The MGC Story

Referred to in the media as “Budding Richard Branson”, 24 year-old Pete Williams has been an entrepreneur from an extremely young age. Back during his school holidays, when most kids are at the pool or kicking the football, Pete was renowned for creating ventures from arranging trading-card swap meets at their holiday home to creating and selling greeting cards to raise money for the Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal.

Then during 2003 whilst reading the book The One Minute Millionaire, Pete Williams got a business idea like most of us have at some point, but unlike most he took action and went on to be referred to in the media as “budding Richard Branson”.

Within the pages of The One Minute Millionaire  is the story of Paul Hartunian, who in the 1980s whilst the Brooklyn Bridge was being redeveloped, had the insight to ‘salvage’ the timber which was the walkway of the bridge. He then went about creating 5” x 11” certificates outlining the history of the bridge, attaching a small piece of the timber and selling them for US$14.95 each. This simple and unique venture ended up making him over US$2 million.  This sparked Pete’s entrepreneurial interest and he began to think of how this venture could be replicated in Australia.

It was during this period that the MCG was under its own redevelopment and as Australia’s number 1 sporting ground, PeteWilliams took action to recreate the certificates using the timber that was once the seating at the ‘G. On the back of a few phone calls and self-confidence he was able to track down the wrecking company which was demolishing the Ponsford stand (at this stage the Members Pavilion had not been touched), who informed him they had a significant amount of timber from the seating and flooring as hoped, however to his amazement they also had a considerable amount of the world famous MCC Crested Carpet - which originally lay in the members dining room. After viewing the carpet lying in the corner of the wreckers’ warehouse the following morning he took the entire sum along with a mass of timber at a very ‘pleasing’ price. 

From that point on he developed and created a series of limited edition sports memorabilia pieces which sold from $395 - $1495. These included a photo of the G, a piece of the famous carpet and even a limited number series that had their frame created out of the timber which was once the stadium.Amongst a wide range of creative and unique marketing techniques and strategies employed, a press release created with the headline ‘21 Year Old Sells MCG For Under $500’ generated over $50,000 of FREE advertising and publicity in media via Channel 7 news, Herald Sun articles, AM and FM Radio interviews and trade magazine articles – which generated a huge proportion of sales at no cost.