Wow, so this year marks the 10th anniversary of Bigwig Jerky Co.

Did I think it would ever get this far? Not at all.

To be honest, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t really have a plan.. but I had an idea, and a passion to make it happen.

I often get asked why I started the business, so seems like a good time to spin a few yarns.

Taking a step back 10 years ago, I was heavily involved in setting up other companies for success online, launching one site after another, seeing their success and wanting my own piece of the pie. I wanted something physical, something tangible that I could hold and call it my own. Something I could share with people and most importantly have fun marketing. It was to be my little experiment, testing my skills in design, development, digital marketing, and SEO, but what I wasn’t ready for was all the other skills I would have to quickly learn along the way.

The birth of Bigwig

Coming up with the brand and doing the digital side of things was the easy part, then came the actual product development. Sure, I had dabbled with making jerky at home like most middle-aged men on a weekend, but I had no idea the process involved in going commercial. Food licensing, equipment, commercial kitchen space, packaging, recipes, ingredients, it wasn’t a walk in the park and took approx. a year before Bigwig Jerky was renting a café kitchen after hours and selling it’s first packs of jerky.

From renting a kitchen in the back of a nightclub in Brisbane, to having our own production facility several years later, the business was doubling in revenue year on year. This was no longer a small side hustle. The learning curve was steep, the business was growing quickly, what started as an online only business quickly grew into a wholesale food production business and with that came all the complexities of stock management, food safety, ordering and logistics, a whole new skillset to adopt (I’m just a web designer remember)

I have no doubt that utilising my skills in SEO and Digital Marketing enabled the business to succeed online very quickly and gave Bigwig a competitive edge on other brands that were yet to digitalise their offerings. The website ranked number 1 in Google for core “beef jerky” searches very quickly and with that was a steady stream of online sales with healthy profit margins. Being very passionate about the brand, I was always taking advantage of opportunities to promote the brand at BBQ Festivals, Beer Events and the local markets. I definitely recommend undertaking opportunities such as these for anyone launching their own brand, it’s great to present your product in person to your audience and get firsthand feedback.

Where to from here?

Whilst online sales are steady, there are constantly new players emerging all wanting a piece of the meat snack market. Without a good database of loyal customers or organic web traffic, it can be expensive to gain traction with online ads, and this is evident when new brands will throw a chunk of cash as ads, then disappear. Purely running paid ads to generate sales can be a costly exercise where significant ROIs won’t be achieved for quite some time. In saying that, we will continue to increase our online marketing efforts via paid and organic SEO practices. Our focus will however shift to the wholesale market in an effort to increase our monthly volume of jerky sold.

Personally, I would love to see our brand in as many convenience stores, bottle shops, butchers and bars across Australia as possible. With production taken care of, the ability to scale our volume is now more achievable than ever, so the timing seems right. It’s a great brand with quality products and I am looking forward to the challenges that lay ahead with securing increased national distribution.

Thank you to all those that have supported Bigwig Jerky on our adventure, it’s been fun and it’s not over yet! We are just getting started.

Keep an eye out from some birthday promotions this month!!