Bill Allardyce was fiddling with a piece of high tensile (springy) wire when had a ahah!! moment and though he could make joined together chopsticks from stainless steel. Later he found that if they were stainless steel the Aussie Chopstick would cost $5.00 to manufacture. This would make them commercially unviable, at $5.00 to manufacture they would need to sell for $15.00, a price that no one would pay. Bill had a plastic manufacturer offer to make them from plastic, this would make them 20cents to manufacture which would set the retail price to be $1.00 per chopstick. This change in production bought the Aussie Chopstick back into being commercially viable. Bill was surprised to hear that he now had to have an Injection moulding die manufactured which cost $20,000.00, then packaging plastic bags, special size, 100,000 minimum run. Header cards 60,000 cards. Labour to put two Aussie Chopsticks in a bag and staple the Header Card on top, all costs totalled another 10,000.00. This made a total investment of 30,000.00 before the first Aussie Chopsticks were sold. Tupperware bought 350,000 Aussie Chopsticks, Amway Corporation (Australia) bought 250,000 Aussie Chopsticks, Woolworths, Coles, Kmart collectively sold 500,000 Twin Packs of Aussie Chopsticks making a total of 1.6 million Aussie Chopsticks sold in Australia alone. Imagine the size of the world market for Aussie Chopsticks. Bills hobbies are helping other people, his interests Captain Anglesea Fire Brigade Victoria Australia, Vice President Anglesea School Committee, Vic President Anglesea Football Club, Vice President Inventors Association Melbourne Australia, Vice President Geelong Chamber of Commerce and many other interests too numerous to mention here.
