What do you do if you you’re a creative 20 something and you don’t appreciate working for the man? Well rather than strapping heroin to your body and flying to Indonesia a good option is starting your own business, which is what Kirsty Brunt (27) and Marty Knoll (23) decided to do. The couple have just opened their latest business venture The Rabbit Hole, a multi-platform project in the city, and are trying to breathe a bit of vibrancy into Adelaide while also creating an avenue for young people to build some practical skills. I sat down for a chat and to rack their brains on the ups and downs of the precarious task of starting your own business.           

 

Kirsty - I was studying forensics.

Marty - Electronic engineering in Germany and my own business designing electronics. I am still doing some work at the moment for AUSTEREOK-While I was at uni I was finding it hard to balance full time study with work - so I asked myself what other options do I have? At the time I was doing sewing as a hobby. I ended getting into the NEIS program and got a certificate in small business management and it all pretty much went from there. 

 

M -Yeah, it would be nice if there were more support for people that are actually trying to do stuff.

K - I mean we do see ourselves as trying to do something positive, not just for ourselves but also for young people too. And the fact is there are a lot of young people around looking for something to do. So creating that opportunity is quite a focus for us. 

 

 

K-Well we definitely want to provide a safe place for young people to come to, but the business is a bit of a hybrid, we’re using the space as a retail outlet for our own clothing range as well as supporting young designers from around Australia plus we offer a range of classes including; dance, clothing design, sewing, DJ-ing, aerosol art, web design. Not to mention making our regular custom design work for clients.

M- Being that a lot of young people don’t really know what they want to do we really want to be an avenue for providing them with skills that will give them interesting career options or even fulfilling hobbies. We also want to act as design or art hub where networking and making connections with like-minded people is possible. In essence we would like to promote a community rather than just a business.

K- It’s a lot of work getting it all going though, and we’ve had some issues with the council already in terms of what class of shop we are. So doing the research is pretty imperative.

M- It’s not uncommon to get mixed information about what your allowed to do and what your not allowed to do. 

 

M- We’ll we actually started out with the business idea first.

K- It started out as an online business which Marty set up, I was basically doing clothing design, and liaising with people in that context where customers could purchase clothing online. We then got an outlet in James place and were there for about a year and a half. I have been involved with dance and performance so I was making clothing for stage performance, so the logical progression was to move to this where we are combining it all together. But yeah we definitely are around each other 24 hours a day, which can add extra pressures.

M- But it can also be good thing, because if you’re at work all the time separately it can also be hard to spend time together.

K-There’s not one other person that I would want to work with over Marty. 

 

M- Well we do work well together, we seem to have a lot of ideas that even if they aren’t the same combine together well.

K- We can usually align them. 

 

 

K- Well it’s good, but there are something’s that don’t work, like cleaning, but I usually end up doing that (laughing) But we do have a lot of support and people helping us out which has been great. 

 

M- Well we basically want to get it to the stage where it’s running smoothly and we can employ enough staff to look after the place so we can go for a design trip to Japan and Europe and check out the fashion there. 

 

M- Yeah, definitely, we would like to bring ideas back to Adelaide. We’ve been working non-stop for the last couple of years, so we’re just going to keep on going for now. 

 

K- It definitely is but we would rather be giving it go than the alternative.