In July 2025, Trevor Bowman, the owner of PHS and designer of their products, was asked to be the key-note speaker at the QLD Brisbane Connect Event hosted by the Brisbane Chamber of Commerce about what it takes to participate in procurement for major events.
In this Q&A blog, the event captured Trevor’s top insights and advice for businesses looking to participate in procurement for major events.
It was an enlightening event that provided a valuable chance for Queensland businesses to unite and discuss potential opportunities that are available through the Olympics procurement path. Trevor showed that businesses, both large and small, can truly capitalise on major events and get involved.
In July 2025, myself, Radmila Bowman, and Francisco Arellano, were invited by Brisbane Chamber of Commerce to attend a Q&A session at the Brisbane Connect event to share mine and the companies experience within the sporting industry and what it takes to participate in procurement for major events. Here, I wanted to give you breakdown of the event and share some highlights from the session so you can get help preparing for major events.
The background to PHS started with my lack of ability to play basketball at the time. Shocker! On weekends, I used to head down to the local school to shoot some hoops where I would find that a lot of the rings were either broken or missing. As a noobie basketballer you can imagine the frustration. Later, I went on to designing a ring that I thought would solve the issue of broken rings.
After designing my first ring, I contacted a local spring maker to help him build it, which then led to an unknowing business venture. My wife and I went on to join the Inventor’s Association in New South Wales where I met another inventor who wanted to take me to the Chicago exhibition in the US. Guess what? I went! I got flown to the US with my fellow inventor where I met other Basketball Manufacturers who liked the Basketball Ring I made. From here, one thing led to another, and my OzRing Basketball Ring was born!
As of today, PHS have over 300 in-house manufactured products from a wide range of sports that are used by Stadiums, Schools, Councils and residential properties around the world – such as Robina Cbus Stadium, Sydney Olympic Park and XXI Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
When PHS started, there was a lot of competition in the sporting space, so I decided that I’d personlise my products by giving them an individual name – an identity – as opposed to a random number. I also had the mentality of designing products to fix existing issues, as opposed to creating from other designs. Because of this, I found that PHS were no longer competing for the same opportunities as other competitors because they didn’t have anything that were equivalent to my designs.
Myself, and the PHS team, have always focused on solving problems, so when it comes to creating new product designs, we always listen closely to customers and builders. Someone’s always got a problem, and we want to be the ones to solve it.
For us, innovation is at the forefront of our product designs as we’ll have something unique to offer, so it puts us in a really good position. This has really helped us in the past as we won a contract last minute, specifically because we had a very exclusive item.
We have to mention another important note that built our success – persistence. We got our Thor Hammer Throw Cages into the 2018 XXI Commonwealth Games at the last minute by being persistent. The years leading up to the Games, we had put expressions of interest and were intending to tender, however we hadn’t back about anything.
So, you know what? We took matters into our own hands, and we reached out to them to find out about the quoting process, and they told us that they were about to sign up an overseas supplier in the next couple of days for the Games. We didn’t want to miss this chance in our home state, so we went back to the organising committee and said, “you have to give us a chance”.
We didn’t know what it would take for them to give us a chance and cancel an overseas supplier, so what did we do? We gave them a deal that was hard to refuse. We decided to rent the Thor Cages to them for $1 each, and then only charge for our services to set up the cages. Call us crazy, but you know what? It worked!
A dollar isn’t much, but it was worth it. After the Games, we already had 2 customers lined up to buy the Cages for 85% of our market value, plus we were also on International TV. We then went on to Exhibit at FSB in cologne which then led to us finding a UK agent who has sold more than 25 cages across the UK.
It felt pretty amazing. We basically gave away our Thor Cages to get into the supply chain, but the payoff was worth it from the aftermath of the games and having our legacy cages featured in Queensland. It opened the international door for us along the way which was never expected.
Our motivation for being part of the games wasn’t for financial gain; it was for what the future would look like for us after and the potential opportunities that could come with it. When the Comm Games accepted us and our products to one of the best venues, it sent a signal to rest of the national and international community that we were the ones to work with and on the rise.
Even to the Australian community and procurement teams, it was a good sign. It showed that they can buy from a local company and get innovative, custom products that can do a better job than sourcing from international suppliers.
Major sporting events, like the Comm Games, are a great leeway for smaller businesses to get involved as they will bring a lot of work through upgrades, as well as in the lead up due to the need of training facilities. Internation and local athletes will need to train ahead of the event, so there’s always work involved as smaller training facilities will need to be built and upgraded to accommodate for these events.
In saying this, with the lead up to the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, it’s certainly worth a look at all the various training facilities that will need upgrades, new equipment, or services going into the Games, as well as other major events.
When we were accepted for the Commonwealth Games, we actually opened up opportunities for other local businesses and suppliers as we ended up procuring components from 50 different suppliers, mainly from the Gold Coast. These were for the nuts, bolts, wheels and everything else.
This is why we believe it’s a great reason for the people running these events to source locally for these big events and choose Australian manufacturers, as opposed to overseas companies. All that additional money and support go into the local community.
We had the opportunity to put in a tender with a company from the US to supply all the athletic equipment, with the provision being that they use our cages. At the time, we didn’t have the full range of their requirements on the tender, and the US company had a track record of supplying the rest of the equipment to that level of event.
In this case, we didn’t win that one. However, it was a good experience for us as it really identified the kinds of opportunities we, as a smaller supplier, could partner with other businesses on and what we’re capable of.
I think the biggest thing we weren’t expecting was the amount of time it would take to supply for an event of this magnitude. For example, we had our prices made up based on the cost and expenses to manufacture a product, have it delivered and attend the event. However, we didn’t have any clue to the amount of time it would really take to fill out all the necessary forms, attend different meetings and carve out time replying to emails.
Ir was pretty much occupied and taken out of action in terms of BAU and my wife looked after all our other customers during this time, being the glue of PHS, while I was focusing on the Games.
In one instance, we had some team members from PHS setting up at a venue on the Gold Coast and they arrived at 4:30am with a trailer at the front gates. To get through, the vehicle had to be scanned, and they ended up getting flagged. Do you know what for? A bag of lollies! Something random and unpredictable that you can’t expect that caused a time delay, which also meant that we had to pay our employee’s overtime.
I have to say, if you’re looking for financial reward, it might not be the best focus as it’s more about the benefits and the fact that it will give your business confidence in having delivered a project at that level. Future projects will become a lot easier with experience and inspires you to do new things and go in unchartered territory.
In my opinion, I believe that businesses should look to prepare themselves to showcase that they’re a trustworthy and capable company – that you can truly deliver on what you say you’re able to. In saying this, it’s worth focussing on the areas you know you’re good at and representing a clean image of yourselves.
Generally, for big events and projects, procurement teams only want to deal with one entity, so if you choose to collaborate with another business, it’s good to know who in the partnership is going to put themselves forward and manage that relationship.
