In late 1993, Antony and Sherrin Gugenberger resigned from the Queensland Education Department and co-founded a company that now is called Fruition Australia Pty Ltd.
Antony was initially a secondary school teacher in the areas of Science and Maths: Physics, Chemistry, Maths B and C. He completed his Diploma of Education in 1986 and was posted to Middlemount State High School in central Queensland. After a couple of years he completed a Grad Dip of Computer Education. Antony became a subject area coordinator and wrote work programs that the Board of Senior Secondary School Education used as model programs for the rest of the state.
Sherrin was originally a secondary school music teacher having acquired a Bachelor of Arts: Music Education Degree from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. After six years of secondary school teaching in Brisbane, she accepted a secondment to the Queensland Education Department as a consultant for the Alcohol and Drug Education Unit. Her secondment led her to provide professional development training for high school teachers in Central and North Western Regions of Queensland. She was posted to Central Regional Office and based in Rockhampton. After her consultancy, she was promoted to the position of Senior Mistress/Deputy Principal, and was subsequently posted to Middlemount State High School.
In the middle of 1991, Antony and Sherrin were re-located to Brisbane. During 1993, when Sherrin was a Deputy Principal at Ferny Grove State High School, she came in contact with the software that Fruition now uses, as Education Queensland was trialling the software at her school. By the end of 1993, Antony and Sherrin had resigned from the Department, established a Company called Applied Learning Systems (ALS) and located a Learning Centre in Upper Mount Gravatt.
Originally, the Learning Centre housed twenty-five (25) computers in a large office space that previously had been a Commonwealth Bank. Throughout the early operations, Sherrin and Antony came in touch with TM5 a group of lawyers, accountants and designers who specialised in Trade Marketing. As a result, and after some set backs, Fruition was conceptualised with its dynamic and distinctive character, colours, position statement and icon.
In 1995, Antony and Sherrin took six computers from the site at Upper Mount Gravatt and established a boutique learning centre at Oriel Road in Clayfield. This proved a most successful initiative and formed the basis of the model for smaller learning centres that characterise Fruition Tuition today.
As a result, the large learning centre at Upper Mount Gravatt was dismantled and divided into smaller centres over time. Ferny Grove State High School invited Fruition to operate a learning centre in their school grounds after school hours and this occurred for approximately eighteen months. The next centre was located at the Metropol Shopping Centre at Carindale, and then followed the Everton Hills Centre. The Clayfield Learning Centre was relocated from Oriel Road to the corner of Sandgate Road and Adelaide Streets in 1996; this is now the location of the National Office. For several years, Fruition Tuition, as it was now called operated with four learning centres. In approximately 1998, Fruition began to expand its operation to include learning centres at Bulimba, Rosalie, Sunnybank, Windsor and finally Yeronga. The Windsor learning centre was relocated to Days Road the Grange at Easter time 2004. Yeronga joined in with Indooroopilly.
Antony and Sherrin set some goals at the very beginning of their business. They understood the principles of duplication and were keen to document systems and processes as they developed their business. The entire project required positive attitudes, high risk taking ability, stickability, faith and the capacity to explore and investigate ways to make Fruition a viable and sustainable business. The most difficult areas proved to be sales, promotion and marketing, and staffing. While they always dreamed of a national company with fifty (50) learning centres, there were many periods in time when they were grateful just to survive another day.
Some of the most foundational precepts or principles that underpinned the operations of Fruition were centred around free enterprise precepts of reward for effort, being a server of others, seeking first to understand and then to be understood, honesty, and old fashioned integrity 'do what you say you are going to do'. There was an instinctive urge to make a significant difference to the lives of the students and families they had the privilege and honour to assist. In 1997 Fruition was dedicated to God and Antony and Sherrin realised that their business was a kind of ministry to children and families.
Antony explored many options to try to find the best way to link staff to the success of the individual centres. Profit sharing, bonus systems, and a variety of managerial levels with differing responsibilities linked to salary packages were implemented and evaluated. Franchising was explored with a variety of experts over a number of years as Antony and Sherrin knew that for them to achieve their original goal of creating a vibrant national company, they needed to surround themselves with like-minded people. Franchising was introduced in mid 2005.