Australian owned, since 2001
25 years & 5 million stories
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Naomi Simson
It’s coming up to 25 years since the first RedBalloon customer was served. Back then there was no team, no office – just a spare room in my home in Balmain, $25,000 of family savings, and a belief that Australians would pay for an experience that they could trust would be good. And that we needed less stuff and more stories.
It took 64 days before the first person believed enough in what we were doing to buy a RedBalloon experience.
“Everybody told me it was a great idea – but those long months of waiting, hoping, trying to get someone to buy seemed like an eternity.”
Five million experiences later (I look forward to sharing the exact number on 4 December 2026 – 25 years after we served the first customer), the start-up days feel like a different world. No social media. No smartphones. A time when, as I’ve said before, nobody even trusted the internet enough to type in their credit card number. And yet the business survived-not because I had it all figured out, but because I picked up the phone.
When that first order finally came through (order #14, because I’d personally done 13 before it just to check the website worked – it did), I didn’t leave it to the confirmation email and move on. I called the customer myself. He didn’t even realise he’d bought anything – he thought it was a mistake. When I asked what he thought of the website, he told me it was crap. And then the journey really began.
I didn’t hang up. I asked him why.
That conversation – and every uncomfortable one after it, including the caller who asked to be put through to the “complaints department” of a company that, at the time, consisted entirely of me (and some part-timers) – became the model for how RedBalloon was built. Not from a business plan. From listening. Then adapting to the feedback.
The funny thing was, when I was the person asked to speak to the complaints department, I responded, “But we’ve never had a complaint before” – and she answered, “Well, let me be the first.” That shifted my view. Feedback – even if painful – is always an opportunity to learn, as long as you do something with it. And you let the customer know they had an impact, and that the time they gave you was worth it.
I’ve said this for decades and I’ll keep saying it: customer obsession isn’t a line you put on a wall. It’s the daily practice that decides whether a business survives its second year, let alone its twenty-fifth. Every conversation, every decision, every email tells the customer who you are and what your brand stands for-whether you mean it to or not.
That belief is what took RedBalloon from a one-woman spare-room operation to one of Australia’s best-known consumer brands, and it’s the same belief I bring into every boardroom I sit in today-and onto every stage, including the rooms I speak in around Sydney, where this story started.
“Customer obsession” is different today, in the age of AI chatbots and instant everything, compared to what it meant in 2001. We use data to look for trends, analyse opportunities and see the gaps in what we’re doing. But the RedBalloon “Best of Range” is built on customer reviews-what people love. The review process is critically important to how we know if the experience quality is consistent.
The tools have changed beyond recognition. Marketing in 2001 meant a website and a prayer. Today it means AI, data, and a customer who expects a personalised answer before they’ve finished typing the question. I talk to business owners about this constantly in my keynotes – the pace of change now is faster than anything I navigated building RedBalloon, and the businesses that will survive the next 25 years are the ones that treat that change as something to get curious about, not something to fear.
But the fundamentals haven’t moved an inch. A business is still a relationship. Trust still has to be earned one interaction at a time. And the founders who build something that lasts are still the ones willing to do the unglamorous work-picking up the phone, reading the one-star review, sitting with the answer they didn’t want to hear.
“I think the fundamentals of building a brand remain the same-just the tools are different. We must build trust, have real people talk to real people. Have real customers tell you what they think. Then we use AI and other tools to ensure consistency of that story. As I say in my keynotes-‘AI is for tasks and relationships are for people.'”
If it is to be, it is up to me. That’s been my compass since long before RedBalloon existed, and it still is. A few things I’d tell any founder starting out now-including the ones I meet at events like the ones I speak at
One simple thing a founder can do is simply “do what you say you’re going to do.” In a world where no one knows what they can trust, you stand out by simply following through with what you said. Consistently – so people know that they can count on you and count on your business. And as your team grows, make sure that this becomes the soul of how you do business. Your reputation and brand story will spread.
These days a lot of that conversation happens on stage rather than in the office-and increasingly, right across the country through events all over Australia. The story I share inspires people on what is possible. It reminds people how and why RedBalloon became so loved.
Twenty-five years in, I’m more curious about what’s next than I’ve ever been. That’s the mindset I’d want any founder reading this to walk away with.
If it is to be, it is up to me.
– Naomi
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Naomi Simson found RedBalloon? Naomi Simson founded RedBalloon in 2001, launching the business from a spare room in her Balmain home with $25,000.
How long did it take RedBalloon to get its first customer? It took 64 days from switching on the website for RedBalloon to record its first sale.
How many experiences has RedBalloon delivered? RedBalloon has delivered more than 5 million experiences at the time of writing.
What is Naomi Simson’s business philosophy? Naomi Simson’s philosophy is built on customer obsession-treating every customer interaction as a chance to build trust-alongside her personal motto, “If it is to be, it is up to me.”