The Geelong business lighting up globally

In just four short years, Custom Neon went from a side-hustle to a $16-million international business working with the likes of Paris Hilton, Elon Musk, the Kardashians, Facebook and Google.

Custom Neon’s founders and owners are down-to-earth local Geelong couple Jess and Jake Munday who came across the million-dollar idea while decorating their first son’s nursery.

“Jake was doing his own online business already, and I have a background in HR and recruitment, and I was working full time in that space,” Jess said.

“I got pregnant and was about to head into maternity leave, and we were at the point where we were looking for things for our son’s nursery and we wanted to get a neon sign.

“We found the process quite difficult, to find a neon sign that was easy to purchase and easy to design. So it gave us the idea ‘is this something that we could start up as a little side hustle while I was on maternity leave?’.”

So, Jess and Jake designed their first neon sign and decided to combine their business skills to see where it would take them.

“We loved it that much that I convinced Jess to buy another eight for our wedding,” Jake said.

“And we were going to use the content from that wedding and set up an Instagram account to sell them or hire them out.

“Fast-forward four years now and we’ve gone from a garage start-up business to a $16 million business that is international. Our base is here in Geelong, we’ve got teams in London and in the US.

“We do neon signs for business, hospitality, restaurants, events, beauty salons.”

Custom Neon now runs as an e-comm business, meaning customers use an online design tool to custom-make their neon signs.

Today, Jake works as the Custom Neon chief executive officer and Jess is the business’s people and culture manager.

“[Customers] can literally create their own neon from scratch – choose the size, colour, font, which was something that when we originally trying to purchase a neon sign originally you couldn’t do. You just had to wait to get a quote back, it was just a really long-winded process,” Jess said.

“Our customers can literally design a sign online, add to cart and then it gets delivered to their door.”

“Or if a customer wants something that’s a little bit more unique, like a business logo, they can submit a form on our website and we have teams of neon designers and essentially they work one-on-one with our customers to create and design a neon sign from scratch. All of our signs are completely custom made and we have a split between business customers and consumers, purchasing for personal use or for events or things like that.

“Every sign is 100-per-cent custom made and we do all ends of the spectrum in terms of neon signs.”

Custom Neon helped design signs for Paris Hilton’s wedding, as well as for Elon Musk, Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner.

“It’s been a huge learning curve for both of us, starting the business ourselves from one employee to now more than 30 employees. And one thing that has helped us is our local network of advisors around, business coaches and accountants that really helped grow us as leaders as well,” Jake said.

“The really cool thing about Paris Hilton was she was actually [direct messaging] us with voice memos.

“Our marketing manager Amelia was the one having to reply with her with voice DMs so that was a little bit nerve-racking for her but it was cool to essentially be chatting to Paris Hilton like that and working on her wedding.”

Jess said the company has had such huge success through their combined use of social media, and online marketing through focusing on search engine optimisation.

“Our strategy and focus is to appear on the first page of Google searches for neon signs and we are leading in that space.”

“And we also have a social media strategy, so getting the brand and product out there by social media content.”

They’ve also worked with Facebook and Google, and most recently with the team at ITV and Channel 9 on the neon signs used on Love Island Australia, airing now.

“It’s pretty exciting for us, even though we are in the US and UK, we’re still a local business and we’ve managed to partner with Love Island, so made all the Neons for the latest Love Island Australia season so that’s being aired at the moment, so all of our signs are on the villa and on TV.”

“For us getting that level of partnership has been a great experience, working with ITV and Channel 9 is something that our whole team has been involved in and we’re really excited for that.”

Looking to the future, Jess and Jake said more than any business goal, they were personally looking forward to life with family as their primary focus.

“The business we’re still growing, we believe we can double the business over a two-to-five-year period. That’s the goal for the business to continue to grow as steadily as possible, keeping the same profit levels,” Jake said.

“But my personal highlight has been being able to grow the business and also have a family. We’ve got two kids; one almost five and one two-and-a-half.

“And we actually have another little one on the way.

“So personally, I think that we’ve been able to create a successful business but also put the right structures in place to make sure that we have good family time and make sure that we have that as a priority in our lives.”

The couple said they had worked hard to create the work-life balance they have now, and it was not something they will ever take for granted.

“For a long time, we weren’t able to do that sort of thing, we were working every night. As the business grew we were able to get more people on board and add new things into our structure, which in turn helped us be able to step away from some of the day and get that balance back.” Jess said.

“For us the most important thing is making sure family is number one and making sure we can enjoy what we’ve created for ourselves and making sure we keep a good work-life balance,” Jake added.

To find out more or design your own neon sign, head to customneon.com.au .