Jessica Rudd found her business partner by accident one night. Oddly enough, he was sitting across the dinner table from her, and had been for years.
It was her husband, Albert Tse.
The daughter of ex-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd — who is a lawyer, author and intimidating entrepreneur in her own right — was in the throws of setting up her retail business and naturally began bouncing ideas of her partner, a former Macquarie banker.
“When we came to the end of each day and were sitting around the table with a high-chair covered in spaghetti, between those normal snippets of normal family life, we were talking about our day,” Rudd told the Australian Financial Review.
“I’d say a great brand approached me today. A sample would arrive and Albert would say that’s cool, I want to talk to those people. I would introduce him. Then we realised we were working together.”
It’s fitting when you consider that Rudd, 33, similarly happened upon the idea for her booming business.
She and Tse, 37, had been married for two years when they moved to Beijing in the middle of 2009.
Each time she visited Australia the new mum would return with a suitcase full of local products for her friends – which, of course, they loved.
When she returned to Brisbane in 2014 she turned the idea into an online store, “Jessica’s Suitcase“, which sells more than 150 Australian mother and baby products back into China.