Few friends, let alone business partners, have a bond like Thessy Batsinilas and Yiota Kouzoukas.

The co-founders of Brisbane-based, multimillion-dollar, global fashion empire Sabo Skirt work together, holiday together, socialise together and even live next door to each other.

Yet despite what they call a 24/7 relationship, the pair, who are also sisters-in-law, insist they never get sick of one another.

“We get asked that all the time … we just lucked out,” Batsinilas, 35, says of the friendship, which began as teenagers after meeting at a party. “I just remember meeting her and then thinking, ‘I love you, you are my person.’”

“Feeling’s mutual,” Kouzoukas, 36, chimes in.

“I always say that Yiot is my soulmate, which is a bit concerning for my husband, but my husband and Yiot were best friends growing up, so the dynamic is perfect, like we’re all best friends,” Batsinilas adds, with Kouzoukas also married to Batsinilas’s brother, George, who is the third partner in Sabo Skirt (pronounced Sa-bow, short for sabotage).

While it might sound unbelievable to some, the women insist it’s this unwavering union, as well as their connection to their extended family that is behind the success of their beloved fashion brand that has taken the world by storm.

“In the business we have so much family that work with us … they’re just as passionate about Sabo as we are, plus their support outside of work, especially after we had children, that has been integral with juggling work and owning your own business,” Kouzoukas says, with their parents, siblings and aunts all helping with everything from school and kindy drop-offs of the women’s four children (they have two each) to preparing dinner each night.

“We wouldn’t be where we are today without them.” That support is even more crucial going forward as the duo looks to take their business to even greater heights.

The pair started Sabo Skirt in 2011 in the spare bathroom of Batsinilas’s parents’ home in Brisbane’s south. It began after their fashion blog showcasing their personal styles suddenly became a hit, making them instant influencers with followers from across the world.

Capitalising on their new-found popularity, the duo first started selling a mix of customised vintage pieces and local wholesale labels. They soon switched to creating their own bespoke designs with a focus on affordability and their laid-back resort aesthetic loosely influenced by their Greek heritage.

It immediately filled a gap in the market for 20-somethings chasing sophisticated and chic fashion that looked unique but wouldn’t break the bank. It also became a hit with big name celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Ariana Grande and Bella and Gigi Hadid. The business boomed and the entrepreneurs were named in Forbes’ prestigious 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2016.

Now after 13 years in the online retail space, selling to more than 200 countries, the pair plans to expand their bricks and mortar presence in Australia from just two stores in Queensland, at Chermside and Pacific Fair on the Gold Coast, to an entire fleet across the country starting in Sydney. It’s part of a strategy to diversify their risk, but also grow their customer base Down Under, with the US currently their biggest market.

“There are still people who are hesitant to shop online or are more comfortable shopping in store and I don’t think that’s ever going to go away,” says Kouzoukas, who wouldn’t be drawn on exactly how many shops they plan to open. “It’s a new challenge we’re looking into and we’re excited.”

The proliferation of stores is also designed to force the label to improve its winter offering, with Sabo known for its easy, breezy summer designs rather than outfits for the cooler months. “We have winter customers at any point of the year because we have such a big international and domestic customer base, so I think a huge piece of the puzzle that I think we’re missing is the winter stuff,” Kouzoukas says.

The pair also plans to up the ante on Sabo’s sister brand Zaco (pronounced Zar-co), which was launched in 2022 as an affordable, luxury event wear label, focusing on higher quality fabrics and more detailing, coming in at a higher price point than Sabo, but well below other up-market brands.

“We are working towards dropping more (collections) regularly with Zaco,” Kouzoukas says. “It’s just been so popular with the collections we’ve had to date, we just foresee it continuing to grow; so more collections, more often – it’s what the people want.”

And if Batsinilas has her way, that will mean a new drop each month. “With Zaco we didn’t anticipate it to sell as quickly as it is selling,” Batsinilas says. “The last (collection) sold in a week, the one before that sold in a few hours. We didn’t know with that price point if it would sell like Sabo sells that quickly.”

The pair is also working with a secret Australian “It” girl on a new collaborative collection for Zaco, due to launch early next year, that they believe will catapult the brand to new heights. “She’s been really heavily involved in the designing process and we’ve based the whole collection around her and what she wears and everyone loves her,” Batsinilas says, revealing other collaborations will also be on the way for Zaco.

But the biggest changes for both brands will come from the women themselves as they reach new milestones and chapters in their lives. After starting Sabo in their early 20s, they say their style has evolved with each new era they enter.

“Being pregnant and then being a mum and then having a post-partum body, we really, really think about that now because we’ve gone through it,” says Batsinilas.

“So (it’s) making sure we’re always catering to different body shapes and trying to be as inclusive as we can. Having a different body shape to what I used to have now really helps with thinking about elements of the designing that helps cover a wider group of people.”

Batsinilas says Sabo Skirt has grown to now cater to everyone from teens to mums of all ages. “It’s been a really fun journey for our customers and followers to grow with us,” she says.

Their personal growth has also affected the way they show up on social media.

While it was once their platform for sharing their lives, with each woman boasting more than 150,000 followers on Instagram alone, and led them to starting the fashion line, since becoming mothers they reveal they are much more private about what they post.

“Now that you have kids, it’s a safety thing as well and we’re always thinking about that,” Batsinilas says. “The more you share, the more people see and it’s sometimes a little bit scary so we’ve had to navigate through that and strategise our influencer side of who we are and what we share, and be a little bit more selective. It’s definitely nowhere near as much as we used to share.”

That said, Batsinilas has become somewhat of a poster girl for endometriosis after publicly revealing her fertility journey on her socials and her battle to fall pregnant with her children, Zani, 6, and Jay, 3.

After documenting losing what she says were half of her reproductive organs and having four failed IVF attempts trying to conceive her first child, she says sharing her story online actually brought her “comfort”.

“It was such a supportive community. I had so many women reaching out to me every day, some of them with their thoughts and prayers for me, and then a lot of them saying, ‘Thank you for bringing awareness to this, I’m going through the same thing,’” she says. “The amount of people I helped sort of outweighed the negative aspect of everyone knowing my business, so I was really happy to be able to do that.”

Batsinilas also chose to share her post-partum experience online, and the difficulties she has had “bouncing back” to her pre-baby body. While now 3.5 years post-partum, she says the journey has been incredibly difficult and she has actually enjoyed being open about the struggle as it’s helped other new mums.

“I really like sharing that because so many women related to that and it made so many women feel comfortable and they were finally able to see an influencer who didn’t have that bounce back in a very short amount of time,” Batsinilas says.

“I think it’s really important not always to share just the highlights, making sure you’re real and you don’t look like everything’s perfect all the time because obviously everyone isn’t.”

What the women have been very good at hiding until now, however, has been their incredible skills for property development.

The pair, along with Batsinilas’s brother and Kouzoukas’s husband, George, are behind Ature Group – a property company tackling everything from luxury homes to commercial properties and residential towers. With Batsinilas’s family having long been in the property game, the trio decided to follow suit about a decade ago to diversify their risk if the fashion label went belly up.

They have since completed projects in Brisbane’s Highgate Hill, West End, Greenslopes, Tarragindi and Bulimba, as well as their Sabo Skirt headquarters in Salisbury, and their own homes in Holland Park West, in the city’s south.

Their latest venture is their biggest yet, an apartment complex in Broadbeach on the Gold Coast, called Sola, featuring 20 full-floor units with luxury, resort-style facilities.

“I grew up with my parents flipping houses … So I’ve been exposed to that my whole life so it wasn’t as daunting for me to dive into,” Batsinilas says.

They love to come in “when it’s the fun time for the interiors”, putting their fashion eye to good use deciding on the aesthetics of each property, while leaving the rest to George.

While their projects have increasingly levelled up with each build, the ladies say their ultimate goal is to have a luxury boutique hotel – or a portfolio of hotels.

“My personal dream is to build a really beautiful Mediterranean escape somewhere here in Australia,” Batsinilas says, though she won’t rule out Greece as another possible location.

“We just love it and we really love the interior side of it.”

While that dream, she says, is a little while off, what’s much closer for the pair is a potential move to Greece for three months of each year.

The family of Batsinilas’s husband, Georgio, has a home in Kythira, Greece, where they all holiday together almost every year.

The goal is to spend the European summer there, giving up their palatial multimillion-dollar homes in the Brisbane suburbs for a quieter, simpler life, while still working on the business remotely.

“It’s a very small, traditional, very simple life that you live there and we love that it’s so different to here,” Batsinilas says.

“I think it’s important for our children so they can experience what it’s like living off the land. Like we’ll go and pick our own fruit and eggs, and then we’ll come back and cook it up. Sometimes some of the family will catch the animals (to cook) and it’s really, really traditional.”

While they may be chasing a simpler life overseas, the women insist it won’t mean taking their foot off the pedal at work, with the pair just as passionate today about Sabo as the day they started.

“We’re always talking about business or thinking of new ideas … We love it,” Batsinilas says. ■