12:00a.m. 3rd September 2008

Alan and Liisa McNeish at their LSComms Sourcing Warehouse are multiple business owners. Photo: Michaela O'Neill/177959

January 16, 1991 has gone down in history as the day the US launched the heaviest air assault the world had ever seen, marking the start of operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi army.

The previous night was equally significant for the Sunshine Coast’s Liisa Savimaki.

She was working as a pharmacist at a hospital in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

On the night of January 15, Liisa had attended a party on a nearby British Aerospace compound, appropriately called “The End of the World party”.

It was there she met Alan McNeish, an Scottish avionics engineer who was employed by British Aerospace working on contract to the Saudi Air Force to work on their Tornado fighter jets.

The couple met, fell in love, were married, and in 1993, Lisa brought her new husband back to the Coast to live.

Not surprisingly, Alan couldn’t get a job in avionics, so he set up an antenna installation company called X-Mod.

That was the start of an amazing journey for the couple that has seen Liisa named Sunshine Coast Business Women’s Network Corporate Businesswoman of the Year, and Alan helping found so many different companies he struggles to remember them all.

While Alan was working on X-Mod, studying accountancy at night school and building spec homes at Sippy Downs, the couple was also working on plans for a chain of pharmacies.

Given her experience and qualifications, it was Liisa who opened their first AusCare Pharmacy at Chancellor Park in 1996, just three weeks after giving birth to their first child.

They now have a string of pharmacies stretched from Sandstone Point near Bribie Island to Rockhampton, with business partners in each one.

Alan sold X-Mod in 1998 following a back injury which kept him in bed for 7 months, but it was two weeks before the injury his world was set back on its heels.

“In 1998 I discovered I was adopted. I was 32 and quite upset about not knowing my who my real mother or father were,” he said.

“I took 12 months off to find my mum. It turned out she was from South Africa, was working in Washington DC and had been married to a Portuguese film director and then a Columbian businessman. She had never had any more children after having ovarian cancer at 26 which is one of the reasons we support Bloomhill Cancer so much.”

After discovering who he was and where he had come from, it was back home and back to family and more businesses for Alan.

In 2004, he and Liisa set up a furniture, houseware, gifts and cookware shop at Chancellor Park called House Effects.

That was followed by others at Currimundi, Coolum and Buderim, before they realised they needed bigger stores, buying Open House in Hervey Bay.

Stores in Gladstone and Wynnum soon followed (more are about to open in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore), before they sold out of the Coast-based House Effects shops. To cut out the middle man, they also set up a wholesale outlet in Brisbane.

Next came handbags. The couple has a handbag factory in the Philippines which makes and exports bags under the Funbags Australia brand.

Alan is also a partner in an IT company called All Digital Services, partners in a medical centre in Little Mountain, and owns another business called LSCOMMS Sourcing which sources products for businesses in Australia and overseas including hotel furniture and artifacts in Dubai.

As an extension of that business, they have just opened an LSCOMMS Sourcing warehouse in Hoopers Road at Kunda Park.

Alan said he knew it seemed like a lot of businesses when you listed them all together, but added each had arisen out of a need in another.

He also said setting up and running multiple businesses wasn’t rocket science.

“It’s about focussing on the outcome and making decisions quickly ... and it’s not all about Liisa and I,” he said.

“We’ve got 13 business partners and we don’t tell them how to do stuff. It’s a team effort so it’s important to surround yourself with good people.