Skincare brand Boring Without You has steered clear of the advertising and marketing traditions long dominant in the cosmetic industry, instead embracing the cheeky and eye-catching. One brand product, a “hydrating milk serum”, is marketed with the line ‘Make Me Wet’. Founder and CEO Davey Rooney has sported pale blue nail-polish in promotional images. “Beauty without the bullsh*t, says the company’s website.
For its first big brand campaign, the Melbourne-based company sent a large truck billboard to Sydney’s Bondi beach. When passers-by stood in front of the billboard, their faces were projected onto it – over the line “Beauty is Staring You in the Face”.
“You’ve got to do things to get attention,” Rooney says. “In such a saturated market, you have to be different. It’s like that classic saying, when they zig, we zag. I’m constantly trying to think of ways to do things differently.”
The concepts of self-love and self-care are central to the brand, he adds, noting the “You” in the name “Boring Without You” is the person staring back from the bathroom mirror every morning.
Founded in 2022, Boring Without You has logged solid growth. A Financial Review Fast Starter finalist in the manufacturing category, the firm went from an annual revenue of less than $135,000 in the 2023 financial year to just over $1.18 million in 2024 to just under $3.2 million in the 2025 financial year. Now employing five people, the company’s compound annual growth rate is 386.35 per cent.
With more than 400,000 followers on various social media platforms, BWY currently has a limited range of three skincare products – all for combination skin – a mask, a moisturiser and the hydrating milk serum. “I think it’s really benefited us, having a tight SKU (stock-keeping unit) range and focusing on profitability from the start,” Rooney says. “We’re bootstrapped; there’s no way we could have expanded this business without being profitable from day one.”
As well as colourful and cheeky promotions, the company concentrates on giving followers personal attention. Rooney has a weekly phone-in session for customers with skincare problems – which he sees as an opportunity to hear feedback about the company’s products. He also spends a lot of time answering direct messaging queries about skincare.
Originally from New Zealand, Rooney came to Australia at the age of 24 when his radio program employers moved here. He worked in media relations, which he enjoyed until his experience was soured by a fellow employee who “relentlessly bullied me for the last few months”, he remembers.
Increasingly anxious and depressed, one day he had a panic attack on the way to work. Then came the Covid pandemic and social isolation, and he turned to something completely different – skincare. “I actually started studying cosmetic science, and I would take textbooks to the park and read chapter after chapter on formulations and skin types and ingredients,” he says.
Rooney says he understands enough about the science of skincare to communicate on product development with dermatologists and cosmetic chemists.
“When I was studying cosmetic science, I learned a common industry practice is a lot of brands will put in what they call a ‘marketing story ingredient’ or a ‘tip-in’, and it’s just a sprinkling of the ingredient so they can put it on the label,” he explains. “When I heard this, I was shocked. We refuse to ever do that.”
The BWY serum and moisturiser have been independently clinically tested, Rooney says, using a tool that measures the hydration increase in skin. “A lot of indie brands don’t do that because it’s so expensive,” he says. “But from the get-go, I wanted us to be an evidence-based brand that creates products that work.”
With a roughly even split between retail and direct-to-consumer sales, BWY products are now sold in 450 Priceline pharmacies and Rooney expects the retail proportion to grow.
Future plans include consolidating the range, increasing distribution in Australia and potentially finding an international retailer, he adds. The overarching Boring Without You strategy will remain the same. “It really is that classic of classic strategy of giving people value and being educating and entertaining at the same time,” Rooney says.
A Fast Starter manufacturing finalist of a completely different type, Global Resource Recovery has a facility in Darwin where Liquid Natural Gas industrial waste can be purified and transformed into usable products.
These products include organic compounds such as glycols, the active ingredient in anti-freeze, and amines which are used to remove acid gases from raw natural gas before it is liquified. GRR developed an innovative process to regenerate contaminated glycol and amines into high-purity products, an environmentally and commercially valuable option for LNG producers.
GRR co-founder and CEO Mike Everton says he and his partners have decades of experience in the oil and gas industries. GRR bought a failed biodiesel and glycerine plant in Darwin in 2023 and repurposed it to recycle industrial waste.
The GRR facility now offers multi-stage distillation to transform waste glycol into a 99.8 per cent pure substance to meet industry standards. All the impurities, including water, salts and small traces of hydrocarbons, are removed. Amines can also be purified.
As the only recycling facility of this type in Australia, GRR has enjoyed rapid growth. A Financial Review Fast Starter finalist, the firm went from an annual revenue of just over $150,000 in the 2023 financial year to just over $3.9 million in 2024 to more than $7.8 million in 2025. It has a compound annual growth rate of 622.82 per cent.
With 22 employees and full-time contractors on the books, the GRR plant now reprocesses used glycol and amines from major LNG producers for a fee, and then sells the purified product back to them. “We evaporate it, distil it, and then put the water component through reverse osmosis, what’s called RO, to bring it back to 99.8 per cent pure,” Everton says.
Until recently, LNG producers had limited and costly options for the disposal of this industrial waste, but now with Global RR they can pay a lesser amount overall to have it reprocessed for re-use. It can be re-processed for reuse again and again. “It’s a win-win for everyone,” Everton adds.
Brought to Darwin by ship or road, the waste is processed by Global RR and the purified product then sent back to the LNG producers. “We’re looking at processing close on 30,000 tonnes of these products next year,” Everton says.
Now with only limited storage on site, the company has just been given approval to build a storage facility at the port of Darwin. The multi-million-dollar storage facility will allow the company to service local needs for the next 18 months, Everton says.
“We’ve already been permitted by the EPA to double the size of the processing facility,” he adds. “Once we do that, we will be bringing in product from Asia for reprocessing.”
Looking to expand, GRR is also on the hunt for facilities in Houston in the US that could be repurposed for recycling so the company can work with major US-based LNG producers, Everton says. “We’re now looking how to expand into regions where it makes sense, where there is a need for GRR’s services and technology.”