Not many employees can say that their boss has over 11 million followers on Instagram.
And yet, Saski Collection GM Isabella Laws can.
Founded by mega-Australian fitness influencer, Tammy Hembrow, the activewear label has grown in three short years to become known for sell-out collections.
Its most recent sell-out success was the Unisex and Mini collections which sold out in two minutes after 20,000 people went on the site ahead of the launch.
Laws says that the secret behind creating knock-out collections is creating hype and keeping it limited-edition.
“The Unisex and Mini sold out the quickest of any other collection we’ve had. That collection we also showed at NYFW as well which was massive.
“All of our collections are limited edition capsules and we try and work on getting the hype built for them and then you grab them if you want them and we don’t usually bring them back.
“That’s just how Tammy likes to do it, she loves designing new things – and she doesn’t like having the same things all the time – she really likes having fresh pieces on the site all the time.
“Tammy obviously builds the hype on her own – people follow her because they love her style and they love the collections – and then we just work out the market depending on what the collection is,” she says.
And Tammy’s hype-building capabilities aren’t to be overlooked, with her two lead-up posts to the Unisex and Mini collections launching garnering more than 628,000 likes and 2470 comments combined.
Helping to build this hype is the business’ network of influencers around the globe, all of which aren’t paid to advertise the Saski product, Laws explains.
“We don’t do any paid influencer marketing but we have a huge database of girls who just love the pieces and most of them reach out to us if they see new stuff is coming and let us know if they think that there’s something in the collection that their audience would love to see, so we work with them on a case by case basis.
“Sometimes we do limit the amount of what we’re sending out if the demand’s there for it already, so we can keep as much stock as we can and make sure we’re selling it to the customers,” she says.
But as any start-up business can relate to, in the beginning it wasn’t all glamour and sell-out collections.
For Saski, Hembrow slightly underestimated how popular the brand would be and how lengthy the restocking process could be, Laws explains.
“Tammy launched Saski Collection very quickly and she did it all on her own.
“She did a lot of things backwards in the sense that she just really wanted to launch and get her designs out there and get the brand happening and there were a lot of things that we then had to – once we’d launched and then sold out initially a few years ago – we were like, ‘oh we don’t have this, we need to get this,’ as a start-up it’s been working it out as we go along and figuring out what works best for us.
Tammy Hembrow and children Wolf and Saskia.
“When Tammy launched we sold out immediately and she hadn’t really anticipated for that so we were trying to order more stock to keep up with the demand but it’s quite a long process.
“All of our pieces are designed by her and a lot of them are custom fabrics, so it can take a month to dye the fabric, and then a month for production and then you have to get it shipped here, so we had all of the growing pains with that where we didn’t have any stock on the site for so long because we were just waiting for it.
“Then the same with the website. When we first launched, the website kept crashing and the amount of people on the site was so massive that the servers couldn’t handle it. So we ended up changing website platforms,” she says.
Now, with those teething problems out of the way, Saski has grown to employ a team of 14 and operates three warehouses in the Gold Coast.
And continual growth is on the cards, with the business launching a dedicated US website this year, with plans to launch one in Europe too.
“At the start of the year we built and launched a new US currency website so we now have the Australian website in Australian dollars for Australia and New Zealand and we have a US website in US dollars for the rest of the world.
“That was something that we felt was really necessary for our international customers who maybe aren’t as familiar with the Australian dollar, it just makes it a lot easier for them to understand the amounts because the dollar does differ so much with Australia and overseas.
“Offering the different shipping options as well has been a huge focus for our international customers and just working on improving that so we can get our packages out to customers as quickly as possible.
“We’re hoping to launch new websites to the UK, hopefully Europe and Canada as well and that’s something that we’ll be working on throughout the year,” she says.
Building on this growth, Laws says that the business aims to open a US headquarters in the future.
“In terms of growth over the next five years I know Tammy really wants to work on building our market not only in Australia but internationally.
“I know she’d really like to open up a headquarters in America one day, so we’ll keep working towards that goal – I know she would really love to relocate there one day,” she says.