‘To be a woman in business, you’ve got to be tough’: Booby Tape co-founder Bianca Roccisano
The cut-throat business world may often be a boys’ club where “strong women are still viewed as bitches”, but these female entrepreneurs are making their own mark.
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Bianca and Bridgett Roccisano were brought up tough. Born and raised in Mildura, with a father who worked seven days a week for their family business, the sisters – born six years apart – learnt loyalty and hard work from the time they could walk.
“Our father always taught us that life was hard and no one was coming to save us,” Bianca told VWeekend, immediately responding to a question despite being in the middle of her sister’s glamorous hen’s party.
“There were no tears or many congratulations in my family. If we wanted anything in life we had to take responsibility for it and secure it ourselves.”
There is no such thing as a day off for the 37-year-old, who, alongside her sister, has built a multimillion-dollar brand, sold in more than 60 countries, from scratch over the past five years.
The journey, which began in 2017 with their fashion brand Bianca and Bridgett, was followed by the international phenomena Booby Tape, which is expected to reel in more than $20 million in revenue this year, with Jennifer Lopez donning the brand last month.
Despite their unwavering commitment and groundbreaking success in the fashion industry, the journey has not come without its challenges.
“To be a woman in business, you’ve got to be tough,” Bianca says, this time speaking on hands free as she drives up the coast from Byron Bay to the Gold Coast.
“We go through a lot of things that I believe men would never have to go through.”
Bridgett, joining the call from Melbourne, adds: “As soon as you meet someone you have to prove yourself.
“We’ve had so many people try to not pay us,” she explains, remembering back to their first gig styling celebrities for a Melbourne company.
“It would never happen under women. It was men and … they would just make an excuse not to pay us.
“That happened to us a lot of times and we quickly learned (we had to ask for) money upfront.”
The professional networkers, who are often glammed-up at social and business events, say conversations are rarely unblemished by patronising commentary.
“We’ve been laughed at, asked whether we’ve even studied, if we even have any staff, if we even work,” Bridgett says.
“It’s condescending from the start and it doesn’t stop.”
Bianca, who deals with stakeholders daily, explains that she is constantly over quoted by clients, lawyers and manufacturers – just a few weeks ago quoted $4000 for an $800 legal letter.
“As soon as I pulled him up, he quickly apologised and made it $800.”
Bridgett, 31, says many of the people they do business with think that “because we’re women, we’re silly and that we’ll just pay anything”.
“They think because there is no man in the business, they can take advantage of us,” Bianca says, backing her sister.
Market disrupter, Ellen Weigall
Much like the Roccisanos, market disrupter Ellen Weigall, 27, saw a gap in the market and a big opportunity.
Before 2020, you’d be hard pressed to find a premium spirit marketed to women on the shelves at your local bottle shop, with the hard liquor section saturated with brown and black bottles seemingly targeting men.
But at age 24, enthused by the idea of a sugar-free, hot pink spirit and eagerly searching for a distiller, the door was repeatedly slammed in her face.
“I know it was the fact that I wanted to create a feminine product and that I was a woman,” she says.
“And it delayed my business by a year.”
Refusing to give up on the idea, Ms Weigall pressed ahead, founding Australia’s first 100 per cent female-owned spirits brand, Baby Pink Gin.
Speaking on the phone from her Collingwood office, Ms Weigall, who walks into bars and hotels herself to sell her product, says she hardly goes a day without being reminded she’s an outsider.
“Restaurant managers, bar owners, they can’t wrap their heads around the fact that I’m the owner,” she says.
“They’ll ask: So, is the business with your dad, or your husband?”
“They’ll ask to speak to a male sales rep or the distiller.”
Start-up founder Annie McAuley
Fellow Melbourne start-up founder Dr Annie McAuley, who operates in a world far from that of distilleries and bottle shops, is all too familiar with the seemingly ingrained perspective of women in business.
“When I initially approached manufacturers, nobody responded to me,” she told VWeekend.
“But when I used a male name on our emails everyone responded. We switched to Mitch, and Mitch gets all these emails back.”
Dr McAuley, who founded Talkiplay – a company delivering early childhood speech and language development tools – says investors are always shocked that she developed the hardware.
“They can’t seem to get their head around the fact that I designed and developed the original technology myself,” she says.
Having faced many panels and pitching rooms, Dr McAuley says one line of questioning is regularly brought up.
“Who’s looking after the kids?”
“I just don’t think that in a panel the male start up CEO will be asked: where are the kids?” she says.
Tech entrepreneur
The stereotypes still run strong in the tech universe, assures multi-pronged start-up founder Lisa Teh.
“Strong women are still viewed as b---hes,” she says.
The tech entrepreneur, who founded digital marketing company CODI Agency and co-founded Web3 marketing agency Mooning, says despite the rise of women in the workplace, “a lot of the time it’s still a boys club”.
“Conversations happen at the footy, at drinks, at the strip club, at golf,” she says.
“Women have to adapt to working in a man’s world.”
Ms Teh says the way men and women in the industry are perceived is clear day-to-day, and had made it “quite difficult to win pitches and build relationships”.
“I was recently at a meeting with a client, three men, and my business partner who is a man, and I was pitching to them, and they directed the conversation at him 90 per cent of the time,” she says.
“It was like I was there to take notes.”
Ms Teh, speaking from her office on Richmond’s bustling Church St, says she believes most men don’t notice because they had never experienced it.
“The way I think of it is if you’re at a restaurant and you’re trying to get the waiter’s attention and you’re being ignored and getting increasingly frustrated,” she says.
“I don’t think men get that feeling.”
Company founder
Dr Liz Williams, co-founder of Hemideina, a solely female-led company working on redesigning the Cochlear implant, agrees, saying people often fail to see women as authority.
“You’ll be in a room and you’re the one with the information but people turn to the male colleague for the follow up, as if for approval,” she says as she sits looking out at Melbourne’s skyscrapers from her office well above the treetops on Nicholson Street.
“It’s as if bringing a male into the room gives you credibility.”
Dr Williams, who runs Hemideina with fellow medical practitioner Dr Kate Lomas, says in many meetings “ it feels like we give our opinion or thoughts and then a man says virtually the same words, the same message and people start listening.”
“A man’s opinion is often taken at face value, whereas a woman has to provide significantly more evidence,” Dr Lomas adds.
Dr Williams, 38, says “there is definitely an assumption that women can’t do business” and that women “are seen as soft if they’re not leading like a man would”.
HOW TO BUILD A WINNING BRAND
Listen to podcasts
“Listen to podcasts,” Bianca Roccisano says.
“Podcasts are a free tool where you can learn advice from entrepreneurs such as Branson, Zuckerberg and Sara Blakey.
Decide who you want to be, then go for it.”
Before podcasts, Ms Roccisano says she was charmed by the words of her father.
“There was one stage where I wanted to be prime minister of Australia. My dad told me I could do it,” she explains.
“Should you not have parents that are so progressive, take charge of your own life and learn to think for yourself.”
If you want success, “always take control of your own life”, she offers.
“We are blessed to live in Australia, the land of opportunity!”
Make your haters your clients
The Roccisano remember one particular attendee at Cosmoprof – the biggest trade fair in the world for beauty – in Bologna.
“There was a large distributor in Germany and he walked past the booth and he started laughing at what we did,” Bianca says.
Quick to correct him, she asked the man to call any woman in his office and ask if they’ve heard of the brand.
“He came back and wanted to sign us asap. They’re now a multimillion dollar client of ours.”
Raise funds
Dr Liz Williams and Dr Kate Lomas run one the few solely female founded start-ups able to secure sizeable funding, securing $15m over the past three years.
“We’re very methodical in building out all of the data that investors need to make that decision. We bring in third party analysis as well,” Dr Williams explains.
“As women you have to do a lot more to stand out. You have to work four times as hard as your male counterparts and give four times as much evidence.”
Dr Williams says smart investors “are looking at the fundamentals of the business, the team, the market opportunity and whether the technology and business plan can fill (and monetise) that gap”.
‘Build allies’
Surround yourself with men “who get it”, says Lisa Teh.
“I’ve been really lucky to have allies around me,” she said.
“Don’t be afraid to have conversations about the issue and open up to those around you.”
You might find new allies, but you might also educate men on issues they weren’t even aware about.”
Be a role model
Lisa Teh, the Roccisano’s and Ellen Weigall have made sure they are a visible presence online to give young women role models to look up to.
“You can’t be what you can’t see,” Ms Teh says.
“I want women to see that they can have a voice.”
Ellen Weigall created her brand to give women an option and her podcast platform to give women a voice.
“People want to hear the unfiltered parts of others’ business journeys … the real and raw person behind the brand.”
‘Don’t give up’
“It took over a year to find someone to produce my product,” Ellen Weigall explains.
“I probably got laughed out of the first six I went to.”
“They’d straight out say no or over quote. They’d say: “You won’t understand, this is too much for you.”
But Ms Weigall refused to doubt the idea, using the early rejections as a sign that she had “stumbled on the industry’s blind spot”.
“I knew that there were so many women crying out for a product like this,” she says.
“When somebody tells me I can’t do something, it only makes me want to do it more.”
Get to the root
Evie Fox Koob says the only way to stamp out gender bias in its totality was to dig into the issue itself.
“The way that you get around these things is trying to get at the root cause itself in terms of norms and bias,” she says.
“For example, having much more standardised questions in pitching rooms, more women in leadership in investment firms.”
“More female representation on the investor side is important to correct this bias,
particularly when it comes to actually making funding decisions.”
Ms Fox Koob assured that times were changing, with a growing number of companies realising the value of women.
The challenge
While 22 per cent of all startup founders are women, female founded startups secured just 0.7 per cent of all capital in the 2022 financial year.
This is despite funding increasing tenfold between 2018 and 2022, according to a report published by Deloitte Access Economics.
“Our research suggests this disparity in funding is not attributed to potential investment returns or business fundamentals, but rather embedded gender bias,” co-author Evie Fox Koob explains.
Evie Fox Koob, who has spoken to a range of women who participated in support programs, “nearly all mentioned that gender was an issue”.
“Not having access to funding is the biggest barrier to growth … and pattern matching – where investors look to where they’ve gone in the past – plays a big role,” she says.
“We also found that investors were more likely to ask women preventative questions, for example, about potential losses whereas men are asked about potential gains.”
Ms Fox Koob says female founders have had a particularly hard time during the recessionary period, with investors looking to fund “less-risky” business ventures, meaning they’re usually “more inclined to go to male owned business”.
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