The wedding industry’s a bloody profitable one. The average Australian, for example, can drop around $36K on their own wedding. But in the same way Baby Bunting‘s profits rely on the absence of Durex, the wedding industry rarely rakes it in without the proposal that comes before it. So who’s cashing in on that part, other than Michael Hill Jewellers?
THIS LADY.
26-year-old Samantha Davies has helped orchestrate over 400 (and counting) proposals for Aussie lovers since starting up her biz ‘Unforgettable Proposals‘ just under five years ago. During a time where a double tap means more than a smile from a stranger, we can’t be too surprised that the demand is high for the Gold Coast-based entrepreneur. We mean, if the moment’s not worthy of a share on social media, did it even happen? (Yes, the answer is yes, but we can understand why some would want all the bells and whistles for a proposal.)
PEDESTRIAN.TV travelled to the Goldy to watch one of Davies’ jobs go down for ourselves and yep, we’ve never felt so lonely in our lives.
Feeling inspired and all’a that? We got down to the nitty gritty business side with Davies, so keep reading on tips for starting up your own side hustle.
ON KICKING THINGS OFF
There’s never a right time, I feel like you’ve got to start. You’re going to learn throughout your journey. I’ve changed my brand and my strategy maybe four or five times. Where I am today is not where I was five years ago.I look back at some of the things I did then and it was a bit cringey but I also feel like I needed to just go – I had so much energy and I was so passionate about it that there was nothing that was going to hold me back.
I feel like if you’ve got an idea and you think it’s going to work – you’ve done a bit of testing and you’re solving a problem – give it a go. It’s not going to be perfect straight away but you’ll learn and you’ll grow and you’ll change things as you realise along the way.
ON COPPING HATE
All the time. When we first launched and I was getting a bit of press, just reading the comments of people being like, ‘I can’t believe she’s doing this to the romance industry’ or ‘I can’t believe there’s women who have this job and men who would pay for that service’.
That was a bit hard because I really believed what I was doing, was just helping – I wasn’t taking away from the romance from anyone. It’s these men that are in love and wanted to create a romantic event and I was just helping them. It was a little bit hard when people couldn’t see the importance of what you were doing.
ON PERFECTING YOUR BRAND
I personally think brand is everything. So really working out: what is your brand, who is your customer and sticking to that, and not trying to be something for everyone. When I first started out I wanted to take smaller jobs because I just wanted the work, then over time I realised this isn’t my customer and this isn’t my brand, so eventually we stopped taking those customers and now we just focus on is the customers we really want to deal with, and represent our luxury brand.
ON GETTING NOTICED
I made my own website and then was just paying a small amount towards Google Ad Words and then eventually, as the business started growing, I was putting more money back into the website, back into my SEO, I changed my website a few times making it more organic – I now employ an SEO team – so I’ve really got a strong presence online which is our main focus.
ON ALWAYS BEIN’ READY
We find guys like to book proposals two days before the event. So we’ll have a quiet weekend and all of a sudden Thursday rolls around and we’ll have five guys call and say, ‘What can you do for Saturday?’. So we don’t kinda of get that two-week planning – it’s a really quick turnaround for us. With proposals we can generally turn them around within 24-48 hours. But if they’re looking for something a little more elaborate we like to have four weeks just to make sure – if there’s any sort of props we need to make for them, book in any suppliers and things like that.
Meanwhile, you can find me on Tinder.
