Sydney mum grows innovative small business with help from NSW government

Litter Kwitter owes its inspiration to a Hollywood comedy, says founder Jo Lapidge. The Sydney mother had just bought a kitten, whose inability to use the litter box was making her regret her purchase. In the comedy, Meet The Fockers, Robert De Niro's character Jack Byrnes, has taught his cat to use a regular toilet. "A light bulb went on in my head," Lapidge told The Age's Denise Cullen. "I thought, I'm going to train Doogie to use the loo."

Today, a mere five years later, Litter Kwitter is a worldwide sensation, with distribution in the largest pet chains in the USA and the UK, and a recent appearance on Good Morning America.

Along the way, the Sydney company has received help from Industry and Investment, NSW – including grants for overseas export trade events and for the ongoing development of a cluster of similar companies to pool resources to create export opportunities.

Jo talked to animal behaviourists, vets and cat breeders to help develop the product, but her first prototype was assembled with a cheap plastic toilet seat, a glue gun and a jigsaw. The company's humourous website provides great advice on how to use it from none other than Doogie, the cat that started it all. " Litter Kwitter starts next to the toilet with a seat device and a red plastic disk full of litter so your cat knows what it is and where to go to use it," pens (or paws) Doogie. "Then you put it on the porcelain rim of the toilet, so your cat learns to hop up (easy when you’re as nimble as we are). Once your cat gets the idea that the toilet is where the action is, you can move to the amber disk. It has a hole in the middle and room for some litter around the edges so that your cat can use it, but also starts to learn how to perch on the edge of the seat itself. It doesn’t usually take too long to get the hang of this, so then it’s time to use the green disk. It has a bigger hole so that your cat can balance on the seat and go, knowing that everything will end up in the toilet. Brilliant !!!"

Jo's husband Terry brought 20 years of marketing experience with two of the world's largest consumer goods corporations to the business, and his recent severance package from a British company, combined with the couple's savings helped launch the company.

"We were lucky to have money in the bank when this idea presented itself," Terry told The Age. "We haven't had to borrow huge amounts or sell equity in the business to keep it moving forward, because when that happens, you can find you're just working for someone else again."

But government assistance from I&I NSW has proved extremely helpful. Business clusters are groups of like-minded, co-operative businesses and organisations with common objectives that work together for economic growth. I&I NSW offers three levels of financial support for clusters, including up to $5,000 in matched funding for business networks to create business opportunities for their members; up to $10,000 in matched funding for business clusters to achieve competitive advantage, and up to $30,000 in matched funding to existing clusters for specific cluster activity that increases employment, improves productivity and competition, and promotes innovation.
www.litterkwitter.com

Would you like to get funding to grow your small business? There's money available now for qualified existing and start-up businesses. Phone toll-free 1800 813 863.

No claim is made the above funding success is due to ABFC.