Where the advice comes from.

Selected work across Australian brands heading into Asia and enterprises and founders building in ANZ.

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Brands that made the move into Asia

Aesop into China: building the platform before the brand moved in.

When Aesop decided to enter mainland China, the challenge was not brand strength — it was platform fit. A premium, design-led Australian beauty brand entering China via Tmall Global needed a launch strategy that protected its identity while translating its proposition for a different consumer culture.

I led the Tmall Global launch in 2018: channel strategy, platform positioning, and the operational build to get a premium brand live and credible on Alibaba's cross-border marketplace.

The brand connected. The Tmall Global flagship grew past 700,000 followers. Aesop became a reference point for how a values-led Western brand could succeed in China without compromising what made it distinctive. In 2023, L'Oréal acquired Aesop in one of the largest beauty transactions of the year.

Most market-entry failures are not about the product. They are about the decisions underneath it — channel, partner, positioning, and whether the economics still work when the excitement wears off. That is the work I do.

"The opportunity is rarely the hard part. Everything underneath it is."

Treasury Wine Estates and Penfolds: building a China presence that outlasts a market cycle.

Treasury Wine Estates had one of Australia's most internationally recognised wine brands in Penfolds. The China opportunity was significant — but the path from ANZ-based producer to credible, discoverable presence on Alibaba's platforms required more than a listing. The commercial structure, category architecture, and platform positioning all had to be right.

I worked with Treasury Wine Estates on their Tmall Global and broader Alibaba ecosystem strategy, supporting the expansion of their portfolio — including the Penfolds flagship and international labels they distributed, including Baron Philippe de Rothschild's Mouton from France. The work covered channel strategy, platform positioning, and how to build brand architecture across Alibaba's ecosystem that served both the premium tier and the broader portfolio.

Australian wine in China faced severe trade disruption from 2020. The brands that had built real platform infrastructure and genuine consumer recognition during the growth window were best positioned when the market reopened. China's anti-dumping tariffs on Australian wine were lifted in March 2024. The brands that had done the foundational work were ready.

A market cycle can interrupt a business. It cannot undo well-built brand infrastructure. That distinction matters when you are deciding whether to commit capital to a China move.

Health, nutrition and pharmacy: making FMCG work in cross-border e-commerce.

Cross-border e-commerce for FMCG is a different problem from luxury or lifestyle. Volume, compliance, pricing, and supply chain reliability matter as much as brand. A premium price point that makes sense in duty-free can collapse once the full landed-cost picture is visible.

I managed key-account relationships with Chemist Warehouse, A2, and Fonterra across Alibaba's ANZ business — working across Tmall Global strategy, promotional planning, and the commercial mechanics of maintaining a profitable presence in a competitive category.

Health and nutrition was one of the clearest and most durable demand signals from Chinese consumers on Alibaba's platforms. Several of Australia's most trusted brands in this category were already household names in China before they had a coherent cross-border strategy. The work was about matching commercial structure to that demand — the right category positioning, the right promotional calendar, and the right expectations about what the platform could and could not do for a brand at scale.

The brands that treated cross-border as a distribution channel rather than a strategic market invariably hit problems. The ones that invested in the commercial fundamentals — pricing integrity, content quality, customer experience — built something durable.

International companies and founders building in Australia

NAB Asian Ambassador Program: building the commercial bridge Australian banks weren't designed to provide.

Most Australian banks were not built to serve a business moving capital across borders, establishing an entity in a new market, or navigating the gap between Chinese and Australian commercial and regulatory environments. The product existed. The relationship intelligence often didn't.

At NAB, I led the Asian Ambassador Program for the Business Banking division — a national strategy role responsible for building NAB's commercial capability for Asian businesses operating in Australia and Australian businesses engaging with Asian markets. The program carried dotted accountability across 74 bankers and specialists, with a combined lending book across that network of approximately $3 billion.

The practical work was about fit, not product. What does this particular business actually need? Where are the gaps between what they need and what standard bank processes can deliver? How do you build an internal capability that can serve a business owner from Shanghai or Hong Kong as well as it serves one from Melbourne?

That diagnostic discipline — understanding the real problem before proposing anything — came from consulting. It stayed with me through banking and into everything since. The businesses that came through the program were not looking for a brochure. They were looking for someone who understood their situation well enough to tell them what would actually work.

Building Alipay's ANZ infrastructure from the inside.

When a major Chinese financial institution operates in Australia, the foundational questions are not about product or marketing. They are about AUSTRAC compliance, banking relationships, payment infrastructure, and whether the regulatory posture is right before the commercial build begins. Getting those wrong is expensive. Getting them right creates the platform for everything else.

As Country Manager ANZ for Ant International, I held full P&L ownership for that infrastructure — not advising on it from the outside, but building it from the inside.

That meant establishing AUSTRAC-compliant operating structures, building working partnerships with Australia's major payment acquirers, and developing the enterprise merchant network across retail, tourism, and services that would make Alipay genuinely useful in-market — not just technically accepted. I migrated all 24 acquirers across Australia and New Zealand onto the Alipay+ platform, providing the foundation for multi-wallet acceptance and commercial expansion.

When market conditions shifted — weaker Chinese tourist volumes, post-COVID behaviour changes, exchange-rate headwinds — I rebuilt the growth model. The focus moved from legacy tourist and luxury spend toward high-relevance everyday verticals: supermarkets, pharmacies, electronics, education, student and migrant services. Category growth in that rebuild period included food and beverage up nearly 30%, electronics up nearly 50%, and education and services both growing significantly year on year.

The Chinese enterprises I now advise face versions of the same foundational questions at a different scale. The regulatory structure, the banking relationship, the right commercial partners, and the right category to start in. I know those decisions because I made them with real capital and real accountability.

The ANZ Asia Pacific Desk: what cross-border trust actually requires.

At ANZ Bank's Asia Pacific Desk, I worked on cross-border corporate and commercial banking between Australia, China, and ASEAN — transactions and relationships that involved Australian businesses moving into Asian markets and Asian businesses establishing a commercial footprint in Australia.

The desk was not a product function. It was a relationship and advisory role inside a major institution, where the value was in knowing enough about both sides to help a client navigate something genuinely complex: different legal structures, different regulatory environments, different commercial norms, and the trust deficit that every significant cross-border transaction carries in its early stages.

What I learned at that desk — and have not unlearned since — is that the technical barriers to cross-border business are almost never the real problem. The real problem is almost always confidence: does this counterparty understand me? Do they know how things work here? Can I trust this relationship when something goes wrong?

That question is still what I spend most of my time on. I'm not inside an institution now, which means I have no competing commercial interest in the outcome. I can tell you what I actually think.