Vision to Venture Avail Design story - From a milking shed in Gippsland Australia to national supply... what a journey.

Neil Betts
Oct 9
2 min read

“Success isn’t just about the idea — it’s about faith, persistence, and lifting each other up along the way.”

Vision to Venture Avail Design story, it starts with A Meeting in 2017

In 2017, I was involved in Startup Gippsland, a regional program aimed at helping promising founders in Victoria’s Gippsland region scale beyond their local constraints.

It was in that program that I first met Dave Sayers, a bright and determined entrepreneur who was building Avail Design. At the time, his operation was modest: working from a repurposed milking shed on his parents’ farm, he was designing and manufacturing bathroom accessibility hardware, that is grab rails, shower seats, and accessories that combined form and function.

From our earliest conversations, it was clear Dave had something special: a design sensibility, a tenacious ethic, and a deep commitment to creating products that people would use. I came alongside him as a mentor, helping him think through supply chain challenges, product-market fit, regulatory considerations, and how to scale without losing integrity.

The Hard Yards

Those years were not easy. There were moments of doubt, resource constraints, and the challenge of making something physical, useful, durable and meeting regulatory requirements in a conservative market. But Dave pushed forward, iterating, refining, learning. Slowly but surely, Avail began to gain traction.

I recall conversations about logistics (“How do you get your rails to a national distributor?”), about margins (“How do you make this financially sustainable?”), and about vision (“If you could scale across Australia, what would that look like?”). Each step forward involved risk, grit, and accompaniment.

The Reunion

Last Saturday, I had the delight of hosting Dave and his family here in the UK. Dave had been visiting the UK and the Grand Designs Show. Over coffee and conversation, we paused to reflect.

Today, Avail is no longer a farm-based side hustle, it’s a licensed product line distributed by national suppliers across Australia and New Zealand. It’s a brand that now stands in showrooms, in homes, in accessible spaces built on a foundation of design, purpose and perseverance.

As we sat together, I felt gratitude for having been part (in a small way) of that journey but more than that, admiration for how far he’s come.

What This Story Teaches Us

Small beginnings don’t limit big outcomes: The milking shed is a powerful metaphor: you don’t need perfect facilities to begin. You need conviction, resourcefulness, and a willingness to start.
Mentorship matters more than you think: Sometimes it's asking a tough question, introducing someone to a contact, challenging assumptions, or simply believing in them. These inputs can compound.
Scale with integrity: It’s one thing to grow; it’s another to grow without losing the core values and quality that made you special in the first place.
Celebrate the journey: Often we fixate on milestones (funding rounds, distribution contracts) and skip over the lived experience, the moments of failure, the pivoting, the resilience. Yet those are the formative chapters.