641: How Konnie Built A $60K/Month Swimwear Brand In 18 Months — Without Quitting Her Day Job

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0:51welcome to little empires brought to you by the team at founder at founder our mission is to support the next generation of e-com founders so while you may know us for interviewing some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs this series is a little different little empires shines a spotlight on the builders inside our own founder community the entrepreneurs who are in the trenches, taking action, learning, and building their businesses in real time. These aren't overnight success stories. These are real journeys, real lessons, and real founders creating their own little empires one step at a time.

1:24This podcast is proudly produced by the founder team to give our students a platform to share their experiences, wins, challenges, and honest realities of building a business from the ground up. Now, let's dive into today's episode. We are here on the Founder Little Empires podcast where we're featuring members of our community and how they are starting and scaling their e-commerce brands. I am Leah Finch, the community manager from Founder. We have here today Connie Simiklas. She is based in Melbourne, Australia. Her brand is Unity Cove Swimwear, Australia's first gender-inclusive swimwear brand.

2:06she has grown this into an incredible e-commerce brand. Connie, welcome to the Little Empires podcast. It's great to have you here. Thank you very much, Leah. Gosh, it's been an incredible journey since we first met when I was talking about the idea, I think, in terms of gender inclusive swimwear and trying to build this into a brand that really doesn't exist quite so much globally or in Australia. So really excited to get into this. Yeah, excellent. I'm really excited to get into your brand journey, your product development, how you have made this brand come to life. So we'll get into those details.

2:42I know you've got a lot to share in terms of what it's like to start and scale a fashion brand, going through that sampling process, all the way through to the marketing strategies that you've used to grow the brand. So let's get started with what your life was like before e-commerce. I know you had a little bit of dabbling with dropshipping perhaps, but tell me a bit about what your life was like before you started this brand. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, I work in management consulting, so I'm a management consultant. I do strategy for businesses. And I think probably about 10 years ago, I started dabbling in dropshipping and e-commerce.

3:22I heard about this little thing, the internet or sort of online shopping and the growth of it. And it was really quite small at that time. I think it was probably online shopping in Australia was probably about 1 % of total retail sales. So really small. And so I started thinking, right, well, it's sort of taking off globally. Surely in Australia, it's also going to start taking off and the world's going to change in terms of how we shop and how we use online. And so I started just researching and dabbling into the world of dropshipping first, just trying to think, right, well, how can I quickly try and build the skills of an e-commerce brand and all the things that you need to kind of be doing.

4:02But it was more just focused on understanding how ads work, how to build websites, how to target your customers back then. So I've kind of taken an interesting little journey through that. But ultimately, what I always wanted to do was start my own brand, which Community Cove, we've now got a flourishing little or big business starting to bloom, which is really exciting. Yeah, it's really exciting. And I've loved watching it grow over time. And so let's talk about the problem that you were solving with your product. So let's talk about how the concept of gender inclusive swimwear came alive. What was that process like?

4:43Absolutely. So I think for me, it was solving a personal problem that I had with swimwear from when I was a young child. I never liked to wear bikinis or one-piece suits. I didn't feel comfortable in the traditional female swimwear and what you need to wear per se. I always felt a lot more comfortable in just putting on a t-shirt, putting on some shorts and going into the water. And unfortunately, you know, in the 90s, that probably wasn't the norm to do that for a little girl. And so I always just avoided going to the pools. I still can't swim, actually, surprisingly enough, because I just always avoided going any sort of activity that needed water or for me to dress in a way that never felt like me.

5:30And so this was, you know, an issue that I went through my teenage years, my 20s, my 30s. And I sort of felt I got to a point where I was like, this is just ridiculous. Surely there has to be some swimwear or some active wear that can kind of meet my needs in terms of being able to go into the water and feel comfortable and confident. And so as I looked around, there really wasn't any grands that were doing that. And so I was always kind of resorting to wearing men's board shorts, which in essence didn't fit my body because clearly it's made for a male and it doesn't fit the female curves. And so I sort of went through this journey of researching and looking around and found there was nothing.

6:15And so I thought, look, I'm just going to solve this problem for myself. And as I started talking about it to, with other people, I just found that I wasn't the only one that was alone in this, in having this problem. And so I kind of off I went. So I think it was effectively, I had the idea from 2019. It was sort of trickling away in the back of my mind. And funnily enough, I actually found a piece of paper the other day as I was moving houses, which had my whole business model structured out. So that was in the days of doing kind of dropshipping. And then I'm an ideas person. And so I never really settled on anything until a little bit later on in that.

6:57But yeah, it was really in essence just solving a problem that I had. And then as I spoke with other people, I realized that I wasn't the only one and there wasn't a solution available. Yeah. And that's really fascinating because something that we teach a lot of in our founder courses is scratching your own itch. And I think that comes down to being something that you're really passionate about and a problem that you're passionate to solve. But then also being able to empathize with who your target customer is, because you kind of see yourself in the target customer. Does that really resonate with you?

7:27Absolutely. I mean, I am my target customer in terms of the products that I've been developing, being the colors that I put out into the world as well. So it's all things that I would wear and that I do wear. And I rotate my clothing around in terms of the swimwear. And that was also why it's active swimwear, because I wanted to make a multi-use product that you can use for swimming. You can use it for the gym and you can use it for every day, because I just generally struggle finding any type of clothing that, I guess, meets my personal preferences and needs. and so I created it to be active swimwear which means that I can wear it all the time and so can my customers or anyone interested in purchasing as well so it's that added value for money as well which is you know a real kind of benefit and multi-purpose use I think but definitely solving for myself.

8:19That brings me to ask you a bit more about how the product became developed right because there are a lot of fashion brands on the market. There are a lot of activewear brands and swimwear brands as well. So could you talk us through that product development process? What did version one look like and how it came about? Absolutely. So you are very right in saying that it is a very saturated market. Whether you're going into swimwear, whether you're going into activewear, There are thousands and thousands of brands who are selling, you know, different products or very similar-ish products. I think where Unity Cove is really different in the design and development is that it's gender inclusive.

9:05So it's not unisex. Unisex, there's a lot of brands that are doing unisex. And that is generally taking a male shape and size and almost just going down a couple sizes and, you know, selling it to females. That in a very high level is what unisex is. When you go into gender inclusive, then that is actually taking into consideration different body types. It's looking at the shapes and curves and where, you know, a body is very different and it's testing it on a lot of different bodies to make sure that you can get the sizes right and it fits everyone and looks, you know, generally good, generally good.

9:46And so that process was actually quite challenging to do. Getting the sizing right. I worked with a garment technician and a sizing technician to try and test it on various different bodies and try and get the sizing right. going through my initial product it looked very different to what I ended up with I went through I think seven or eight sample rounds before I actually launched with the product so it was quite a long process that I went through just because of the intricacies in terms of the design and the fit which frankly if you look at my product it looks very simple extremely simple but there's so much that's actually gone into it in terms of developing it and making sure it fits lots of different types of bodies.

10:33Yeah, wow. And so it really is approaching, it's approaching designing the product in a completely different way and challenging what happens in the industry already perhaps. And so you worked with a founder coach to work through the product development phase and the sampling phase. What was that like for you? Yeah, I think for me, my coach, Kiana, is a fashion designer and I don't come from a fashion design background. And so being able to work with her was really fantastic because she was able to direct me to various sources to understand different materials, different stitching, understand what questions to be asking when I'm getting my samples back, when I'm communicating with the various different technicians and the manufacturers.

11:23is and so um you know she was really important I think in that early early process of me building my own knowledge base um and understanding uh the various different aspects of creating a an apparel product and then you throw in swimwear that's a completely different ball game um and so you know it was really quite challenging and it was a really steep learning curve for me doing a lot of research. And so there wasn't, you know, quite a bit of back and forth with manufacturers. And then I also did, I think I received three or four samples from different manufacturers to make sure that I could firstly test, can they develop the products that I'm wanting to and what is the communication like?

12:08And I think there was probably one manufacturer which did superior on the manufacturing side, but the communication was very poor and I had to make that decision what is it that I'm going to do um and I kind of went with the communication the company with the communication and then I worked with them to to really develop up um the product um through zoom meetings and um it was actually facetime whatsapp chats and um going through um a lot of communication with them and back and forth to to develop it up um but I think in finding a manufacturer really important to to focus on communication. Yeah I mean that's what I was really considering right is like how did you go about finding that manufacturer and it sounds like the one that you ended up deciding on going ahead with was the one that had the best communication and was the most accessible in terms of how to how to go back and forth with them.

13:04Can you tell us a bit about what your MOQs were like and also your pricing your timelines like shed a bit of light on on that process and what that those numbers were like? Yeah, well, I'll tell you what, the numbers really shocked me because so many people say that you can start a business with$500 or$1 ,000. And for me, it was, that wasn't the case. But I also think that was a bit on me because I did my research and I knew this idea was going to work. I could, I had the facts behind it. I had the real strong hunch. And so I did go a little bit bigger than probably what I should have for an initial launch.

13:48But in working with manufacturers, a lot of them have really high MOQs. And so I was sort of stuck between the, you know, do I go with a manufacturer that can develop me one or two product sort of, you know, a run of 50 or 100? Or do I go with one that does have a higher MOQ, you know, volume value thing that they need? And so for me, because I knew I wanted to have a rather big launch, I think I launched with nearly a thousand products, which was against the advice of what most people told me to do. and so that was a little bit of a challenge trying to find, you know, a great manufacturer who was verified, who met my needs in terms of, you know, the various elements in terms of product development, material, being able to customise my material.

14:43So I actually also have custom material which added to clearly the MOQ as opposed to just buying off-the-shelf material that was available. And so you launched with 1 ,000 products. What did that first run cost you? Like what did it cost you to produce that first run? Yeah, I think it was about$20 ,000. Yeah, somewhere around there. And then the shipping was, that's the bit that really threw me out. I did express DHL shipping by air. So that cost another like$2 ,000,$3 ,000. Then you had a 10 % GST charge on top of that as well. And so it was all rather expensive. It was a lot more than what I expected.

15:27And that's actually been throughout my whole journey, frankly. I'm at the position now that I'm ordering, I'm getting pallets delivered every month. And so I've got open orders every month, lots of big purchase orders. And there's a lot of debt, I think, because you've got a lot of cash that's tied up in inventory and in purchase orders. And that's actually continued throughout. I'm up to 18 months in the business now. So it is very cash intensive when you're going into an apparel, you know, high volume business, which will be challenging to manage. And I think that's something that's worth demystifying and sharing with other aspiring fashion brand owners is that you are launching with, for instance, if you're launching with 1 ,000 units, then it can be a bit more surprising in terms of the capital up front that it requires.

16:23And so that's helpful to learn a bit more about. And I'd love to go into your marketing and your community building because I know that you've built this really close-knit community that identifies really well with Unity Cove, and I think it's really special. And let's start with that. Let's start with your Instagram and also you did have a viral TikTok, didn't you? uh it it went well and I say it went well um maybe not so much from the number of views but in terms of the actions that were taken um so the whole premise of my brand has been around it's a founder-led brand um I wanted people to it's my story um in essence that I am putting out in the world and I know that that story resonates with a lot of other people uh as well and so you know who better to sell your brand than yourself and so because I am my target customer as well it's just been really great for me to kind of put a face to to the brand and just be out there and authentically talking about what my challenges were right from being a youngster through to my adult years and you know why I started this brand and how you know it's benefited me my life and you know many other people as well who have been purchasing my customers and not even that just supporters as well who are just loving the inclusivity of the of the brand um and what I've building so if I was not in front of the camera would it be as successful I think probably not actually I don't think I could have done this just um through still image product pictures um and UGC I think I am the brand and the success is also down to people resonating with me and enjoying my vibe and high energy kind of output videos and engagement, whether it's in person or online, I think, as well.

18:26So showing up has been probably one of the most fantastic things I could have done for the brand and getting it out there. The TikTok that you posted, there was a storytelling TikTok that spoke about the problem and how you've solved it through launching Unity Cove and how that led to quite a number of email signups. Can you talk us through that? Yeah, absolutely. So I created my first founder video, which, you know, followed a classic, you know, this is the reason why I started my swimwear brand, going through all the various elements of, you know, what my pain points were and the type of product that I've started to develop.

19:09So I put that out on TikTok probably about six months before I launched. And to my surprise, it was my first TikTok and people had gone to the website and or gone to my profile, gone to the website and then signed up to my wait list. And it was probably about a week or so after I had posted the video that I actually realized I had probably like a thousand signups. So I didn't even know because I didn't have a call to action to say, you know, go to my website or go look at anything. It was just me authentically telling my story. So that was, you know, a little bit of a surprise, but it was also a real good motivator or confidence booster to know that, right, I've put in this higher MOQ and I'm pretty sure this is going to work now as well.

19:55And then, you know, if I'm honest, that one video still probably has brought me in, I reckon 70 % of my revenue because I use ads as a meta ads as a channel. So it is just, yeah, it's a really great evergreen founder ad. And then I made a couple other variations of it as well, which, you know, do really well kind of also. So it's really, yeah, sort of blown it on. That video has done so good in terms of just attracting people and people resonating with the authenticity of my story and just me showing up there, just, you know, camera up and, you know, just kind of talking and showing all the background snippets.

20:38of how I was developing up the product over the prior couple of years. Wow. And so the performance of that TikTok, that video was so powerful and cut through and resonated so much with your audience. You've now used that creative in your paid advertising. Yes, that's correct. Yeah. Can you tell us a bit more about how that has been for you through that process? Yeah. So interestingly enough, I'm actually still working full time as well in my corporate job which means I'm probably not as consistent in terms of developing up content in constantly posting on my on my socials and so I needed a bit of a booster or something else to help me sort of get that consistency and get in front of customers and the market as well and so my main channel that I use is Meta and so I effectively just create a lot of founder-led videos and Um, and I put them through the ad account and they perform generally quite well.

21:42Um, now that does take every day. You need to be in the account monitoring, looking what's working, looking what's not working, clearly rotating ads in and out. Um, but, uh, it's, yeah, it's really working quite well for me. I think if I was to stop my ads, do I have that strong organic, um, community that'll keep the brand that'll keep the revenue coming at the level that it is I don't think at the moment that it would be able to sustain it um just because I don't have that time to be investing in I try to do as much as I can but I'm running a business um you know a new seven-figure business um which I'm doing on the side my little side hustle of working a full-time job as well so I'm fulfilling everything um I've got all the swimwear at home I've actually just moved to my parents house I've created a couple rooms there so I've got some storage there and then I've got a fulfillment room um in my apartment uh which is kind of really exciting to getting to that growth um kind of phase but um yeah the reality is that I don't have an abundance of time and so I need to use um a bit of organic and then the main driver is the the meta ads to find my customers and get the word out there and then over the summertime just this summer I've also done a couple in-person and activations as well at some major queer events in Melbourne.

23:07And I went over to Sydney last month for Mardi Gras Fair Day as well. And that was so good just to get in front of customers and talk with them. And it was amazing to see UnityCove out in the wild. I had customers coming over there wearing their swimwear because it's active wear as well, remember, so you can wear it for casual, coming over and showing me and just, you know, talking about things and meeting them, you know, engaging with them, getting to know them, getting feedback on the product as well. It's just invaluable getting out in front of people. I wish I could do it more. I wish I had more time.

23:41But I hit up some major events where there were high traffic volumes and it was so cool to see. That's the best. And you can just see how your whole face lights up when you're talking about your customer, when you're talking about getting in front of your community. I think it just reminds you why you're doing this. But it also gives you so much really valuable feedback about the product and what they really love about the product. Because I think you're also constantly iterating, right? You're constantly evolving the brand and pivoting left and right on the back of your customers. So that's awesome.

24:19Now, I want to backtrack a little just to share a bit more about your launch weekend. Like if we can just touch on what that launch was like uh in that that first period just tell us a bit about how that felt yeah it was nerve-wracking and that's what it was um it was a yeah it was a crazy period I'd actually delayed my launch um multiple times um over so I launched in the middle of winter I think it was July um end of July um when I was meant to launch the summer before but for various reasons I just kept putting putting off the launch and so we launched in the middle of summer in terms of the traffic and how I got my first customers that was just through socials I didn't do paid advertising at that time so it was through firstly that TikTok I'd built up a wait list and just continuing to post on TikTok I built that up so I had a pretty decent wait list and then also just ongoing posting on socials.

25:20I had done some professional photography as well and videography, which was really amazing as well because, again, it was my target customers who were promoting, I guess, the brand and there was a lot of sharing from the talent and the photographer and the videographer as well to kind of drive a bit of excitement and traffic and I had a countdown launch for 10 days on social media. And so there was a lot of different activities that I was doing. And it was really, yeah, I think it went really well. And what surprised me as well was there were, you know, several internationals orders as well. There was actually a lot of international orders that came through.

26:02And so I realized quite quickly that, you know, whilst I did my research globally and I knew there wasn't any other brand that was doing quite what I was doing. It was just showing how desperate people are for a solution and I was providing them the solution. So I've kind of got also this international kind of expansion that I can do as well or focus on in the winter times. Okay so that would give you a good understanding around exactly it's a seasonal type of product ideally so that international expansion. I also went through the um when I was initially designing why it was also active swimwear so you're not only wearing it in the summer and then you're putting it away and you're not touching it again um you could actually wear it um you know throughout the year for lots of various different occasions as well yeah so it's more versatile and it's really clever in terms of swim gym every day how you created that versatility in the product for the customer so your launch weekend yeah Yeah, you mentioned that you were nervous.

27:07I think it was that first three months you did about$27 ,000 in sales. Is that right? That's correct. Yep. And so most of that was all organic through that. So, yeah, I think from there, once the first three months, there was also kind of, I'll be quite frank, there was actually some significant personal challenges and family things that were happening in the first three months, which my mind was not necessarily on UnityCode. So to have been able to do that was just absolutely blew my mind. And then things really have kind of accelerated, I think, from there as well. I mean, at the moment, as we said, we're getting pallets delivered.

27:50So 600, 700 kilos of swimwear every month so far. So, you know, it's kind of like I kind of feel like the first six months or the first year, I think, it was really learning. It was really getting a feel of how do you run your own branded product business? How do you manage all the different unknowns that just keep popping up? You know, one of my huge challenges was I sold out of product during Black Friday and December in my first year. And then I was left for three months without a stock, with no stock, which was horrendous. January, February, March, I was out of stock because Chinese New Year came, came along and my manufacturer was like, okay, we can't actually, you know, um, create you any more products at this point.

28:38You're going to have to wait until April so we can send you, um, some new products. So, you know, it was a really big learning. And I think that's, that's a learning that I've taken into my second year. And now this summer I'm just fully stocked up. And that's why I've sort of had ongoing purchase orders, um, analyzing through AI, what my best sellers are and what the, the different products and sizes and colors that I need to have on hand. I currently have 10 sizes, so I go up to 6XL as well. So trying to, you know, demand planning is something that I'm definitely working on. But AI has really kind of helped with that, I think as well, in terms of really analyzing quite quickly what my best selling sizes and colors and whatnot are, making sure that I'm stocking up on those.

29:22Okay. So that was a massive learning experience around staying up with your demand and then leveraging AI to work that out as well. So it sounds like, yeah, it sounds like you're gearing up for a massive year this year. Yeah, I'm hoping so. We've got, I'm going to start my international campaign shortly as well in the next, well, within the next couple of weeks as the rest of the world starts to head into summer. So we'll start that and then, you know, up for a really big next summer in Australia and New Zealand. I'm going to introduce three or four new products as well. So at the moment, I've actually only got three products and they're the three products that I launched with, but I've been adding different colors and going up in size, which is why I haven't introduced new product because my main priority has been to be size inclusive and increase on sizes.

30:15You mentioned you have 10 different sizes per product. Yes, that's correct. So you are currently running a seven figure business with three different products. Yes. Nearly a seven figure business. Nearly there. Nearly a seven figure business. So I want to ask you more about that. How are your sales tracking? Like, can you give us an idea of what your average month looks like? I'm tracking on at the moment around about 50 to 60. 50 to 60 ,000 Australian dollars a month. Yeah. So hopefully the plan over the next six months is to get to 150. I feel pretty positive I can do that in this cross. Just got to keep working hard, keep tipping away.

30:58But that's kind of the goal of where I want to get to in the next six months to double the business. So I've already kind of doubled and hopefully, you know, we can get it up even more. Set the bar high. So how long have you been live for? Has it been about 18 months since you launched? 18 months now. And I still kind of feel the first year was a little as I said it was a lot of learning there kept being times um where I was out of stock because then I'd do hype drops and yeah it was all all a huge learning experience so I think in terms of strategy my first year was very much hype drops so get the stock in sell it quickly um my second year which what I'm in now was around right making sure I've always got stock in and I've got my best sellers on hand um so we're always you know kind of selling um but now my third phase um that I'm moving into and frankly should have been my first is cash flow.