Barry Amor and his company, Digispectro, are imagining better for the world with their award-winning invention—CompleXion.

The handheld device perfectly captures the colour of a person’s skin, in all lighting conditions—a notoriously difficult challenge. This enables cosmetic manufacturers to create unique formulas with perfect colour matching.

“But it goes beyond that,” Barry explains. “We can use it to help monitor skin disorders like vitiligo and melasma, and in the future we believe it will detect inflammation beneath the skin—like swelling or melanoma—CompleXion can also be linked to an electron microscope to provide a further record of skin conditions.”

Like all innovations, making CompleXion a reality was a task that required expert assistance and advice along the way.

Clever with technology.

Barry might not be someone you’d expect to solve cosmetic problems—his background is in industrial control systems.

Barry then worked on process control systems in copper mining in Papua New Guinea. He then developed his own automation company, and then a software company.

As Executive Chair at Digispectro—the camouflage cosmetics company to help people with skin disorders—he found that none of the commercially available colour analysis devices would work.

“Nothing was practical, nothing was handheld—you couldn’t put them on a face” Barry says.

He decided to do something about it.

Advice made easy.

Barry established his company, hired his team, and found his premises—but when it came to hiring accountants, the decision had already been made over a decade ago.

“I met my accountant Shaun in Bridgeman Downs football club—unfortunately he supports the wrong team—but he’s a lovely guy. That’s where I heard about SRJ Walker Wayland, not long after that I hired them.”

The service from SRJ has made Barry a loyal client.

“I deal exclusively with Shaun and have done for 15 years—they cover bookkeeping, BAS and everything really. I use them for my personal accounts too, they’ve helped me avoid paying unnecessarily.” Barry says.

And when it came to imagining better with Digispectro, SRJ were the perfect fit.

“Strategic advice, structure advice, tax advice, whatever I need—the team is behind it doing all the work,” Barry says.

Grants served up.

That work wasn’t just helpful, it had a real-world impact that kickstarted their product.

“SRJ helped us get set up. They got us applying for innovation and development grants and were absolutely instrumental in us getting an Accelerating Commercialisation Grant.” Barry says.

“It’s not just SRJ identifying the opportunity but also helping us apply for and secure it—the strategy planning came as part of the application.”

That ACG grant paid for 50% of the research and development of CompleXion and is still doing so today, as they scale up to manufacturing.

“They also helped us get an Export Market Development Grant, which is an incentive for R&D,” Barry says. “SRJ are up on all the incentives, they handle that for all the businesses I own that have a dimension of R&D.”

Designed to succeed.

Once it was developed, CompleXion won the coveted and world-class Australian Design Award—a huge win for Barry and his company.

“It’s a fantastic promotional tool—it’ll open a lot of doors. We’d already done overseas trade shows pre-COVID—we went to Hong Kong during the riots for a cosmetics convention, people from all over the world were asking us for quotes.”

“We were scheduled to go to the CosmoProf convention in Italy, where attendance is about 700,000 people. Then the pandemic hit.”

Afterwards, it became difficult to launch a product globally and Digispectro was struggling to find a route to market.

“The Australian Design Award has unscrambled that for us. It’ll help us cut through to that international market that makes all the business sense.” Barry says.

Outcomes beyond cost.

When it comes to the service he’s received, Barry is clear on the value.

“You don’t engage with SRJ to save money on billing—it’s all about the outcomes they achieve. Of course, the invoices come in—but look at how much we’ve saved—there’s no argument there. The financial benefit speaks for itself.”

The major outcome for Barry—beyond the development of his new award-winning technology, the securing of grants, and the advice—is trust.

“Trust is a given—I trust them enormously,” he says.

Can you imagine accountants who make it easy? That’s us. For a confidential conversation with an SRJ Walker Wayland partner, contact us today.