Mr McCardle has launched H20 Wipes — a business importing, packaging and distributing an innovative alternative to the usual face wipe.

The wipes start life as highly-compressed bamboo viscose, which expands to many times its original size with just 15ml of water to become a reusable, and harmful chemical and perfume-free face wipe.

Mr McCardle first saw the bamboo viscose concept in Bali, and decided there was a market for it here.

He launched the business on less than $5000 and is already distributing to camping, cycling and infant stores in South Australia and interstate.

H20 Wipes won a Mix102.3 and Telstra “next big idea/innovation’’ award recently.

Mr McCardle, who has a background in sales, said he had always had an entrepreneurial bent, and had been on the lookout for the right opportunity.

It has been a two year journey while Mr McCardle also worked full time, with the business launching in earnest four months ago.

He is now focused on building sales.

“The main demographics will be camping stores and mums with children, and when the new shipment comes in we’ll be focusing on restaurants as well,’’ he said.

Mr McCardle has designed the packaging, which includes small, lightweight tubes of wipes and larger refill packs.

There is also the scope for companies to use the product as a branding exercise by affixing their own marketing materials to the tubes.

“The initial production I brought in was 100,000 pods and I’ve moved most of that already,’’ Mr McCardle said.

“This will expand as well, there’s going to be organic oils which you can add to water and make it a refresher towel to enhance the experience.’’

Mr McCardle is aiming to run the business as a wholesaler, rather than competing with his clients online.

Mr McCardle said once volume had built sufficiently he would look at buying machinery to produce the product locally.