But instead of embracing the quiet life, she has ended up heading a dynamic organic baby food company that is turning heads on the international stage.
“I started my accounting career straight out of high school, and I did a cadetship with Crowe Horwath [formerly WHK] while I was at university,” says McBain.
That’s when the career plan hit “a spanner in the works” – the arrival of a baby for McBain and her husband.
Despite returning to work after the birth, the grind of the Sydney commute proved too much and the couple decide to move closer to her parents-in-law, in Tasmania. Ironically, the in-laws soon returned to New Zealand, but she has never regretted the shift.
“It is a fabulous place to raise a family and you are two minutes from the office,” she says.
Even back then, McBain says she knew she wanted to run her own business. “That was the driver,” she says.
McBain was a senior accountant at Launceston firm Ruddicks when she first encountered start-up Bellamy’s Organic.
A family business launched in Launceston in 2004, Bellamy’s was undercapitalised and its financial controller had left. McBain was seconded to the company to take over the controller’s job – and found herself unexpectedly exhilarated.
“All of a sudden, I found myself doing everything that I had ever wanted to do,” she says.
“Bellamy’s was a private company but owned by a group of shareholders … it was a bit of a pressure cooker. It was a crazy time.”
McBain says that under the secondment arrangement, she was supposed to be working four days a week at Bellamy’s and one day in the Ruddicks office. But she soon found herself working at Bellamy’s on weekends because of the workload. “It was a massive commitment,” she says. “You got caught up in the passion and you could see what it was capable of doing. It was a great brand and a great product.”
When the secondment ended, she went back to her normal accountancy job, but Bellamy’s came knocking, appointing her general manager in the first few weeks of 2007.
“I remember standing in the kitchen with my husband and saying: ‘This is such a massive, massive risk’,” she recalls.
But husband Roger McBain, also an accountant and a partner with Deloitte in Launceston, urged her to run with it, telling her she would never get an opportunity like it again.
“I managed the whole thing, answering the phones, talking to mums about their babies’ health requirements, answering questions about poo,” she says.
“Then, the next minute I would be talking to Coles and Woolworths or to the banks.”
Bellamy’s was taken over by a Tasmanian group of investors under the Tasmanian Pure Foods Ltd banner. McBain began using Tasmanian Pure Foods chairman and current Bellamy’s director Rob Woolley as both mentor and sounding board. Together they sat down and crunched the numbers. “I got to know Laura and we had the view that there was an ability to develop the business,” he says.
Bellamy’s sold off its orchard and factory to concentrate on the brand and logistics. It fine-tuned its marketing message to tell mums why they should prefer Bellamy’s to conventional products.
But the firm had bigger issues. McBain was also slowly realising that Coles’ and Woolworths’ purchases – at that time accounting for 90 per cent of Bellamy’s business – were a point of vulnerability. The supermarket giants were supportive. But if they walked away, Bellamy’s would fold.
McBain doesn’t remember any one particular “light bulb moment”, but she does recall that “there were times when products were deleted from trade – which reminded us that we were small and vulnerable and needed something big to happen to change that”.
Knowing the limits of the Australian market, they looked abroad. “The company had changed hands on the basis that we could grow this thing, so we had to look outside of Australia,” says McBain.
China was the obvious launching place. “We have 200,000 babies born in Australia every year; they have 20 million in China and the same again in Southeast
Asia,” she says. “There was a huge opportunity to go offshore.”
McBain had some friends in Shanghai, so she decided to try her luck there.
“Rob Woolley and I pretty much got on a plane and met some Australians and had a look around,” she says.
“We started building a network in China with lawyers, other accountants, PR companies, and a lot of them were ex-pats,” she adds.
The organic product struck a chord with Chinese mothers looking to protect their babies, usually their only child. “We fit into the super-premium infant formula category. We are highly regarded. The mums buying it are looking for safe, 100 per cent certified organic product,” she says.
McBain, who became chief executive officer in 2011, says her work in the accounting firm, dealing with a range of micro, small and big businesses, was a big help.
“You get to see all of those ways of operation and see how these companies harness all those experiences in order to set your own goals,” she says.
A national finalist in last year’s Telstra Business Woman of the Year Awards, winner of the national private and corporate sector category and Telstra Tasmanian Business Woman of the Year, McBain says Bellamy’s is now balancing its books, with 12 per cent of the Australian market.
The company employs 30 people directly and up to 300 indirectly – “we’re a significant employer in Tasmania” – and is on target to reach $50 million in revenue this current financial year, up from $3 million in 2007.
“Half our market is in Australia and the other half is in export,” she says. “We are looking to continue to grow both streams. There is a lot of pessimism around the Tasmanian economy and future industry, and what we can do here is great, setting an example of what is possible.”
And, she adds, the best is yet to come. “We are really a baby still in terms of the food industry. This company could be a real player, a real pioneer. I would like to see Bellamy’s achieve world domination, and then I will worry about what happens next.”
