Young Alumnus of the Year

When he left high school, like many of his peers, Andrew Nichols didn’t have a clear vision for his future. He bypassed university at the time and started his career on the sales floor with retail juggernaut, Harvey Norman in ​​Brisbane.  

“As a teenager, you learn a lot about people through sales; how to interact, manage expectations and how to read situations,” Andrew said. 

The corporate world beckoned and Andrew rose to the position of Corporate Administration Manager while still in his teens, but he was equally drawn to further study. 

Thanks to his work experience, Andrew was admitted to the Graduate Certificate in Business. 

Over six years, he went on to complete a Graduate Diploma and his Master of Business Administration. 

“With Southern Cross, I got the feeling they are not just signing you up for courses, they genuinely want you to get across the finish line,” he said. 

“It was a steep learning curve, but you should always get out of your comfort zone, and the University was so encouraging.” 

He joined Woolworths Supermarkets in Sydney, later becoming Category Manager at Big W and recently Commercial Manager for Everyday Rewards. 

As Andrew’s career took off, his choice to study with Southern Cross continued to pay off. 

“I travelled a lot with my work, and was often just sitting in hotels,” he said. “Online study was perfect for me to balance study and work.” 

He praised the flexibility of the courses that allowed him to hit the pause button whenever his workload increased – like the time, over dinner with friends, he and his partner Liam decided to launch their own luxury fragrance brand, Mr Hux. 

“There were many sleepless nights trying to juggle an executive job with multiple assignments at the pointy end of a master's degree, while also preparing to launch our own company,” he said. “That is when you know what busy is.”  

Starting your own business is an enormous challenge, but their goals were even more ambitious: create Australia’s first accessible, genderless fragrance. 

Sustainability was a priority, with the desire to make a big impact as a brand with as small an environmental footprint as possible. “All our packaging is fully recyclable or reusable and any plastic that we do have in the brand is the highest grade of recyclable that you can potentially get. We're really trying to turn a corner here and set an example for other brands, potentially big brands, to start following that path,” said Andrew. 

Andrew credits his MBA with giving him some essential business foundations, both in the corporate world and in his own business. “Starting my own business, putting all that theory into practice and helping me with the different nuances of business, which I potentially would have been unprepared for.” 

With a brain for numbers, Andrew happily leaves the creative side of the business to Liam and their brand ambassador, Huxley, one of two pampered russet-coloured Hungarian Vizsla pups in the household. 

“Eighteen months on, when you see people buying your product, giving good feedback, and with ​​eight stockists around the country, it’s all worth it,” he said. 

Andrew plans to pursue, at ‘full throttle’, both the fragrance business and his Senior Executive ambitions, supported by his life-changing Southern Cross MBA experience.