LUKE Sutton has built a $12 million camping company in Gloucester but his life wasn’t always so blessed.
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After school, he acquired no qualifications beyond life lessons from the men for whom he laboured for a decade.
“I was named Luke the drifter because I was travelling all over Australia and at one point of my life I was living under a park bench – I would constantly run out of money and get a job to eat,” he says. “You can spend 10 years at university but there is no handbook to run a business. The only thing that helps you is life experience.”
Raised in central west NSW, Mr Sutton spent his childhood summer holidays camping at on the north coast. That love of camping inevitably stoked his business, Drifta Camping & 4WD.
In 1994 he got the idea for his first product – a fold-out camp kitchen, made from ply – during a trip around Australia with his two brothers.
He launched Drifta in 2000 from his Blayney garage then relocated to Gloucester, where land was more affordable. He had three staff.
Today the town’s biggest employer with 80 staff, Drifta manufactures 1000 camping products it sells online, including camping drawers, canvas bags and camper trailers.
Most of its marketing is via You Tube videos filmed by Mr Sutton’s son, Kaito.
“We have the largest range of canvas bags in the world and we are world leaders in 4WD storage drawers,” says Mr Sutton.
He says he’s been able to create his niche by camping regularly and designing products he believes are needed. All it takes is an idea, a scribble on some plywood in pencil and within a matter of days the product is online.
The temptation has arisen to manufacture offshore but he is committed to using local products from steel to canvas.
Mr Sutton, who is mentored by Mike Hilsden at The Business Centre Newcastle, recently teamed up with not for profit group Sea Mercy and designed a hexagon tarp that will be sent to island communities in cyclone areas. The tarp provides shelter and has a “gutter” system that collects rainwater – a vital source for communities who typically receive water in plastic bottles that end up in the ocean.
Mr Sutton says the initiative came from a chance meeting he had with Patrick Whetter, manager at Anchorage Marina in Port Stephens and director of Sea Mercy Australia, and will lead to the tents being deployed to areas of need from November, when the cyclone season begins.
Mr Sutton is working on a prototype and seeking funding for the non-profit venture from government, charities and crowdfunding.
“It will saves thousands of single use plastic water bottles going into the ocean – all the focus is on global warming but if we don't stop plastic we will destroy all the marine life in our ocean,” he says.
Mr Sutton still camps as much as he can, and says its important more than ever today.
“It gets you back to basics and that's more relevant today than before, people are getting so removed from reality – the resilience of young people has been decimated because it's all about the phone these days,” he says.
