‘Pretty wild’: One clever business move turns brand into mult-million dollar success
A wildly successful Aussie businesswoman has revealed the million-dollar idea that is now flying off shelves and has taken the US by storm.
Retail
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When Lizzie Waley founded her brand, Sundae Body, she turned it into an overnight success because of one clever business move.
Ms Waley, 33, founded the brand that offers cruelty-free body care that looks like whipped cream. It is now stocked in Woolworths, Priceline, and Coles.
The brand has found so much success that it has even found a market in the US and is stocked in retail chain Walmart.
On average, the bodycare brand sells 14,000 products daily after only four years in business.
Six products sell every 30 seconds, and 12 products sell per minute, and the business is now worth millions.
“It has been pretty wild,” Ms Waley told news.com.au.
Ms Waley wasn’t keen to discuss exact figures, but in 2023, the brand was expected to generate over $4 million in revenue – it has grown even more in the last two years.
Growing a brand quickly isn’t just luck though.
From the beginning, Ms. Waley knew she wanted to create a business model that could handle growth.
Of course, it started with the concept. She knew she wanted to create a brand that made body care fun.
“It was a very tired and distressed category. We wanted body care to feel like a treat and not a chore, and we saw an opportunity,” she explained.
“It is something you‘ve got to do every day. You have to enjoy it.”
Ms Waley said starting the company wasn’t too much of a financial burden. Although she fronted up the original investment of creating a website and branding, she didn’t put the product into production until she secured stockists.
“We pitched it into Woolworths and Priceline before we launched, and we managed to secure their stores,” she said.
“It was the only way we could afford to launch the brand because the units were in the $100,000 plus range.”
Ms Waley said that because of that clever tactic, her business wasn’t a “slow burn” at all, it was the opposite and took off immediately.
You can’t argue with her business model. She launched the brand in supermarkets so people could see her product while they were already shopping for body care.
The business founder argued that she was already asking consumers to change their behaviours and buy her products instead of the ones they’d been previously buying, as she felt that asking them to change where they shopped would be too much.
“We’re in over 7000 stores. It has been a really rapid and steep incline to success,” she said.
“It is so surreal. We had no experience but it was just about building a strong and purpose driven brand.”
Ms Waley also thinks the brand’s success is owed to the fact that she does not just agree to every opportunity but rather make every decision with the brand in mind.
“It has shaped every major decision and sometimes that means turning down commercial opportunities,” she said.
She’s also been clear about investing the success back into the brand. Yes, it is a multimillion-dollar success, but profits get invested back into the business.
“Any money we’re making we are injected into markets,” she said.
The success is undeniable, but for Ms Waley, it really felt like the brand had “made it” when she noticed other labels doing a similar thing.
She said that seeing her “products being duped” was a huge compliment because it meant she was setting the trend.
“We started noticing lookalikes pop up, we felt like we’ve made it,” she said.
Originally published as ‘Pretty wild’: One clever business move turns brand into mult-million dollar success
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