621: We Bet $200K on Bras Before Making a Single Sale — Sold 400,000 in 2 Years | Nala

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. $200 ,000. That's how much today's guests invested in their very first product order before making a single sale. And they'd never worked in fashion before. I want you to meet Chloe and Phil DeWinter. They're the co-founders of Nala, the Australian intimates brand that sold over 400 ,000 pieces in just two years, partnered with David Jones after revolutionizing how women shop for bras online. So in this episode, you're going to discover how they validated their entire product line with just 250 survey responses, the guerrilla marketing stunt that put G-strings on hundreds of car windshields in Bondi that went viral and why spending 30 % of their revenue on marketing with a 70 % repeat purchase rate became their secret to hyper growth without raising a single dollar.

1:35This is an incredibly honest conversation of what it truly takes to build and launch a product-based business with massive MOQs, negative platform bans, and scaling without losing your sanity.

1:51Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

2:04First and foremost, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. How did you start this brand? Yeah, so never thought we'd end up here, to be honest. I'm a physio and Phil's background is in sports tech. So very different to bras and underwear. And we now, we launched in 2022, but back in 2021, I was just on the hunt for some bras and underwear and looking around, didn't really find anything that suited me. I was looking for something comfortable, sustainable, affordable, but also cool that sort of spoke to me. and at the time Phil was working out what he wanted to do next I was doing which I still do an online Pilates business which was a result very much my little COVID business and we really recognized that there was just a gap in the market here in Australia and there was a real opportunity so that's where why we really went for it and yeah that's when the idea of Nala was born.

3:04yeah okay so talk me through so you had your own personal problem you saw a gap in the market this was 2021 ish you launched in october 2022 so how long did it take to bring the product to life what was moq how much did you outlay all the juicy stuff that people want to know so i think the first thing that we did was chloe was lucky enough to have this like online pilates platform where she probably had about I think it was 5 ,000 people in her database so mostly women and so she sent out a survey and asked you know what problems they have with buying underwear and a lot of the like very general like if if I could solve one problem in the world of bras and underwear what would it be yep and the insights that we got from that really formed the product roadmap you mentioned the support wire free bralette that's been one of our best sellers and keep selling out.

3:57That one came from the insights that we got from that survey. And so once we had a vision for what we wanted to do, one of the biggest challenges we had was the MOQs on bras and underwear are really high. So most sort of high level suppliers will quote you a thousand MOQs per color, per style. And so if all of a sudden you want to build a range of five or six different bras, five or six different undies, three or four colors each, all of a sudden you're looking at thousands and tens of thousands of units. And so I think in our very first order, we outlayed just over 200 grand, which was like a big, big investment.

4:34We really, we went for it and we knew that we wanted to go all in. We also didn't want to come out with just one or two products. We knew we wanted to come out with a whole collection that spoke to different people, different needs. We had a vision for that as a whole. And yeah, I guess we really invested in that. And I think on that first order, maybe we were able to negotiate down to like 500 units per color per style MOQs, but then like with the view that it would go to a thousand for our follow-up orders. And so it was a big undertaking. And I think it's a big barrier to entry for like competitors that want to get into the space.

5:10Like you can't just come in and be like, it's not a t-shirt where you can go, all right, I'm going to order 50 black, 50 white and be done with it. And so, yeah, it was a big undertaking, but luckily enough for us, I guess, you know, paid off. Yeah. Okay. So I'm curious, how many survey responses did you get? This is a common one that comes up. It wasn't that many. I think it was a couple of hundred. I looked recently. I think it was like 200 or 250. No, it wasn't that many. In my mind, I think we'd like, I was the same. I thought it was more as well. And I went back and had a look and then I was like, oh, it was just that.

5:43But out of a survey like that, okay, call it 250. It's not a huge pool of people, but everyone, there was quite a universal response to that. It was like pretty clear. A lot of the women who have struggles when it comes to bras are bigger busted. It was bigger busted women who were saying, I just want a wire-free bralette that actually fits, that's actually supportive. And looks good. And looks good, yeah. It's just, I think there are other brands out there, say like Cotton One Body and other brands who make bralettes, but nothing was really catering to bigger busts. And so that was like a huge thing that came out of that.

6:21And the other thing that is universal, I'd say like amongst all women, I'm going to even say that, is I just want a strapless bra that's comfortable. And even though there were only 250 people, we got like at least 100 people say, I want a strapless bra that's comfortable. So that gave us such clear direction on two products that we needed to make. And those two products were really successful from the first day. yeah yeah so from this survey from this insights that gave you guys the confidence to drop come on a thousand on product yeah it sounds ridiculous when you say it wasn't just the survey yeah okay what else was it i would say like delving into the industry as a whole when you look at you when you look at the bra and underwear industry in australia specifically it's filled with a lot of really great brands but they're legacy department store brands that have been around for many many years who have been doing the same thing for many many years and maybe haven't modernized or don't have such a strong online presence there are some econ brands out there but nothing when we looked at it as a whole we really thought there was an opportunity not just from a product point of view but also from a marketing point of view a marketing strategy that really spoke to women in a new way.

7:39And one of our pillars is inclusivity, and I can talk more about that, but a brand that really spoke to women in a way that spoke to them, that they could see themselves reflected through marketing and see themselves reflected through the product as well. We saw an opportunity there. That was where the real opportunity was. And the survey, yeah, definitely helped, but we saw it from a bigger picture holistically. I also think it's important just like point out that like we were in a lucky position like Chloe had another business that was doing really well yeah my previous company that I'd been working out for eight years and I was the second employee had exited so we had a bit of like a financial buffer we had some family support and so we were able to take a bit of a punch and we're at the stage in our life with no kids that we were like okay this is the right moment for us to like build something and really go for it and we you know believed in the idea and and did that but also want to like put on the table that not everyone can can do that of course from the outset so we were in a we're in a good position to to take that kind of risk i wouldn't necessarily recommend that that's what every founder should go and go and do yeah of course but like these are the real stories right like this is what it takes you know some people start you know we've done interviews with people that have started with ten thousand dollars twenty thousand dollars to launch a you know a physical product business that i exited healthish the water bottle that costs twenty thousand australian dollars so it just depends it depends on the product right that's very very telling around how much it's going to cost to start an e-commerce brand if we wouldn't have wanted to have launched with like a 20 grand product budget for example we would probably had one bra two briefs or something like that right and it just wouldn't have been enough to get cut through in the market and so that's you know how we kind of yeah got you so um you both have kind of come from very different backgrounds not backgrounds in fashion the question that some people will be thinking or asking is how did you work out how to design these products how did you work out to you know obviously we talked about the functionality of the product but what about the design is that is that not a concern or oh yeah yeah that's where we we outsourced other people to help us okay i think we um learned early on that bra construction is incredibly technical yes and exactly what you said a physio and sports tech business development man over here yes i don't know what to call you sorry salesman sales sorry yeah um yeah we knew we needed help so yeah we we we work with a team of bra designers so we think about the vision um we think about what we want to do what we want to create and then we work with people who are specifically skilled in that area who can help us actually construct them because yeah you need help it's more technical than i ever imagined and i i think pretty early on we realized that's why there aren't more bra businesses out there because of exactly how technical it is like um our support wire free bralette comes in 71 sizes now soon to be 75 right soon to be 75 sizes so yeah a lot of skews uh and creating a bra across so many sizes is so challenging and requires a lot of work and time and energy that goes into it and yeah we we outsource to get help with that yeah got you so how do you find that help and how for those that are looking you know working at creating a product and they need to use like someone to help with formulation or you know the wife all that kind of stuff how did you find and And how did you know the right to personal group to go with?

11:08Yeah. So we had some family connections in the rag trade. And I think it was part of the reason we kind of set ourselves on this was a good fit for us. So that helped finding the designers. I think like in terms of like signing off on product, very hard for me to sign off on a bra. But like, you know, Chloe and then like we have like a team of test wearers like we're about to launch a sports bra range in January. I think we've done probably 300 fit sessions on those sports bras. because again they're not kind of coming 71 sizes to begin with it might be 50 but you've got to get it right across the whole size curve and we're just absolutely you know dogmatic on making sure that the products fit properly it's kind of like a probably one of the second the second most technical product you wear behind a shoe and like you know what it's like with a shoe if a shoe doesn't fit then you won't wear it it's the same with a bra if it doesn't fit properly people aren't going to come back and buy again yeah got you so talk me through launch because you guys have had incredible growth these past couple years since you've launched a lot of e-commerce businesses post-covert boom experienced a lot of challenges this hasn't been the case for you guys you've built an incredible product you've done some crazy cool marketing which i want to talk about but talk me through launch what did that look like what was your wait list how did the marketing like talk me through that part we a couple things that we did um firstly we did like a very heavy influencer gifting campaign and I think we had a couple of paid influencers as well from the outset but the good thing about bras and undies is like the cost of goods is low and the cost of shipping is low so I think on that very first week we sent out like maybe like two or three hundred influencer packages to get the brand out there but what was probably the thing that we were sort of most famous for at launch and really got us some cut through was we did a guerrilla campaign in in Bondi where we put a bunch of G-strings on cars.

12:57So people woke up in the morning, they came out of the house and there was a G-string on their car with a note saying, Hey, wild thing, you left this at my place last night, XX Nala. And then we seeded it into like the local Facebook groups and to the media. And a lot of, I wanna say a lot of them, we, I think most of them were red G-strings just to like make a bigger impact. A bit more spicy. Yeah, and we got a photographer there to take photos. So there were photos of like guys, like holding up a G-string, like, like what is this at Bondi Beach it was amazing and yeah the post went like viral in these local Facebook groups at first like really got like built some traction and then I got picked up by the Daily Mail which was amazing like people were people were writing hilarious comments like you almost caused me a divorce which is hilarious but also so great like it just amplified it so much the message so much people were like who is this brand who's not I think they were actually getting divorce and like it honestly just got us off to a really good start like we were really lucky that we never had that day where we were like scratching around being like is anyone going to order or like you know is this going to work like really from the very first day we just had this momentum in the brand and and the business that like has carried through till till now so yeah like it was a sort of um scrappy way to launch but like it really worked out and the cost of doing that was you know not much like a lot of you know g-strings are our cheapest product which is why we we chose to leave them part of the reason we chose to leave them in the cars and yeah that's clever so how many how many cars a few hundred yeah a few hundred a few hundred okay okay and what were the facebook groups are just local local grace look yeah exactly it's like i'm gonna get the name wrong so apologies yeah bondi people i think it's bondi local loop but these facebook groups are very active facebook groups and it was from there that it got picked up by the daily mail like there was like screenshots of comments from this group in the Daily Mail article.

14:50And we should shout out our PR agency movement who we still work with today and we're part of that launch campaign. It was their idea and they have been a huge part of our success and helped execute that campaign. They actually, that was one of the ideas, like when they pitched us before we launched, that was one of the ideas that they had. And as soon as I saw it, I was like, this is the best idea I've ever seen. Yeah, that's really clever. Okay, so you guys went all out. you even invest in a PR agency you're gonna be dangerous a lot of these PR agencies hard to trust yeah I mean again a shout out movement they've been amazing for us like they've you know particularly on like those kind of guerrilla activations we've done I don't know be close to half a dozen of them now and you know either their idea or our idea that we've executed with them and um they've yeah it's been a really key integral part of our marketing strategy how did you know that they were the real deal and you want to work with them I found them on tiktok isn't that how you find people that are the real deal here I found them on tiktok I saw they do some cool things I think they did a similar kind of stunt for maybe chargrill charlie's yeah he pronounced the name yeah and we met with them a few like you know a handful of times um and we're really impressed they just had this kind of creative flair that most other agencies we were talking to didn't um they also really understood the brand I I mean, Phil and I had a really clear vision of what we wanted Nala to be.

16:15We weren't going in. We didn't want to be safe. We wanted to do some really out there things to really stand out. The brand is cheeky and confident out there. We wanted to work with people who understood that. And, yeah, from the get-go, they really understood it and, yeah. Oh, there you go. Well done. Because, yeah, look, I hear the other side of the table where it's like, oh, I'm just about to launch. I've paid this PR agency. like you know three grand a month five grand a month they've locked me in for six months and they said they can get me here and then you hear oftentimes they can't or it does nothing or it's a paid placement you know what I mean like yeah 100 yeah I think traditional PR has really changed like obviously media has really changed and so that's kind of why we've gone down this activation path more so than like you know let's get on the news or be on the front page of the paper or or whatever it is.

17:06And like, you know, those things are obviously nice too, but yeah, it's been much more a gorilla style PR play as opposed to like your traditional press. Yeah. So talk me through launch day. What can you share numbers? Like, what can you share? Like what, tell me, talking back to that moment. I actually had a look. I did you? Yeah, I actually had a look. I looked a couple of weeks ago, so I'm not gonna get exactly right. We launched our first launch date was like friends and family launch day. and then the next day was like our hard launch where we went out. So the friends and family launch day, we did just under 10K in sales that day.

17:42And I just – Good friends and family. Yeah, I know. It's going to say that. It's going to say that. I said that, yeah. Probably like half of that was your mum. Like five, like 100 brats. Yeah, it was amazing. I remember like we all sat there. I remember in our house. It was four of us. It was four of us at that time, yeah. and we were so nervous. Like I found it hard to even enjoy the day because I was like, is anyone going to buy a bra? I think it's one of the only days you and I had a fight about work as well. Did we? I don't remember that. I think it was about packaging. Really? Okay, there you go.

18:14There you go. And then the next day we launched and it was like five and a half K on the first proper day. Yes. And then from then it was like, that was enough momentum to then like, we were able to just build on that, which was amazing. I mean, once you did that, then we started running ads then we said everything was started moving you know so i remember those first couple days the biggest tell to me that we were like onto something was we'd sent out all these influencer orders that i just mentioned and we started seeing those influencers ordering and we were like okay we've just gifted this person four or five pieces or however many we'd given them and they've just gone and ordered five more and to us that was like okay the product's good they obviously like it we're onto something and from there there was just yeah that momentum and they'll get like it wasn't just people like posting oh like i've got this package look at the package it was like they've put the product on they're talking about how much they love it and that for me was like okay we yeah before we launched i held a whole meeting i was convinced no one was going to post in their bras and underwear i was like we need to have a meeting because we need to send out briefs to influencers and customers in general with ideas of how they can post their underwear without putting it on because i was i was honestly convinced that was going to be our biggest issue.

19:25I was thinking we could put it on clotheslines and like in cute ways and things like that. And then when we launched, everyone was posting selfies of themselves in Nala in the mirror, mirror selfies here, there, like everywhere. We were just like the content was like flooding in and content is, as you know, like the hardest, one of the hardest parts when it comes to a business. And we were so lucky with an influencer strategy that from day one, we had content. It was there and we could use that. We could reuse that, repost that. It was, yeah it was great wow so before we move on to kind of the growth side and all the other things you've done some really cool stuff on the marketing side i want to talk about some of the growth stuff but i'm curious what would have you done differently if there was anything for the launch because it sounded like it went with a bang would be anything we've done differently i think we got our launch pretty bang on like obviously we ordered some products that ended ended up being dogs and like we - But you couldn't really avoid that.

20:23Yeah. And like we no longer sell those products or whatever, but the ones that did the best were the ones that we got those insights from the survey that we spoke of. And so we doubled down on what was working for us. And, but you know, really like from a marketing, go to market point of view, I wouldn't change a huge amount. Like we got it pretty, pretty spot on. Yeah, we put everything into it. Yeah. We really did. For the year leading up to launch, like I left my previous role. So like I was full-time focused on launching the brand. So we like left no stone unturned and like really went for it.

20:55Okay. You guys went all in. So you left your job like it had to work? Well, so basically, as I mentioned, there was a startup that I was at that exited and that was great. And then I went to a company. I won't mention the name, but I really didn't like it and kind of quit not knowing what I was going to do next. And then we decided we were going to do Nala. And so rather than taking another job for, you know, six to 12 months, whatever, I was like, okay, let's, you know, go for it. and we'd had the sort of financial security to be able to do it. And so, yeah, it went all in. And like there were weeks where like, you know, there wasn't 40 hours of work for me to do a week and I was playing more golf than I've played in the rest of my life and things like that.

21:31Definitely made up for it now. But by the time we got to launch, like we'd given it everything and we'd put our hearts and souls into it. And like, you know, there's this famous story about, you know, this famous battle about there's a French commander, I'm going to get the name wrong, and he had his army on these boats. So they got to a beach and they're about to get into this big battle. And he turned to like his commanders and he said, burn the six ships that we've come on. And they go, you know, why would we do that? He goes, there's no other way out of this other than to win. And I think we kind of went in with that mentality of like, you know, there is no plan B, this is plan A, we're going to go for it.

22:06And it has to work. Yeah. Yeah. And how long, like, did you go? Because sometimes, you know, we see some of our students in our community, they want to launch straight away and then others it's a six month kind of build up how long was your timeline from having the product ready to actually launching i think from idea to launch was about 12 months yeah but the product it takes that long we didn't have the product ready six months before that ready to go um the product design construction testing all of that until it's ready to go from like conception to like in the warehouse ready to send out is min minimum a year so we worked really hard in that 12 months to get it to that point and then once the product was ready we we were ready to launch in hindsight like we actually got to market quite quickly like now oh my god it takes us longer to develop new products than what it took us to develop our initial range maybe it's because we do it in so many more sizes and stuff now maybe i don't know but now it takes i feel like it's like if we get a new if we couldn't create a whole new collection in 12 months now.

23:11I don't know why, how we did it then, but like sports bras have been delayed too many times that I want to mention. But like now it's 18 months we were working on those products to perfect them. Yeah, it's a long time. So since, you know, you've launched, you've sold over 400 ,000 pieces in two years, which is a lot, and your cult favourite, which is the wire-free bralette, is sold out nine times. So how did you navigate kind of securing suppliers, MOQs, planning for scale and demand when you have no fashion background? That's our biggest challenge. You know, up until now, staying in stock, when we've had the kind of growth trajectory that we have had, you know, that style, I think we launched maybe three or four colors at the start and maybe it was 40 sizes.

24:01But now it's, I think we've probably got 10 or 11 colors on the website and 71 sizes. So you've got 710 SKUs just before you've even blinked in one style, right? And so it's been an enormous challenge. To be honest, like this hopefully will be our first summer where we get through with like no massive stock challenges. You know, like by the end of last summer, our stock was so patchy. And like probably the most stressful time I've had personally in the business was like, I think it was Feb, March of this year where we'd had like this amazing summer. And then our stock got really patchy. we were probably a bit slow to pick up on them that it got patchy, but we were still pumping money into advertising and marketing.

24:41And all of a sudden our conversion rate was dropping and we were kind of burning more money than we should have been. And, you know, it took us till the end of the month to be like, hang on, what happened here? And, you know, it was a good lesson. We won't make that mistake again. But yeah, it was all, the core issue was that we had run out of stock in our bestsellers and we were, you know, still advertising as if we hadn't. And, you know, we were lucky we picked up on it within a month but if you do that for two three four five months you're in a lot of trouble we've now yeah i mean the brand's now been it's three years old we just had our third birthday i'd say the first year like especially when you launch you don't know what your best sellers are going to be so we would have ordered the same amount of all of those 13 products that we launched with and then it became very clear quickly that some were going to sell really well and others were really not.

25:28And so that, okay, say our best sellers, we wanna buy more stock, get more stock, get it, like get it making, get it in the warehouse. It's not like a weak process from the time you order it to the time it's in the warehouse. Even if it's a product that's already been perfected, it's like what, four months minimum? Yeah, four months and we try obviously to avoid air freight from costs and environmental purposes. So it's yeah, from us placing an order to getting stock into the warehouse is about four months. So yeah. And like, that's all customers that, like if you're out of stock for that long, like they're all potential customers that you're losing.

26:01Like you're building momentum on these products. The word's getting out about your brand and you're losing all these customers. And you can try your best to not lose them. Pre-orders, wait lists, like keep them in the loop, email marketing, but you probably lose them at the end of the day. So yeah, it was stressful, but now three years in. We haven't got a perfect, don't get me wrong. No, but it's a lot better. It's a lot better. And what's hard as well now is when we launch new products because we launch new products and as much as we believe in those products, you don't really know until you start selling it if that product's gonna be a success or not.

26:35So we wanna buy enough that, okay, if it is a success, then you're selling enough product, but then also you don't wanna be in a position where you're sitting on thousands of SKUs of this product that isn't selling because that can be detrimental to a business as well. So yeah, it's an ongoing challenge for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys actually have quite a aggressive growth strategy. You spend approximately 30 % of your total revenue on marketing operations. Can you guys walk us through, there's a technical question, but I think it'll be helpful for founders, kind of your take on, you know, gross margin, explain how you model your CAC to LTV, you spend a bit on ads, you know, you have an aggressive burn rate, but you have a 70 % repeat purchase rate.

27:22So how did you work that out and yeah that that technical kind of hyper gross yeah yeah so we didn't start that way i think like we've sort of it's evolved over time we're lucky that like our margins on product and shipping costs are quite low um so that allows us to be a little bit more aggressive on the advertising front like i might not go into like the exact ltv numbers and cac and all but from a philosophical point of view the way we approach it is like we we don't we never want to lose money on a first-time purchase, but we want to like either break even or make a little bit, knowing that we've got a really loyal customer base.

27:59People love our products, as you said, like our returning customer rate is amazing. And so we know once we have won a customer over and like they've tried the Nala products, they're very likely to love it. And then they're going to come back and, you know, buy and they sort of become their first place of choice when they need to get a new bra or new undies or whatever. And so that's kind of philosophically been how we approach it. Never to lose money on the first purchase. It's probably been one or two months where we've made that mistake, but again, just slightly. And then, you know, make sure that we're continually bringing them back.

28:33Yeah. So with economics like that, have you guys looked at raising money? Like we haven't seriously looked at it. I think we've got some big plans for the next few years. And so it might be a conversation that we think about. But for now, I think for as long as we can hold on to as much of the business as we can, that's kind of the preference. I think also in G2C, there's some war stories of brands that have raised money. And I think you're getting some really bad habits about how you spend your money. And so we've just always been cautious of it. Yeah, of course. I totally understand. And I read somewhere that you guys are using hyper-personalization.

29:18Can you talk through that? So we have a fit guide on our website. I don't know if you've seen it. You would probably remember if you had. I would look more embarrassed. Basically, it's a library of 100 bare naked breasts and chests. Oh, there you go. And customers can go online and scroll through a library of bodies and choose a body that looks like theirs and then see that body in Nala products that suit that size and that body and whatever that person needs. So the reason why we made that firstly was because we felt like there was a real challenge with buying bras online and we wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to understand what to buy, what their size was, things like that.

29:58So we actually did a whole relaunch of our fit guide. We launched with a fit guide, but it was 35 bodies, but then we wanted to make it bigger. So this year, just a few months ago, we relaunched it with 100 different bodies, which is amazing. And, but utilizing that, we are able to capture more data about our customers because suddenly we know what size they are and that combined with also their recent purchases or if they're not, if they're not a customer yet, we can then target them with specific emails that recommend certain products that suit their body and their needs. So it really just, yeah, it helps everybody.

30:34That's clever. And how'd you come up with that idea for the fit guide? It was just for that reason. I think when we were working on Nala, like before launch, there were so many people that we encountered just anecdotally that would say, I would never buy a bra online or I have no idea what size I am. So that was a really big fear for us going into it that people weren't going to buy bras online. We didn't really feel like there were any brands out there with really strong stories, like from an e-com perspective of selling bras, especially at our size curve, as opposed to just like a standard, like small, medium, large, kind of approach that was our biggest fear going into it was like are people going to be willing to buy a bra online and we just did everything we could to like reduce any barrier to entry totally possibly yeah so this was just one of the things we did to try and make it easy i mean we like i remember we were brainstorming early on like is there some sort of i mean this was kind of before ai that ai boom but we were like is there some sort of technology that like someone could stand there and it could scan their body and tell them what size there is i mean maybe one day we'll get there that would be really cool and yeah I'll be the first one to try it but this was just our way of doing that and also from a brand marketing point of view as well it worked so well for us because our brand is all about welcoming all different shapes and sizes and bodies and what better way than with bare naked boobs in your face of all different sizes so so women and people at home also like the gender diverse community we have a real representation of lots of different bodies people can truly feel represented in what they see as opposed to just seeing the product on a model so there's also like this is a genius move but there's also another side of this one i want to talk to you guys about where you guys were permanently banned on tiktok shadowed banned on instagram so how did you overturn that and negotiate new policies to champion real bodies without triggering automated flags firstly don't believe it when they say you're permanently banned there's always a way it's the best thing to learn so that was a big challenge in those first few months is like we had some mesh products um that you can see i guess nipples through and so putting those does not like tick tock does not like nipples neither does google um and so um yeah we were getting like a lot of bans for um you know violating policy guidelines where we really we hadn't really done anything wrong but like just sort of ai was picking up on certain things and so um when we got permanently banned from tiktok we got really scrappy like um we were begging our account rep over there and honestly to her credit she really fought the fight um we i was dming people on linkedin like gm of australia we met people at events and yeah someone i remember someone telling me i was at this random and she was like yeah i work at tiktok i was like you work at tiktok tell me what can you do can you help me this i had like her number at her email Like my cousin worked at TikTok at the time in London, like a bit hard.

33:30She was like trying to get in there back end. Like it was, we were trying to hustle so hard. And then eventually like they came to the party and I think maybe we told them how much we were spending on meta. And then they were like, their eyes lit up and they were like, okay. And then we've got like really strict policies now with them where like any bit of content that we upload has to be approved by them before it even like goes live. and that way we never find ourselves in that situation again it's been i think 18 months now where we haven't had a band so we do other stuff as well like are there other things we do from an from an advertising perspective extra precautions that we take that we don't take on our organic socials not tiktok more specifically instagram but like definitely like no nipples in content like we other tactics like hiding with your hands or styling it in a certain way we also built custom landing pages so that because what was happening as well is that we we would have an ad that didn't have any sexually explicit content in quotation marks but then it would direct to a landing page of a say a mesh product and because that model was in mesh and you could see nipples it was being flagged as it was once i think google flagged it as pornographic and that's why it was banned so we had to build custom landing pages that were safe for for these platforms yes we've been on some calls with some of these big us tech companies where if like we'd recorded some of the things that have been said like honestly i don't know what would happen but it would go viral like things i won't name like which companies but like things like you can only use smaller busted women in your ads because the bigger busted women have too much cleavage and then that's going to trigger the ai to like make it pornographic and it's like how do you ever get representation if like that's you know these guys hold all the power when it comes to you know modern media like how do you how do you change the narrative when that's the that's the case yeah can you talk me through about inclusivity because you've mentioned that that's a really important thing to you guys not a trend it's built into every scene yeah so when we launched i think like the the word inclusivity gets thrown around a lot it's quite tokenistic and you see a lot of brands at the time when we were talking about nala and the values we wanted to instill in the brand we saw a lot of brands who were using maybe like an inclusive range of models in their marketing, but it wasn't reflected through their product.

35:48And we didn't wanna do that. We wanted to build it into the product as well so that a range of different diverse customers could actually purchase products that were designed for their body. So that was a few different ways we did that. So from a size inclusive range, which is probably what most people know us for these days, when we launched, we went up to a G cup. Now we go up to a K cup. We go up to a 6XL as well. And that is, for customers in those bigger cup sizes, it's actually, they can't access bras that fit their bodies off the rack. It's something that they have to get custom made for their bodies that they have to pay sometimes$150,$200 for.

36:31So for them to be able to access products like that at$59 that are actually cool and that they actually like was a new revolutionary experience for them. And that's really cool for us to be able to do. But we also launched with - Customers leave test wearing sessions in tears because they're like - Literally. Like, yeah, we've had customers come in for fit wearing sessions. Like one of our, it was one of our J-Cup customers. And I remember the sample was all wrong. It needed fixing and we were fixing and we were like, oh, we'll fix it for you. And she was like, you're going to take it from me?

36:59Can I take it home? Please, can I take it? Like it was, and we were like, yeah, if you want. Like to us, it was so not peppy. But for her, she never, she never had anything like that before. So it's pretty cool. So there's that side of things, but then there's also our gender inclusive products. So we launched with an Everybody Collection, which we designed specifically for the gender diverse community. And we worked with the Equality Project who are an amazing organization, who they work to create safe spaces for the LGBTQIA plus community. And we worked really closely with them to develop these products, which were gender neutral, but also briefs, Everybody TAC brief, which is designed for trans women, which was a real challenge to create because obviously it was really new for us.