Along with pictures of his then-wife Mikadie and their young son, Bates laid out his rationale for the book along with messages – some blunt, some borrowed from other websites – encouraging self-help and empowerment.LOSE IT? Because Im [SIC] sick of hearing people complain about their weight, “Ah I’m so fat” “Why can’t I lose weight” “I want to be thin like her” “I wish I had abs like him” “my thighs touch”.
This was the formula dreamt up by Dr Rob Buist, the obstetrician who had delivered Bates’ son with Mikadie . According to early creative marketing done by Bates, Aquamamma’s tagline would be: “Growing, pushing, feeding … JustBates and Buist registered Aquamamma Group with ASIC in 2012 and were both named as directors. They engaged a Brisbane manufacturer to make sachets that could be mixed into water, and kept the inventory in a storage unit Buist paid for in Bondi Junction.
Loosely, the agreement gave Mundipharma the right to manufacture and distribute the Aquamamma product in Australia, New Zealand, the US and the rest of the world, except Indonesia. No money changed hands, but Bates and Buist signed an agreement that said they would bank roughly 7 per cent of all Mundipharma’s Aquamamma sales.After years of slog, the business was finally starting to get traction. Then it all started to go wrong.
Despite getting a run of samples made, the brand never really got off the ground. In late 2014, the business partner discovered that Bates had been trying to raise fresh money through other residents in the northern beaches by telling them the pair had already personally tipped half a million dollars into the business.
“He couldn’t just up and leave because the relationship hadn’t worked,” says one onlooker, who declined to be named. “It had to be because his Aquamamma business was taking off, it was going global, he was set to make millions.” Akle had already secured a $US7.5 million grant from the US Defence Force and the plan was to manufacture Aurum+ capsules through a Swiss subsidiary and distribute them around the world.
While the Aquamamma business had been around for years, the revenues rarely inched above $40,000 a month, according to former Aquamamma staff who had direct knowledge of the company’s sales channels – a far cry from the $US225 million a year in the pitch deck. In September 2018, Bates bought a three-bedroom house on Brownell Drive in Byron’s exclusive Wategos Beach enclave for $2.65 million. Its enormous windows looked onto the Byron Bay lighthouse and the ocean beyond. The scene was set: ocean views, glamorous restaurants, and oodles of rich people. Time to get to work.But while Bates was spending millions of dollars on Byron Bay property and had turned his attention to Aurum+, Buist was running out of steam.
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