Summary: Scott Kilmartin started and runs haul, the innovative streetwear label making accessories from recycled materials. Turning used vinyl advertising billboards, truck inner tubes and printer blankets into messenger bags, macBook sleeves wallets & bean bags. How do you re-route landfill destined industrial waste into design stores? How can a business go from being in dire financial straits with the owner taking a night job delivering donuts at 3am & sleeping on the floor of the factory, to winning City of Melbourne Business of the Year in 2008? Is manufacturing in Australia a romantic fiction novel or scaleable reality ? How being green is no longer enough. And why every entrepreneur should get a dog. Originally named Urban Boomerang, the business started in a garage as a hobby in Tasmania selling a single product from a card table at Salamanca market. The business re-branded as haul in 2004 and now has retail outlets in two states, an online store with 5000 unique products and wholesales to design stores locally and afar. In 2007 haul began making products for companies from their used advertising campaign vinyls. Corporate gifts ‘embedded with their brand’. Clients include SEEK, BP, Jetstar, AGL & Virgin Mobile. In August haul will spin off the corporate gift arm as a new business called RIVETING, which will also offer creative services & logistics for clients. It is the only company of it’s type in Australia to be Good Environmental Choice Certified. Later in 2009 the company will open a new store – TOWNhaul in Melbourne’s laneway precincts. In 2008 haul kept 35 tonne of billboards, rubber and number plates from landfill. This year the projection is 51 tonne. In a past life Scott was a bouncer, personal trainer & ran a chain of bars in the USA. Having been lured into an entrepreneurial life he is now unemployable. Scott is @ScottKilmartin & the brand is @haul on twitter.
