logging and burning activity in Indonesia. Honey production netted him about $5
an hour as a side business but he did it mostly for the love of it because he had grown up with bees.
Initially he planned to do the crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, a site he had admired for years, but he moved at
the eleventh hour when Indiegogo approached him and offered better terms, including a 24/7 support person and the
ability to fund in US dollars. By the time Kickstarter replied to Cedar’s email four days later, Flow Hive had already
made the switch and had $US5 million in pledges.
He set the funding target at $US70,000 but, based on the number of people who viewed the video, hoped he might
crack the $US1 million mark. The actual result far exceeded expectations, and it has come with challenges as much as
opportunity.
“I knew we’d be busy trying to manufacture and deliver hives, but there were lots of things we didn’t expect and one
was that we’d be getting a thousand emails a day for months on end,” Mr Anderson said. “In the end these are our
amazing customers [who] jumped in early to support our invention, so for me it’s worthwhile to have a dozen people
working around the clock to make sure their questions are answered and they’re looked after.”
Some critics have questioned the use of plastic frames, but Cedar Anderson said plastic had been used in beekeeping
for decades. He only uses food-grade plastics that are BPA-free and while he is investigating other materials, such as
bio-plastics, generally the alternatives were either too heavy or would biodegrade inside the hive.
Hee added that the bees still have lots of room to make wax frames and don’t seem to mind the plastic ones.

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