It's hard to start a business, and it's even harder to get some grades. In this article, let's take a look at the experience of this single mother starting a business. Although it is not a very successful or very large business, it is still worthy of our reference for relatively good results.
Today's protagonists are https://www.beactivewear.com.au/
You'll learn:
1. How founders can start a business from scratch
2. How did the new CEO respond to the pandemic and Facebook ads about iOS 14 updates to deploy traffic channels
1. Who are you?
Hello, my name is Julie New and I am the founder of Be Activewear. It is an online retail store with over 60 sportswear and swimwear brands.
Our product range is different from other brands. We showcase established and many emerging Australian brands, including tights, compression tights, sweatpants, sneakers and a plethora of fitness accessories.
Our customers are those who want to live a healthy life and love to wear sportswear. Our customers are generally between the ages of 20-45 and are busy working women. Our store provides convenience for these women to buy all their favorite sportswear brands in one store.
I launched this store in October 2014 (for only $150) and now we have over $1.5 million in sales per year.
2. What is your background and how did you come up with the idea?
I started Be Activewear because I felt there was a need for a place where people who were size 6 or 26 and wanted to wear bright pink tights could quickly find what they were looking for.
I am a single mom who is relocating and working part-time while completing my MBA. During this time, I knew I wanted to start my own business so that I could have more control over my time.
My definition of success has also changed. It's no longer about the development of the company, it's more about how to spend time with my son when he is still young and still achieve my personal goals.
I decided I wanted to start my own business...... Although I don't know what to do. One day, after talking to my two sisters, I decided to start an online sportswear store – specialising in selling low-priced Australian brands.
I love supporting women and encouraging them to feel confident in their appearance while supporting Australian brands. We now have over 60 brands, making it one of Australia's best online sportswear and swimwear shopping destinations.
I've never done business before, so it's a huge adjustment. But I'm determined to make it work.
3. Describe the process of starting a business
I don't have the money to buy the product. I decided to reach out to companies that I could sell my products and have them ship the products (dropship model).
I googled Australian sportswear brands and came up with a list of 100 brands, and I only needed 3 brands to agree to work together before I could launch my own store. I ended up talking about 5 brands.
Stores are built on Shopify, and the look and feel of the website and brand changes over time. Many people spend a lot of time on logos and website design...... My focus is to get it up first and optimize along the way.
The website is very different now than it was 4 years ago.
After I finished my MBA, I thought it was time, my son was 18 months old and it took me 3 months to decide what to do, and then I gave myself another 3 months to start my business.
I designed and did everything myself, using Shopify to build my store. I don't have the funds to hire people, I think about it alone.
I bought Shopify's primer and used Google to research, from getting a business tax number, to getting an image, buying a domain name...... I solved everything on Google.
I've never worked in retail or anything related to e-commerce before. I started the business with only $150 and spent almost all of my free time on it for 2 years and put all my money back in the meantime.
By the third year, we had sold $1.5 million and I now have the lifestyle I wanted. Work for myself and be flexible with my son.
4. Since its launch, what has played a role in attracting and retaining customers?
Having worked in the financial industry for over a decade, I knew that I really needed to invest my time and money in the business.
I was also a single mother with an 18-month-old child when I was working part-time (so time and money were very limited). I literally spent my living expenses (which were already stretched thin at the time) and started Facebook ads for $2 a day.
For the first two years, I spent all my free time in the business, and during that time, I put the money I earned back into the business for more than two years.
This has allowed me to not only gain new clients, but now allow me to learn and become an expert in this form of advertising, allowing me to run marketing campaigns effectively and with great returns.
Also, we don't want to put everything in one basket, we are also focused on getting new subscribers for our emails, and now more than 15000 people receive our emails. There's a pop-up subscription box on our website where people get a 10% discount on their first purchase (as well as access to product launches and VIP offers) if they sign up.
We've also tried other forms of advertising – print, sponsorship, Google ads, collaborations, but for us, the best ones are ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Our ads are divided into 2 sections:
1. Get people to view and purchase items on our website
Our ads are updated almost every few weeks.
We have carousel ads that focus on traffic acquisition and people who are more likely to buy our items. This ad focuses on 2 audiences, a lookalike audience for our top 5% of customers and a standard interest target audience for women in our target market.
We also have 2 content-based ads – the audience is people who are likely to view our products on the site (but not necessarily buy them). One ad is a merry-go-round event and the other is on Instagram Stories.
While these didn't boost sales, they powered our remarketing ad sets.
2. Remarket these people with dynamic product ads
Setting up a Facebook pixel in our store allows us to remarket to people who have viewed the product to reach them.
These dynamic product ads will show potential customers what they've seen and other items they might like.
5. What does the future hold?
Since we are a daigou business, our profit margins are smaller than those of traditional retail stores.
The gross profit margin is about 35%, and our biggest cost is advertising expenses.
Our store has an average of 4.3-45,000 unique website visitors per month. The conversion rate is about 2.1%.
Our repeat customers are around 30% and 70% are new customers because we focus on growth and the lifetime value of our customers.
We have big plans for the growth of Be Activewear, we are proud of the Australian brands we run and our commitment to them is to help them grow while providing the best sportswear and swimwear options for Australian women.
6. Have you learned anything that is particularly useful or beneficial through starting a business?
Entrepreneurship is a lifelong learning journey. My biggest takeaway is focusing on my own vision of success.
I used to get stuck because I thought I wanted to grow a bigger business, and people told me to go and do a bigger business. But I found that this deprived me of the true measure of success...... That is to make sure that I can spend time with my son.
Now I have a real balance in my life.
7. What platforms/tools do you use for your business?
Selling platform: Shopify
电子邮件营销： MailChimp
电子邮件收集：Spin-a-Sale
DPA/重定向广告： Flexify。
8. What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs who want to start a business or are just starting out?
I have two suggestions, which I am very adamant about:
- If you want to start a business or change careers but don't even know what you want to do, focus on how you like to work and build a business around it.
- After the start – the idea/product/business/lifestyle you started could turn out to be something completely different by the end...... But unless you start, you never know where to go.
IX, 2022
See you again!
Hi all, my name is Natasa Miklic and I am the CEO of Be Activewear. We are an e-commerce business that specializes in sportswear for women, men, and children.
My background is originally in management consulting, and I bought Be Activewear from the original founder about 18 months ago. As a consultant, I work with many different companies, providing them with strategic advice to grow their businesses and improve their operations. Buying Be Activewear was a great opportunity for me to do it for myself.
Be Activewear is a website that offers about 60 brands. Our mission is first and foremost to provide our customers with beautiful fashion and functional sportswear products, including workout accessories and supplements, and secondly to support smaller, emerging Australian brands by giving them the opportunity to reach a wider audience, increase visibility and accelerate their growth.
We have a collection of clothing for every occasion, from working out at the gym to lounging at the beach or lounging at home. We offer our customers the opportunity to mix products from different brands. Our clients are women and men of all shapes and sizes, including those who are already active and in peak condition, as well as those who are just starting to take their first small steps off the couch.
We generate about $7-$80,000 per month, and we aim to double that in the next two to three years.
We've been working hard to diversify our marketing channels to reduce our reliance on Facebook as a source of traffic.
10. What have you been working on lately? Is the business growing all the time?
The last 18 months have been very challenging.
It was a difficult time during the pandemic when business performance was very volatile. A lot has changed in my market.
A major move over the past 12 months has been to diversify our marketing channels to reduce our reliance on Facebook as a source of traffic. This is necessary because Apple has made changes in its iOS 14 version that restricts the collection of data from iPhones, making ad targeting more difficult.
As a result of these changes, we've seen our return on ad spend more than halved overnight. To accommodate this, we spread our paid advertising budgets across Facebook, Google, Tik Tok, and Pinterest, and invested in SEO to improve our organic traffic performance. We also take the time to actively recruit new brands to enhance our customer service.
To make these initiatives happen, we hired a marketing specialist to take some of the heavy lifting off our shoulders. This allows us to have a more consistent presence on social media Facebook and Instagram, posting more creative content (e.g., using reels and stories more on Instagram, posting outfit suggestions, and other topical content).
11. What has been your biggest lesson in the past year?
I have three key lessons that are interrelated and crucial!
1. Stay optimistic
The last 12-18 months have been difficult for everyone, especially for small businesses. At first, the pandemic forced everyone to shop online. The sportswear sector, in particular, benefits from this, as many people buy new sportswear to be more comfortable when exercising at home. But over time, as lockdowns eased, we saw a noticeable slowdown in sales.
During these times, it is very important to keep a calm and clear mind and not let emotions affect you. These conditions are tough for everyone. But in order to survive, you have to believe that there will be a better tomorrow and continue to do all the things you know are right. Therefore, stay positive, keep a clear head, and be persistent so that you can continue to make good decisions.
2. Have reverse thinking
During a market slowdown, it's easy to panic and stop investing in your business. When you see your profit margins dropping, it's natural to look for ways to cut costs, such as marketing or employee costs. This is absolutely the wrong thing to do. The most successful businesses in any recession are those that continue to invest in their brand and differentiation no matter what happens in the market.
This is reverse thinking. If you really have a good business idea, then now is the time to go the extra mile and go full speed ahead when others hold back.
3. Long-termism
Over the past 12 months, we've seen many competitors and small brands in our space exit. Some boutiques have responded to the dilemma by offering steep discounts. This is a fatal mistake!
Profits are the oxygen of your business, and by cutting profits, you are killing your business, making it difficult for it to recover and grow in the future. Once you get into the habit of giving regular discounts, you'll train your customers to wait for your next discount offer over time. This resets the customer's willingness to pay at a lower price point, and your profit margins will be lower.
This destroys your brand value in the long run and keeps you at a lower price point forever. In the short term, you may be getting some sales, but this comes at the expense of your brand's long-term perception of value. Over the past year, we have had several competitors fail and exit the market because of this practice.
To get through this period, we are focusing on our five-year strategic plan, not the next 12 months. The current market conditions are completely out of our control. We have used this time to improve the customer experience on our website and invest in improving our internal operations. These moves will pay dividends when market conditions improve.
12. What are your plans for the coming year and the next five years?
We have a lot of plans for the next 12 months, focusing on three key areas:
1. Customer Experience – We are curating a new store theme to change the look and feel of the website and make the store easier for customers to use, so they can find styling suggestions and choose products to mix and match. This will be strengthened with a new branding and a new corporate logo and color palette.
2. New Brands – As a branded marketplace, we rely on having the most exciting and fresh brands on our website. We are always on the lookout for new brands to appeal to our core market segment "fitness fans", but also to great brands in adjacent categories such as beachwear, swimwear, cycling, running, yoga and Pilates.
3. Men's & Children's Wear – Our current customer base is predominantly female, with only a small percentage ~10% of our sales coming from our men's and children's collections, so we will be looking to recruit new brands to increase our supply to these segments.
In the long term, we are looking to grow internationally and want to increase our presence in Asia, with a focus on markets such as Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong, and to strengthen our business by establishing a similar market in the UK to deal with the European market.
Translated and collated from:
https://www.starterstory.com/stories/be-activewear
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