feature article

Cairns Dynamic Designers

City Life Magazine, October 2006

When Aaron Coshaw left school he was enrolled in a Science degree at Sydney University, but when the time came, he has decided he’d be better off working for a year first. His first job was a mail boy at ACP (Magazines) and, through a series of promotions, worked his way up through the ranks into the upper echelons of Australian media. Needless to say, science never came up as a career option again.

He carried on working for several of Sydney’s leading magazine companies (publishing and art directing) before making the switch to television. It was the perfect education for his future business venture. Aaron was made Creative Director at CTC productions, the company responsible for Burke’s Backyard (magazine and TV show), plus Backyard Blitz and Renovation Rescue.

“I spent most of the time on Burke’s Backyard, coming up with makeover ideas for the magazine and TV show, and then either Don would find the places or I would. Working so closely with Don was great. He’s the most inspirational and intelligent man I’d ever worked for. He goes 100 miles an hour and is so passionate about what he does. He really gets stuck into it – he’s on his knees rolling the turf out, doing everything ... I learnt so much from Dan. I also worked with Jamie Durie and the Blitz team ... they worked pretty hard as well.” But after four years in that role, he decided to take time-out and revisited his investment property in Cairns. “And then I ended up staying. I loved it! I never went back,” he laughs.

He started working at the Cairns Post and while he was there, met Richard (aka Richie) Stevens, another makeover specialist in the art department. Ironically they both worked for the same companies (ACP and Fairfax magazines) in Sydney, but never met until they came to Cairns. While working at The Post they won plenty of awards including the Australian Tourism Award for Best Tourism Publication.

Richie, a former Melbournite, had been living in Cairns since finishing high school, and continued to leave town for work stints in Melbourne and Sydney. “I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Cairns,” admits Richie, who studied a Diploma of Multimedia at Quantum, before moving into marketing and graphic design, including working at the Women’s Weekly in Sydney. But in his spare time he indulged his passion for property development, something he’d had a taste for from an early age. “Properties started off as just a hobby,” says Richie. “We’d had a few great wins on the property market doing our own stuff and then six months ago we said let’s leave the office design world and move into the property world. I moved back from Sydney, we spent a month designing our website (www.insideoutstylists.com.au) and business structure, and went about producing marketing material.” “We thought Cairns was ready for property stylists, so away we went, styling properties ready for sale. We approached real estate agents who refered us to their clients who passed our name on to their friends, and through word of mouth it’s getting bigger and bigger,” Aaron says.

And now it seems Cairns can’t get enough of these extremely creative property stylists. Insideout services now include inspiration reports and colour consultations (tailor-made DIY reports for those who like to do their own renovations); transformation of properties for sale (with outstanding returns for the owners); furniture hire packages (perfect for new or empty properties) (half-day furniture hire and styling - useful for open-house inspections), and apartment and townhouse complex renovations.

“We do everything from $500 consultancy jobs to large refurbishments of apartment blocks,” says Aaron. They’ve also just completed the colour scheme for Woree State School, as well as started in on the commercial buildings. “We’ll paint up a piece of the brick or a piece of the gutter and take it into them, just to show them exactly how the colours will turn out on the different materials,” says Richie. “There’s someone new ringing up everyday. Someone last week even rang from Darwin, asking if we had a branch up there! And we attract a lot of Sydney-based investors who say “go spruce it up”, and we transform (their property) for them before they sell it,” says Aaron.

Their move to Cairns hasn’t completely cut them off from national exposure as they still contribute Insideout makeover columns to Burke’s Backyard Magazine. “We like to show that you can create good looks that aren’t expensive,” says Aaron. “Doing the magazines and property styling ... they go together, they’re complementary,” says Richie. “Everyone loves houses in magazines and we make every property look like it belongs in a glossy magazine!” For more details on Inside Out Property Stylists – 40410690