About TKO Products

TKO Products started in 2012 with a newly married couple, some ridiculously expensive outdoor chairs and a very basic Vistaprint website.

Not long after we got married, my husband and I went looking for outdoor chairs and couldn't believe what Australian retailers were charging for products we knew were coming out of China. We figured there had to be a better way to do it.
So we went direct.

The first TKO Products range was exactly one chair: a white Americana. I had a one-page Vistaprint website, dropped flyers around the neighbourhood and ran the whole thing as a side hustle alongside my marketing work. Then people actually started buying them.

Fourteen years later, the range is considerably bigger than one white chair. TKO furniture now heads out to homes, venues, event hire companies, restaurants, wineries and resorts all over Australia.

The business has changed a lot since those early days, but the reason we started it hasn't. We thought people were paying too much for good furniture, not that they should be buying cheaper, lower-quality furniture instead. There's a difference.

We still want our pricing to make sense, but I'm not interested in bringing in low-quality gear just to hit a price point.

The TKO Name Is a Family Thing

TKO was actually around before TKO Products. My husband is a third-generation business owner behind TKO Welding, so when we needed a name for the new business, keeping TKO in the family made sense.

There are a few of us now: TKO Products, TKO Outdoors, TKO Bollards, TKO Pty Ltd for the welding side, and now TKO Boats.
TKO Products is still very much a family business too. I run it day to day from my home office in Brisbane, and when the workshop is overflowing with stock, the family gets roped in.

A normal day starts with a walk and feeding the chickens, followed by yelling at the kids, dealing with my husband, dealing with freight companies, cleaning up whatever needs cleaning up, and then getting up and doing it all again tomorrow.

Somewhere in there, George the peacock usually puts on his afternoon dance for Pricilla the peahen. It's not a particularly glamorous head office, but it is very TKO.

If I Wouldn't Have It at Home, I Won't Sell It

New chairs don't go straight from a supplier's catalogue onto the TKO website. They come home with me first.

I'll usually have a chair sitting in my lounge room for at least a week so I can actually use it and see what it's like to live with. Some of our resin chairs have been sitting outside at home for five or six years now because I want to know what happens to them after years in Australian weather, not just how good they look when they come out of the box.

I visit the factories in China myself too. I want to know where the products are coming from and what we're actually buying before I ask someone else to spend their money on it.

Some products come from further afield, our thermometers come from the US, but the rule is the same wherever we're sourcing from. We don't stock something just because it's cheap.

Sometimes the Testing Gets Interesting

One of our faux oakwood resin chairs had been sitting outside near the fire pit for a while when my husband spotted it and started worrying I'd left a real timber chair out there to get ruined.
He genuinely thought it was wood.

We've seen the practical side of that with customers too. Former rugby league player Shane Webcke had a timber chair his dog had been slobbering on, and after seeing the resin version at Ellangowan Woolshed and how well it held up to normal everyday use, made the switch.

That's the sort of thing I'm interested in when I'm testing a product. It's not just whether a chair looks good when it arrives. I want to know what it's going to be like once someone actually lives with it, moves it around, leaves it outside and generally treats it like furniture rather than a showroom piece. 

Some Things We Make a Little Closer to Home

Our collapsible fire pits are one part of TKO we're particularly proud of because they're laser cut right here in Australia.

They're made by Wilson, who is an absolute legend. Before a new design gets built, he'll send through a 3D render so we can work through it properly first and see how it's going to come together.
We've also had the chance to create some of our own products over the years. The Safari, Kangas, Aussie Outback and ANZAC chairs were all designed by me rather than picked straight from an existing supplier range. You can see our Australian-made collapsible fire pits here. 

From Neighbourhood Flyers to Hamilton Island

Considering TKO started with me dropping flyers around the neighbourhood trying to sell one style of white chair, it's still pretty surreal seeing where our furniture ends up.

These days you'll find TKO chairs in event and function hire businesses, wineries, cafes, restaurants and resorts all over Australia.

We've supplied businesses from event hire companies in Alice Springs and Darwin through to Perth Racing, Pan Pacific, Hamilton Island and Daydream Island, where you'll find TKO ghost chairs. AV Partners have bought from us too, and our black Americana chairs have even been used by the Red Cross for its mobile blood banks.
Then there are all the smaller venues, businesses and hire companies around the country that have been buying from us over the years, which is really where this whole thing started.

If you're fitting out a venue, building a hire fleet or replacing furniture that's seen one event too many, you can have a look through our event and function furniture here. 

You Might Need 100 Chairs. But You Always Need the Right 100 Chairs.

Before TKO, I worked in marketing and also spent time working at the Census. It probably explains why I still tend to pull a business apart a bit when someone calls looking for furniture.

How many chairs do you actually need? How often are they being moved? Where are they being stored? Are they staying outside? Is this for the occasional function or are they going in and out every weekend?

Because the answer isn't always just "buy this chair".
We've been working with venues and event businesses since 2012, so if you're not sure what will suit the way your business actually operates, call and ask. I'd rather work out what you actually need before you order than sell you something that doesn't make sense for the job.

Still Not Sure? Talk to Us

We might have a much nicer website than our original one-page Vistaprint version, and thankfully we don't need to drop flyers around the neighbourhood anymore, but one thing hasn't changed: you can still actually talk to us.

TKO is based in Brisbane, with the business run from my home office rather than a public showroom, and we ship Australia wide. If you've got a question about a product, an order or what will work for your space, get in touch.

If we know the answer, we'll tell you. If we don't, we'll find out.
Browse the full TKO range here.  
Find out more about shipping and collection here. 
Or get in touch with us here.
ABN: 48 121 167 422