Innovative way to stop roasting feel more trouble than it's worth
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AS SEEN IN: Inside Small Business
By Tim Ladhams,
Q&A: An innovative way to stop roasting feel more trouble than it’s worth
Louise Barrett spent her childhood eating roast dinners in Central Queensland, the ‘beef capital’ of Australia. As a working mother, however, Louise stopped making roasts due to the hard work that cleaning the oven after cooking a roast involved. Fast forward to 2020, Louise hankered after those childhood meals. So, at the age of 70, she invented a ‘no-mess’ roasting pan. She engaged her daughter-in-law Bianka as Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer, and they launched ‘the ultimate roaster’ in 2025 – after extensive R&D – under the brand Hagane Home. I spoke to Louise about making the transition to entrepreneurship in retirement.
Inside Small Business: Can you tell us briefly about your professional background prior to launching Hagane Home?
Louise Barrett: I don’t come from a background in product design. My training is in medical science and research which was surprisingly good preparation for inventing a roasting pan. It taught me to test ideas methodically and to keep refining when something doesn’t work.
I have a science degree majoring in human physiology and biochemistry. I originally worked in medical research and, when my children were young, in a routine pathology lab. Later I worked at USQ in Toowoomba in the Biology and Nursing departments. My ‘professional’ career was a pretty fractured affair as I followed my husband’s career moves. However, raising our children to be wonderful human beings and nurturing the people I love has been my full-time commitment.
ISB: What was the inspiration behind your decision to launch this business?
LB: Growing up on a cattle station in central Queensland, roast dinners are a weekly ritual. I built my dream kitchen and didn’t want to mess it up. I went looking for a spatter guard to go over the roasting pan in my new oven and found that such a thing didn’t exist. When I started looking into getting one made, I quickly realised I wouldn’t be able to get just one.
ISB: I understand you went through a rigorous R&D process in order to refine your product before going to market – can you tell us how long that took, and the steps involved?
LB: I worked on this project on and off for five years. Family always came first for me, so ageing parents and new little people in our lives often slowed the process to a crawl. Originally, I pictured a stainless-steel cover evenly covered with small holes and I had some 3D images made. I tested the size of the holes using a very crude set up in my kitchen and then engaged design engineers to help. This whole design failed in the end because the factories I approached said it wouldn’t be feasible to produce.
So, back to the drawing board and we started working on the forerunner of the final design. I called it the ‘cheesegrater model’ because the little vents originally reminded me of a standard kitchen grater. I had some oven proof prototypes 3D printed to test if it actually worked. This wasn’t a straightforward process either and one version shattered in the oven!
Again, I had trouble finding a factory so I engaged a sourcing agent to help. They found a factory. We made some further modifications to the design in collaboration with them and came up with the final design.
ISB: How did you fund that significant RD commitment and, subsequently, manufacturing of the product prior to launch?
LB: I was very fortunate that my husband believed in me and in the project and we funded it ourselves out of savings, which meant staying lean and making every dollar count. We ran a fully-funded Kickstarter campaign, which not only helped with manufacturing costs but validated demand before we committed to full production.
ISB: What strategies did you employ to build brand awareness that garnered you customers not just in Australia but also in North America and Europe within six months of launching?
LB: The Kickstarter campaign achieved international reach and was the first proof that demand existed beyond Australia. Throughout the development phase I also ran Facebook ads to build awareness and to test whether people would actually pay for a no-mess roasting pan before we committed to manufacturing. It was a low-cost way to validate demand before spending serious money.
Thousands of people joined my mailing list from around the world and I kept them in the loop with progress updates throughout development. Many of these original supporters were first in line when we launched. By the time we went to market we already had a warm, engaged audience across Australia, North America and Europe.
ISB: To what extent have collaborations with the likes of Sophie Hansen, Sneh Roy and Kate Flower helped establish the brand?
LB: We share a love of cooking seasonal, delicious food for the people we love – that genuine alignment is why I chose them. They are down-to-earth, big-hearted and talented women who speak authentically to their communities.
The impact has been game-changing. When Sophie reviewed the Ultimate Roaster in her newsletter, we had our largest single sales day ever. Nothing we have done in paid advertising has come close to replicating that. Influencer marketing and user-generated content has been our most effective tool for visibility and sales, with earned media close behind. As a small business with a limited marketing budget, finding the right voices – people who genuinely use and love your product – has been worth more than any ad spend.
Author: Tim Ladhams, Editor, Inside Small Business
Tim Ladhams is Editor of Inside Small Business. He is responsible for all the content on the Inside Small Business website and the quarterly magazine. Tim brought a passion for start-ups and small businesses to his journalism career after a long career – including management roles – in hospitality, insurance and credit management. The latter provided him with first-hand experience of the dealing with the issue that small-business owners regularly cite as their biggest challenge in staying afloat and going on to prosper – getting paid by those to whom they have delivered goods or services! His working highlight every year is the enthusiasm with which Inside Small Business Top 50 Small Business Leaders Report is received.