By CASEY NEILL
A PAKENHAM business is helping local manufacturers take on the world – and is among finalists for two Casey Cardinia Business Awards.
MetamorphCG is up for the Business and Professional Services Business of the Year title alongside Hampton Park business Jotterbug Creative and Berwick’s Successful Endeavours.
MetamorphCG was also announced as a finalist in the New Business of the Year category at an event at Monash University’s Berwick campus on 10 August.
Jotterbug and Successful Endeavours also appeared in second categories – Home Based Business of the Year and Manufacturer of the Year respectively.
The winners will be announced at a gala dinner a Cranbourne Racing Centre on 22 October.
MetamorphCG founder and CEO Simon Maselli was working in Singapore when his parents became ill and he moved home to “start something for myself”.
He tells businesses how to manufacture their products better, cheaper and faster, and helps them to negate other factors holding them back.
“We want to see Australians and Australian businesses be at that top end of whatever they’re doing,” Mr Maselli said.
“The way we do that is by providing those higher-end engineering services and those higher-end consulting services where we can help them be more efficient.
“Our plan is to open an interstate office in the next two to three years, and by 2020 we’re planning to have an international office somewhere.”
Jotterbug Creative’s Natalie Bourke completed an honours degree in graphic design and illustration then moved from the sticks to the big smoke.
She joined a greeting card company in Melbourne and when she wasn’t creating cards, gift-wrap and calendars, she freelanced and explored the more corporate side of the design world.
Ms Bourke created identity and branding for local and national businesses and in early 2010 started Jotterbug Creative.
She describes the business as a small Mac studio with a big heart offering a professional communication service with a hint of fun.
“If you don’t like personalised treatment, face-to-face contact or complete service from concept through to finished product, then you had better look elsewhere,” she said on her website.
Managing director Ray Keefe started Successful Endeavours as a home office business in 1997.
“By 2005 I realised I didn’t know how to make this thing grow,” he said.
Mr Keefe went looking for a business mentor and tracked down the right one in 2008.
He rebranded the business, repositioned it in the market and moved out of home into commercial premises.
“Four months after that we won Casey Business of the Year,” he said.
The Berwick small business has since collected several award nominations and wins.
