I absolutely love the world of business.

by Chloe Alley, Founder (by Chloe), Student (Redcliffe SHS, QLD) & Winner (Future Anything National Grand Final 2021)

Hi, I’m Chloe Alley, Founder and Owner of By Chloe. I am the 2021 Future Anything National Grand Final Winner.

I started my business back in 2019 when I was 11 years old.

After injuring myself while competing in a Touch Football competition, my mum gave me a heat wheat to help recover. It all started from here. I wanted to help people just like my Mum helped me. After some research and trial and error, I purchased all the materials that I needed to make a heat wheat. Not long after, I had a long list of orders to fill from friends, family and even hospital staff (where my mum works) who wanted to use my mini heat wheats to keep in their pockets on night shift.

My heat wheats are made from 100% cotton, wheat and dried lavender. Each one has an inner lining which holds the wheat and I hand pick a variety of cool fabrics for the outer bag to appeal to my customers.

Heat packs are a product that everyone can use to help with relief from aches, pains, and injuries or just for comfort.

I make my heat wheats in three sizes mini pack of two, medium pack of two and long which are $10, $20 and $30 respectively. I currently stock in 8 businesses, along with attending various handmade markets.

As part of my business studies in Year 9 at Redcliffe High State School, I participated in the Future Anything Activate Program where we were tasked with being able to pitch an innovative, scalable and sustainable idea that makes the world a better place.

After completing the semester of learning, I was given the opportunity to enter my business idea into the national Future Anything competition.

I chose to continue to expand my current business making it eco-friendly and supporting our Australian Farmers who are doing it tough through offering an organic range of heat wheats. The idea came about after I was contacted by one of my stockists, Keep Eco store, in early 2021 about supplying their business with organic heat wheats. I was very excited by this and soon learnt that wheat from an organic farm is sustainable and grown with little to no chemicals.

After being successful in my application, I was super stoked to be progressing to the National Semi Finals, which was a very exciting but, nerve racking experience.

I presented my business idea to three judges, friends and family via zoom and won the Semi Final as well as the People’s Choice vote, taking me through to the National Grand Final. [Ed – watch Chloe’s 2021 National Semi Final here]

In the lead up to the Grand Finals, I received heaps of support and guidance from the Future Anything Team, I felt confident and nervous at the same time but, knew what I wanted to achieve with my business, and I wanted to get that across to the judges. During this journey, I met some super inspiring people, it was just amazing for us to be given this opportunity to develop and grow our ideas. I was the second person to pitch my business idea in the time frame of three minutes in front of an audience of 500 people including 3 judges. I was then able to watch the other 7 inspiring groups pitch their ideas until it was time for the judges’ deliberations and announcement of winners.

Watch Chloe’s Future Anything National Grand Final winning pitch.

I could not believe it when they called out my name, I had won the Future Anything Grand Final! I remember standing up on the stage beside Nic, extremely excited with a smile that you couldn’t be wiped off my face.

This moment meant so much to me and for the future of my business, I felt so proud of my achievement.

Ever since then, I have received nothing but help, support, encouragement and direction which I am extremely grateful for.

Since winning the National Grand Final in 2021, I have been working with mentors and website designers (huge shout out to Powered By Purpose and Syntropic Studio) to be able to develop my idea and launch a website [Ed – check it out here!], making my customers’ purchasing experience so much easier. I now have an organic range and for every 1 heat wheat sold, $1 is donated to One Tree Planted, an association that plants 1 tree for every $1 donated. Therefore, 1 heat wheat = 1 tree. By purchasing an organic heat wheat you are helping create habitat corridors for koalas, promoting Australia’s biodiversity and restoring areas in Australia affected by bushfires.

I am super driven and passionate about continuing to turn my business to become eco-friendly and give back to green projects.

More recently, I joined Nic on work experience where I was able to join in with business meetings, during that week we also visited Alstonville High School and Brisbane Boys’ College.

I was able to watch how Nic presented the programs in these schools, and how the students positively engaged with her.

It was such a privilege to be able to share my business story by talking in front of the students and incredible to see the amazing business ideas that were prototyped and pitched over a one or two day workshop.

There were definitely some amazing young entrepreneurs out there that were able to ideate their innovative ideas that they believe would make the world a better place.

It was super inspiring to see everything that the Future Anything Team do to help students start to think like an entrepreneur and bend the future, one idea at a time.

The week has made me realise how much I absolutely love the world of business. I learnt and gained so much, which has only made me more excited for my future.

All students participating in Future Anything’s Activate in-school entrepreneurship program can apply for the National Finals, to be in with the chance of winning the funding and support to launch their innovative, sustainable and scalable ideas into the real world.

Read more about how to bring Activate to your school here. 

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About the author: Chloe Alley

Chloe Alley is Founder of By Chloe, a Queensland-based social enterprise that produces handmade heat packs that provide natural pain relief and comfort. She founded the business as a student at Redcliffe and won the Future Anything National Grand Final in 2021.