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CoolCabanas have exploded in popularity but they present one annoying issue – now, an Aussie dad has solved it while making thousands.
And while the popular shade tents’ ubiquity is testament to how intrinsic they are coastal lifestyles, one Brisbane dad saw a gap in the market created by CoolCabanas’ meteoric rise – and built a thriving side-hustle that has exploded alongside them.
CoolCabanas are now a regular sight across Aussie beaches.
Adam Coward, who works a day job in marketing, was at the beach in Noosa, the spiritual home of the CoolCabana, when he noticed something irritating about his family’s beach setup.
“It was three or four years ago, and it was our wedding anniversary, so we were on holiday with the kids,” recalls the father of three.
“We were setting up our CoolCabana, and we were struggling to lay out the picnic rug to get proper sand coverage, because the design has a pole directly in the centre of the tent. I looked around, and all the other people with CoolCabanas had their towels strewn around the centre pole, all bunched up.”
Dad-of-three Adam Coward spotted a gap in the market when CoolCabanas exploded in popularity. Picture: Supplied
Musing that a picnic rug with a hole in the centre for the shade tent’s pole would be the perfect, simple solution, he pulled out his phone and began googling to try and purchase one – and came up empty-handed.
“It just didn’t exist,” says Adam, “there was nothing out there.”
Next, Adam put his market research skills to good use and checked on Google trends – where he discovered a surge in demand.
“People were searching for mats with holes in the centre of them – which sounds so simple – and coming up empty-handed. So I thought – all right, I’ll make one myself.”
After costing up the initial outlay, Adam realised it would be relatively simple to have the product made.
“I approached a few mates who I am always throwing business ideas around with, and said ‘look, it’s going to cost us about $6000 to have all the stock made. Do you want to go in, and we’ll just give it a go?”
Adam Coward created a mat with a hole in it to be used under a CoolCabana. Picture: Supplied
Adam’s friends agreed, and soon, Holey Mats was born – extra-large, sand-free beach mats with a hole in the centre. Adam put together a website for pre-sales to gauge public appetite – which, it turned out, was immense.
“Everyone who was searching for the solution ended up finding us,” he says, “and now, two-and-a-half years later we’re on track to pull in $50,000 in revenue, all from a fun little side hustle.”
The product, says Adam, has undergone several evolutions in the intervening years, as it continues to adapt to the way people use their beach shades.
“Our original product was just a 2 metre by 2 metre mat,” he says, “but obviously a lot of families have the larger sized CoolCabanas now, and while the brand has actually released a mat of their own in the meantime, even their largest one doesn’t fit the big size when it’s windy and you’re forced to have the legs of the cabana stretched all the way out. Our response was to create a huge, 3.3 metre mat, which fills the whole space. And after over two years of trading, we’ve never had one return due to a fault.”
“We’ve sold out of the larger ones and have more stock coming through in mid-November, but the demand is huge,” says Adam, “basically, when it’s sunny, we get sales. It’s as simple as that.”
The Holey Mat is selling out with each hot beach day. Picture: Supplied
On the popularity of beach tents in general – a trend that has been the subject of much media and debate in recent years – Adam has a unique insight.
“I think that during Covid, beach real estate became the thing that everyone wanted,” he says, “you might not have been able to afford a new house, but for about $300, you could get your own big space on the beach.”
Keeping up with demand for Holey Mats as well as working his full-time 9-to-5 is a challenge, and Adam believes it has the potential to grow exponentially given the right investment, particularly now that they have distribution in the US as well.
“We’d love to find someone to help us grow it, because the hardest thing is raising capital to fund enough stock to keep up with demand,” he says, “Ideally, we would love for one of the “big guys” to tap us on the shoulder – like a Anaconda or Adairs – and say ‘we’d love to back you guys and help grow the brand’. Otherwise, we might look at a crowd-funding play to help get more people behind it to grow it further. We have a lot of plans in the pipeline.”
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