“Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.” Standing in the supermarket aisle, Mark Yates, the founder of Kine Australia, looked at a packet of wipes he’d bought for years and saw them differently. Plastic-based, mostly water. “You’re effectively shipping water across the world in packaging,” he says.

Wipes are one of those everyday buys you chuck in the trolley without much thought. For Yates, it was an aha moment. A question began to form. Why were there no other options? And just like that, Kine was born.

Kine Australia now produces Australian-made wipes and cloths with a focus on plant-based fibres, local manufacturing and higher environmental standards. It’s an outlier in a sea of plastic.

“As a parent, you think more about what you’re using daily, especially on your kids,” Yates says. “That disconnect between convenience and impact made me question why a better option didn’t already exist.”

From tech and retail to wipes

Before Kine, Yates spent the majority of his career in technology and program delivery, while also helping build and scale SILK Laser Clinics. It was a blend of operations, manufacturing and customer experience which gave him the perfect experience to spot gaps and build solutions for a saturated market.

He says wipes stood out because they were both everywhere, yet strangely ignored.

“It’s a product people rely on constantly but rarely question, despite its environmental footprint.”

That made it fertile ground for disruption. The trouble was, making a genuinely better wipe is harder than it sounds. Nobody wants an eco wipe that falls apart mid-job.

“A wipe has to perform first,” Yates says. “Getting the balance between strength during use and breakdown after disposal required extensive testing and iteration.”

So Yates went deep into research mode. He bought packets from competitors, tested them all, studied what worked and what didn’t. He says small changes in fibre or formulation can create big differences in performance.

Opting for Australian-made

That obsession with the details led to one of Kine’s core decisions: manufacture locally.

“I wouldn’t start this business without it being Australian made,” Yates says. “It just wouldn’t align with what I would want a business in Australia to be.”

Local production means better quality control, faster product improvements, lower transport emissions and backing Australian jobs. It also means a tougher commercial road.

“You get no benefits from government or retailers versus a product made in China,” he says. “The big retail grocery stores all preference cheap, plastic, overseas made wipes.”

That’s the reality many Australian manufacturers know well: consumers love the made-local story, but price pressure in the aisle is brutal.

Mark took an eco-first approach to Kine’s beauty cloths.

Bootstrapping the business

Kine was self-funded in the early days, which sharpened every decision.

“Early on you have no real choice but to fund it from your own pocket. This makes you highly focused on ensuring every dollar spent brings the business value.”

That discipline still shapes the business. Yates says one of the biggest lessons in product businesses is how a tiny change can create a domino effect. There are no small decisions.

“A small change to improve an ingredient might mean a change to the production method, website, packaging, carton, all needing updates. Then that may affect your cost, margins, cash flow and pricing.”

Like every founder, he’s had misses too. A trial of flushable hand wipes failed because they ripped too easily. Rather than stubbornly forcing it, Kine pivoted to a non-flushable version that performed better while still meeting environmental goals.

“It is initially frustrating,” he says. “But you need to look forward and work out how it can be resolved.”

Gaining customer trust

Kine’s early traction has come through direct-to-consumer sales, particularly Instagram, backed by word of mouth and a growing subscription model. Yates says subscriptions matter because they turn expensive one-off customer acquisition into long-term relationships.

“You hope to delight your new customers with a product they love, so they subscribe and keep ordering.”

It’s working. Customer subscriptions continue to rise, and positive reviews keep landing.

Still, Yates is realistic about consumer behaviour. He doesn’t believe shoppers will suddenly became saints.

“Convenience and price still matter enormously,” he says. “The opportunity is to give them a better option that still works within real life.”

That practicality may be Kine’s secret weapon. It isn’t preaching from a compost heap. Yates is trying to make a better product people actually want. He plans to launch four new products in the future: hand, makeup, pet and surface cloths, expanding Kine’s range beyond its existing body and baby cloths.

And if he had to boil down what he’s learned as a founder?

“Persistence matters more than almost anything else,” he says. “There is no single breakthrough moment that carries you. It is usually a long series of decisions, adjustments, and steady work.”

Find out more about Kine Australia

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