October 17, 2023 • 13 mins
Have you ever wished you could turn your travel passion into a thriving enterprise? Well, buckle up as we navigate the highs and lows of building our ExplorOz Business. We share our humble beginnings, from documenting our travel experiences to setting up our early user interaction systems, and the exhilarating challenge of converting our passion into revenue. We take you through our journey of creating an e-commerce platform for essential travel gear and our efforts towards building a successful membership program. We also delve into the milestone of constructing EOTopo, our innovative Raster map set that redefined exploration and navigation.
Moving forward, we pull the curtain back on developing our indispensable Traveller app. We recount the brainstorming sessions, the process of transforming ideas into reality, and their significance in shaping the ExplorOz journey. This journey hasn't been a smooth ride, but with each bump, each success has been worth it, to bring a fantastic product to market and help others travel and explore Australia. Join us, as we unravel our tale of trials, triumphs, and the continuous evolution of our ExplorOz Business.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, welcome back to the next episode of our podcast
series, and Earlier we've beenin our first few series we
talked about, you know, gettingto the point where we started
the explorers business.
Now we want to go through a bitof the ins and outs of the
explorers business in the earlydays.
So you know, we originallywe're doing this travel and we
could see that there wasn't muchcontent available on the
(00:22):
internet of any description forthe kind of Journeys and trip
planning and information that weneeded to do.
You know the traveling that wewere doing, so we just winged it
using our experiences andWorking our way around,
obviously, the writing of all ofthat and basically the
documentation which was probablystarted out more about what
(00:42):
we're reading every day andwhere we were, as you said it
was kind of family focused andto our family and friends.
Evolving that into into abusiness obviously comes with
lots of challenges.
You know where's the revenue,how are you going to fund the,
the ongoing costs and marketingand the other bits and pieces.
As you said, early when westarted, you know, google didn't
(01:06):
exist.
All this stuff didn't reallyeven happen.
There was no advertisingplatforms, there was no
monetization systems available.
It was all very early on inthat whole scheme of things.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So we had no jobs.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
And we had no jobs and we had lots of cost.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I was.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I was well, I was still doing a bit of contracting
, I think, contracting back tocustomers that were still in
Sydney that would still botherto ask me questions.
So we were still had somerevenue coming in.
But how do you, how do youconvert that and how do we make
a business out of it?
I think very early on, you know, we store it we.
We started with publishing theuser interaction systems with
(01:43):
the forum and getting some greatinteractions with our user base
.
We had our Trek notes published, which was, you know, giving
information now to people abouthow to move around.
We quickly came along with therealization that we probably
needed some sort of e-commerceplatform.
So we created the shop systemand in the shop system over the
years the shop evolved and grewand shrink and expanded as we
(02:09):
move forward.
We started out pretty much withmaps and books and permits the
maps and books, the things thatyou know everyone needed to
travel with.
Everyone needs a map andeveryone needed books, because
even our internet stuff couldn'tgo with you like it does today.
So we started with that systemand we were a very early
retailer in Australia forforward driving travel books and
(02:34):
we took on, you know, Heema,Westbrun and a whole load of
other brands and particularproducts at the time.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I was even audio books, do you remember?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
The Belinda Audio Books.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
They were a great idea because people would get
them on a cassette tape.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Oh no, they were CDs.
Were they CDs when we started?
Only just.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, but there were all those awesome stories but
there was also things startedcoming out.
You know Lemberdell's storiesand there was lots of really
interesting backstories aboutpioneers and historical figures,
that and then they really tookoff because people wanted
entertainment when they were intheir car.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
So over the years we had access to some great
products that we were able tosell.
We went to GPS's, we went toE-PURBS, we went to parks passes
with.
You know, the store was quite athing.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
There was 1500 products, I remember it was
about the largest, it was ourlargest line of items.
There was a lot of products.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
And we sold a fair bit enough to help support the
business.
Additionally, we created someadditional facilities with our
with a membership program whichwe added to the website to allow
some people to have higherlevel of access, controls and
more features within the app.
So you know, and also, well, thetracking didn't come till a bit
later, but we created amembership system and you know
(03:48):
around about that time.
We were also able to buy intothings like advertising
platforms from Telstra or Censusand things like that.
Early on in the day Googledidn't have it, it was all run
by Census and we were basicallybuying ads from them and at the
time it was good revenue becausethere wasn't a huge number of
people doing it.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, we got 40 CPM.
Oh yeah, we were getting.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
We were getting CPM rates that you could only dream
of.
Now it doesn't even exist, no.
But so we did reasonably wellout of some of those things and
they helped us to keep thebusiness running and developing
the business along over the nextfew years, adding blog systems,
more interaction tools, addingmore member services.
It became some.
(04:29):
It became a bit apparent downthe track that we needed to do
something with online maps.
You know we had things comingout like Google Maps were
appearing on the scene at thetime.
So digital mapping started tobecome a thing and one of the
things being in maps andbusiness like.
We were realized that weprobably needed to have
something in that in that space.
(04:50):
So we started by we werealready retailing the Geo
Science Map Map Raster seriesand things like that and using
it with Aussie Explorer Likemost people back in the day.
You know we use Aussie Exploreror Fagawi, or we'd use Garmin,
the Garmin GPSs with theirinbuilt tracking stuff.
We tried all those things out.
(05:11):
We had all that stuff and wesold products into that market.
So what we first thought wewould do is we'd better be
better, make sure that we had anonline mapping platform.
So we took what we could andproduced our own.
Well, we actually we didn'thave the mapping platform to
start with we created our ownRaster map set based on the
topographic maps from GeoScience.
(05:32):
So we basically took that data,reengineered it and spat it out
as our own product called theOTOPA.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Oh yeah, it was under license.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
We had a license agreement from Geo Science to
use the data and we produced ourEO TOPA map set and that was
that was quite early.
It was a Raster based product.
It was based around the 2005Geo Science product and I think
why don't it?
We can't remember what vintagethat was, what year exactly that
we did that.
Also, at the same time, wedecided we needed a Geo based
(06:00):
system of place data, placeattributes and things like that.
So we we had another licensedproduct that the Geo Science
Gazetteer database system, whichhad all the place names and
points of interest and bits andpieces that we could create a
database from.
So we created the placesdatabase using data that we were
(06:23):
able to source from Geo Scienceas well at the time, and so
they were kind of the corecomponents of moving towards our
app product.
You know that we did some yearslater.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I do recall some of that, although you're speaking
so technically advanced that I'mfalling asleep here.
My love, I'm sorry but it'sgetting hard and I know that
that's because you're adeveloper and that's the way
that you look at things and lookat solutions.
But I know from the user'sperspective, from the travellers
perspective, it was more about.
(06:56):
There was definitely thisbeginnings of using digital
mapping and there werebeginnings of sat navs in
people's cars, but the maps werecrappy as soon as you went out
back.
So you know your Google mapthat appeared either on the
device or in this sat nav, justdidn't have the outback data.
So straight away there was thishuge pressure on all these
(07:19):
existing mapping companies.
In Australia there was HEMA,there was Westprint, there was,
you know, ourselves.
It is.
How do you target that?
How do you give more offlinedetailed maps to two people in
this digital space that was veryquickly evolving?
depending on the government hadstopped well, that's a really
(07:40):
good point to highlight, isn'tit?
stopped in 2008 producing thegeoscience mapping they're
public mapping they do producemaps still, but they don't have
a public mapping, yeah, and socoupled with that at the same
time.
I recall this because I'veactually done some notes because
, like, it's all changed soquickly.
Once the Apple products cameonto the scene, apple really
(08:04):
took a hold of the market, somost people were buying iPads
and phones when they came out,and Android wasn't quite as
popular at the time.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Android didn't exist for years.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It was created by Google after Nokia, but the
biggest problem sorry, thebiggest problem was that there
was no way for the existingbeginnings of digital maps to be
used on Apple devices.
It because the, as everybodyknows, to put anything on an
Apple device, you actually haveto do it through an app, and it
just all got quite complicated.
(08:34):
And so whilst we were, as youmentioned before, creating these
raster maps that completely cutout all the Apple market
because they couldn't accessthose maps.
You remember that?
Speaker 1 (08:46):
well, there was no software to run them there was
no software.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
So the biggest software at the time for mapping
for travelers of the time was awell-used geological survey
type or surveyors type softwarewhich I'm sure some people know
the name of Aussie Explorersounds the same as us, but it's
not.
But that existed but it's.
It was sort of more windowsbased and, you know, had dropped
(09:10):
down menus and things like this, not very user friendly in the
car or if you're bouncing along,but still that really only had
limited maps that you could usein it.
They had to fit into aparticular format and all of a
sudden people are buying thesewonderful portable devices and
not using their pc.
They're using these iPads andgoing, oh, but I can't get maps
on them.
And so this is honestly thechallenge that we were presented
(09:33):
with through user demand.
We would get phone calls andemails and phone calls and
emails constantly and we didn'tlike saying no, we can't do it.
They literally wanted us tomake maps for Apple devices and
do you recall how long that tookus to try and make a solution
(09:55):
there?
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I remember that we oh yeah, we went, we went, we went
to, we went to foreigndevelopment for a while trying
to do app development but weweren't very trustworthy I yeah,
no, I took on some foreigndevelopment out of India at one
point and we spent a fair bit ofmoney and didn't get very much.
(10:17):
We then went looking at all theproducts that were available in
the market already to see if wecould partner with anybody or
maybe buy someone out, and thatdidn't prove very fruitful.
So one day I just sat at mydesk and it was more than one
day.
It did a bit of research andfound some platforms and some
(10:37):
things that may work.
And then, yeah, it wasn't oneday, but a couple of days later
I had made something that wouldload as an app, that had kind of
a map, that kind of didsomething very raw that gave us
the understanding that weactually probably could produce
something and develop an appthat would do.
(10:58):
You know basically what wewanted, and it did take a long
time.
I've always had this idea, andit actually involved Aussie
Explorer, because that was theproduct that we knew so well for
so long.
I had created in my head asolution to using Aussie
Explorer with a place's databaseand a proximity to a learn
alerts and pop-ups when you getto a certain place to tell you
(11:21):
what to do.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I remember that so often we wanted that information
.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
We would discuss this all the time and we sat in the
car on all these trips for yearsand years, researching, going.
Wouldn't it be great if we hadthis?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
If you could just press that button and find a cab
.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And so you know, when we actually started down the
development path to create aproduct like the Troubler app,
we had lots of preconceptionsabout what it should and
shouldn't do, and we had areally good understanding of
what it should do based ontravelling around Australia and
doing the things that we like todo.
So, you know, then we createdit, then it started, and so
(12:01):
that's how we got to the startof our Explorer's travel journey
.
So we hope you like thispodcast and make sure you jump
on board and subscribe and catchup with the next one, where
we'll talk a bit more about theapp and how it actually works in
the market.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yep, so subscribe and stay tuned for the next episode
.
Bye.
Hi, welcome back to the next episode of our podcast
series, and Earlier we've beenin our first few series we
talked about, you know, gettingto the point where we started
the explorers business.
Now we want to go through a bitof the ins and outs of the
explorers business in the earlydays.
So you know, we originallywe're doing this travel and we
could see that there wasn't muchcontent available on the
(00:22):
internet of any description forthe kind of Journeys and trip
planning and information that weneeded to do.
You know the traveling that wewere doing, so we just winged it
using our experiences andWorking our way around,
obviously, the writing of all ofthat and basically the
documentation which was probablystarted out more about what
(00:42):
we're reading every day andwhere we were, as you said it
was kind of family focused andto our family and friends.
Evolving that into into abusiness obviously comes with
lots of challenges.
You know where's the revenue,how are you going to fund the,
the ongoing costs and marketingand the other bits and pieces.
As you said, early when westarted, you know, google didn't
(01:06):
exist.
All this stuff didn't reallyeven happen.
There was no advertisingplatforms, there was no
monetization systems available.
It was all very early on inthat whole scheme of things.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So we had no jobs.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
And we had no jobs and we had lots of cost.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I was.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I was well, I was still doing a bit of contracting
, I think, contracting back tocustomers that were still in
Sydney that would still botherto ask me questions.
So we were still had somerevenue coming in.
But how do you, how do youconvert that and how do we make
a business out of it?
I think very early on, you know, we store it we.
We started with publishing theuser interaction systems with
(01:43):
the forum and getting some greatinteractions with our user base
.
We had our Trek notes published, which was, you know, giving
information now to people abouthow to move around.
We quickly came along with therealization that we probably
needed some sort of e-commerceplatform.
So we created the shop systemand in the shop system over the
years the shop evolved and grewand shrink and expanded as we
(02:09):
move forward.
We started out pretty much withmaps and books and permits the
maps and books, the things thatyou know everyone needed to
travel with.
Everyone needs a map andeveryone needed books, because
even our internet stuff couldn'tgo with you like it does today.
So we started with that systemand we were a very early
retailer in Australia forforward driving travel books and
(02:34):
we took on, you know, Heema,Westbrun and a whole load of
other brands and particularproducts at the time.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I was even audio books, do you remember?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
The Belinda Audio Books.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
They were a great idea because people would get
them on a cassette tape.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Oh no, they were CDs.
Were they CDs when we started?
Only just.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, but there were all those awesome stories but
there was also things startedcoming out.
You know Lemberdell's storiesand there was lots of really
interesting backstories aboutpioneers and historical figures,
that and then they really tookoff because people wanted
entertainment when they were intheir car.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
So over the years we had access to some great
products that we were able tosell.
We went to GPS's, we went toE-PURBS, we went to parks passes
with.
You know, the store was quite athing.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
There was 1500 products, I remember it was
about the largest, it was ourlargest line of items.
There was a lot of products.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
And we sold a fair bit enough to help support the
business.
Additionally, we created someadditional facilities with our
with a membership program whichwe added to the website to allow
some people to have higherlevel of access, controls and
more features within the app.
So you know, and also, well, thetracking didn't come till a bit
later, but we created amembership system and you know
(03:48):
around about that time.
We were also able to buy intothings like advertising
platforms from Telstra or Censusand things like that.
Early on in the day Googledidn't have it, it was all run
by Census and we were basicallybuying ads from them and at the
time it was good revenue becausethere wasn't a huge number of
people doing it.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, we got 40 CPM.
Oh yeah, we were getting.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
We were getting CPM rates that you could only dream
of.
Now it doesn't even exist, no.
But so we did reasonably wellout of some of those things and
they helped us to keep thebusiness running and developing
the business along over the nextfew years, adding blog systems,
more interaction tools, addingmore member services.
It became some.
(04:29):
It became a bit apparent downthe track that we needed to do
something with online maps.
You know we had things comingout like Google Maps were
appearing on the scene at thetime.
So digital mapping started tobecome a thing and one of the
things being in maps andbusiness like.
We were realized that weprobably needed to have
something in that in that space.
(04:50):
So we started by we werealready retailing the Geo
Science Map Map Raster seriesand things like that and using
it with Aussie Explorer Likemost people back in the day.
You know we use Aussie Exploreror Fagawi, or we'd use Garmin,
the Garmin GPSs with theirinbuilt tracking stuff.
We tried all those things out.
(05:11):
We had all that stuff and wesold products into that market.
So what we first thought wewould do is we'd better be
better, make sure that we had anonline mapping platform.
So we took what we could andproduced our own.
Well, we actually we didn'thave the mapping platform to
start with we created our ownRaster map set based on the
topographic maps from GeoScience.
(05:32):
So we basically took that data,reengineered it and spat it out
as our own product called theOTOPA.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Oh yeah, it was under license.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
We had a license agreement from Geo Science to
use the data and we produced ourEO TOPA map set and that was
that was quite early.
It was a Raster based product.
It was based around the 2005Geo Science product and I think
why don't it?
We can't remember what vintagethat was, what year exactly that
we did that.
Also, at the same time, wedecided we needed a Geo based
(06:00):
system of place data, placeattributes and things like that.
So we we had another licensedproduct that the Geo Science
Gazetteer database system, whichhad all the place names and
points of interest and bits andpieces that we could create a
database from.
So we created the placesdatabase using data that we were
(06:23):
able to source from Geo Scienceas well at the time, and so
they were kind of the corecomponents of moving towards our
app product.
You know that we did some yearslater.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I do recall some of that, although you're speaking
so technically advanced that I'mfalling asleep here.
My love, I'm sorry but it'sgetting hard and I know that
that's because you're adeveloper and that's the way
that you look at things and lookat solutions.
But I know from the user'sperspective, from the travellers
perspective, it was more about.
(06:56):
There was definitely thisbeginnings of using digital
mapping and there werebeginnings of sat navs in
people's cars, but the maps werecrappy as soon as you went out
back.
So you know your Google mapthat appeared either on the
device or in this sat nav, justdidn't have the outback data.
So straight away there was thishuge pressure on all these
(07:19):
existing mapping companies.
In Australia there was HEMA,there was Westprint, there was,
you know, ourselves.
It is.
How do you target that?
How do you give more offlinedetailed maps to two people in
this digital space that was veryquickly evolving?
depending on the government hadstopped well, that's a really
(07:40):
good point to highlight, isn'tit?
stopped in 2008 producing thegeoscience mapping they're
public mapping they do producemaps still, but they don't have
a public mapping, yeah, and socoupled with that at the same
time.
I recall this because I'veactually done some notes because
, like, it's all changed soquickly.
Once the Apple products cameonto the scene, apple really
(08:04):
took a hold of the market, somost people were buying iPads
and phones when they came out,and Android wasn't quite as
popular at the time.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Android didn't exist for years.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It was created by Google after Nokia, but the
biggest problem sorry, thebiggest problem was that there
was no way for the existingbeginnings of digital maps to be
used on Apple devices.
It because the, as everybodyknows, to put anything on an
Apple device, you actually haveto do it through an app, and it
just all got quite complicated.
(08:34):
And so whilst we were, as youmentioned before, creating these
raster maps that completely cutout all the Apple market
because they couldn't accessthose maps.
You remember that?
Speaker 1 (08:46):
well, there was no software to run them there was
no software.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
So the biggest software at the time for mapping
for travelers of the time was awell-used geological survey
type or surveyors type softwarewhich I'm sure some people know
the name of Aussie Explorersounds the same as us, but it's
not.
But that existed but it's.
It was sort of more windowsbased and, you know, had dropped
(09:10):
down menus and things like this, not very user friendly in the
car or if you're bouncing along,but still that really only had
limited maps that you could usein it.
They had to fit into aparticular format and all of a
sudden people are buying thesewonderful portable devices and
not using their pc.
They're using these iPads andgoing, oh, but I can't get maps
on them.
And so this is honestly thechallenge that we were presented
(09:33):
with through user demand.
We would get phone calls andemails and phone calls and
emails constantly and we didn'tlike saying no, we can't do it.
They literally wanted us tomake maps for Apple devices and
do you recall how long that tookus to try and make a solution
(09:55):
there?
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I remember that we oh yeah, we went, we went, we went
to, we went to foreigndevelopment for a while trying
to do app development but weweren't very trustworthy I yeah,
no, I took on some foreigndevelopment out of India at one
point and we spent a fair bit ofmoney and didn't get very much.
(10:17):
We then went looking at all theproducts that were available in
the market already to see if wecould partner with anybody or
maybe buy someone out, and thatdidn't prove very fruitful.
So one day I just sat at mydesk and it was more than one
day.
It did a bit of research andfound some platforms and some
(10:37):
things that may work.
And then, yeah, it wasn't oneday, but a couple of days later
I had made something that wouldload as an app, that had kind of
a map, that kind of didsomething very raw that gave us
the understanding that weactually probably could produce
something and develop an appthat would do.
(10:58):
You know basically what wewanted, and it did take a long
time.
I've always had this idea, andit actually involved Aussie
Explorer, because that was theproduct that we knew so well for
so long.
I had created in my head asolution to using Aussie
Explorer with a place's databaseand a proximity to a learn
alerts and pop-ups when you getto a certain place to tell you
(11:21):
what to do.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I remember that so often we wanted that information
.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
We would discuss this all the time and we sat in the
car on all these trips for yearsand years, researching, going.
Wouldn't it be great if we hadthis?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
If you could just press that button and find a cab
.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And so you know, when we actually started down the
development path to create aproduct like the Troubler app,
we had lots of preconceptionsabout what it should and
shouldn't do, and we had areally good understanding of
what it should do based ontravelling around Australia and
doing the things that we like todo.
So, you know, then we createdit, then it started, and so
(12:01):
that's how we got to the startof our Explorer's travel journey
.
So we hope you like thispodcast and make sure you jump
on board and subscribe and catchup with the next one, where
we'll talk a bit more about theapp and how it actually works in
the market.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yep, so subscribe and stay tuned for the next episode
.
Bye.
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