Kic App: How Steph Claire Smith, Laura Henshaw changed the health industry
Two hugely successful young Aussies reveal how their “worst year in history” led to their internationally recognised app.
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It’s a strange sensation to feel like you know someone before even meeting them but that’s just the kind of energy Kic founders, Steph Claire Smith and Laura Henshaw, bring.
The friends and business partners have amassed a following of roughly two million combined on both Instagram and TikTok thanks largely in part to the open and honest dialogue they share with their Kic community.
And Kic, their health and wellness app, is far from your average fitness program.
The duo first founded Kic (or Keep It Cleaner as it was originally known) as a recipe ebook in 2015 before launching the app in 2018. In that time, Kic has been dowloaded 850,000 times with users in 120 countries.
Steph and Laura are both former models and have been very open about their past struggles with disordered eating, starting Kic was an opportunity to make a difference Laura tells news.com.au checkout.
“[Health and fitness] is billion dollar industry, and it profits off people’s vulnerabilities, especially women, telling us that we’re not good enough.
“And for Kic, a big part of our mission is helping people to realise that they are enough as they are and helping to empower them with tools to take care of their body because they love it, not because they hate [their bodies] and they don’t think it’s good enough.”
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‘Our worst years in history’
Laura and Steph met in 2013 at Melbourne Fashion Week. Both were modelling at the time and they instantly bonded.
“It was one of those friendships where you meet someone and you feel like you’ve known them for a really long time,” says Steph.
From there, they both went overseas for modelling; Steph to New York and Laura to Milan. It was during this time that Steph says they both had “[their] worst years in history” due to disordered eating habits.
“I fell into a really bad trap with my relationship with myself, my body and disordered eating. And I also started to use exercise as a means to punish myself and deprive myself,” Laura says.
Upon returning to Melbourne, the two reconnected on their shared experiences and this eventually led to Kic.
“We decided we wanted to do something for others and to help them either avoid it completely, anything that we went down or help them through it if they happen to be on the same track that we were,” Steph says.
At this point in 2014, Steph already had an Instagram following of around half a million people. Now, Steph has over 1.5 million followers while Laura has 326,000 on Instagram.
“It was such a big audience, and we kind of had this opportunity to be able to make a difference,” says Laura.
Now over ten years later, Laura is the CEO and Steph is the Chief Community Officer.
“As we worked together, we recognised each other’s strengths and also just naturally gravitated towards the things that we felt like we were better at,” says Steph.
While Laura is across more of the operations and finances of the business, Steph sees her role as a lot more creative with a key focus on community engagement.
‘Make healthy living as easy as possible’
Designed to work in a variety of ways, Steph says there are no “boundaries or rules as to how people should use the product”.
“People might get injured, but they’ll keep their subscription because they love our meditations and our recipes, or they might sign up because they really want to do a run challenge, but then they fall pregnant, and they stick around because we’ve got our pregnancy program,” she says.
“So it’s very versatile, very flexible and also super affordable.”
Kic Membership
Monthly memberships cost $29.99 a month, while quarterly memberships cost $23.33 a month and yearly memberships are as little as $11.25 a month.
“What we’ve tried to do from the get-go, is just make healthy living as accessible and as easy as possible,” Steph says.
She also says the most common feedback from the app is that it’s the first time most people have actually stuck to a program.
“The most common feedback we get from our app … is that it’s the first thing that they’ve been able to actually kind of sustain and stick to, because they’ve enjoyed it, and they’ve built so much confidence in whatever they’ve been following.”
‘Everyone wants Steph and Laura to have a fight’
For most people, mixing business and pleasure has always been a no-go but for Steph and Laura, they’ve managed to make it work.
“We definitely have disagreements, and there have been some hard conversations we’ve had to tackle over the years, particularly as the business has grown and the pressure has grown and we’ve got more responsibility,” says Steph.
“I think you’ve got the added pressure of it almost being commercialised in a way, a lot is riding on our friendship, but it’s good because it also just makes sure that we’re always prioritising it, which means that when we catch up, we try our best not to talk about work and just reconnect on that friendship level, which is so important.”
Laura also says this commercialisation of their friendship and external forces can be hard.
“There was a podcast recently that came out and they said ‘secretly, you know, I think everyone wants Steph and Laura to have a fight’, which is so crazy. And do we ever say that about men? I don’t think so,” she says.
“We love to pin women up against each other, and I think that adds complexity to a relationship because there’s so much external pressure.”
Problematic TikTok health trends to ignore
As a result of everything both Laura and Steph went through, they are now very conscious of the type of content they share online. For example, sharing what they eat in a day is something they both would never do anymore.
“We started to think about how problematic it felt, and also how disingenuous it felt. I would answer them but I would know myself that not every day looks like that,” says Steph.
“A lot of the day in the plates you see out there are not backed by experts, or they’re not put out there by dietitians, and so it’s really kind of toxic to follow,” she also points out.
In terms of current trends, Laura says that while it is important to stay on top of any trending ideas in the health and wellness space they also are quite strict with what content they will engage with.
“It’s very important that within our content road map, we’re always looking at what’s trending within the wellness space, but we have a very, very clear filter on what trends actually make it into Kic,” says Laura.
In terms of problematic trends, they often will try to reframe it.
“We will do an article or a blog post and get our dietitian to talk about why that is absolutely rubbish, and to empower people to not get caught up in misinformation online,” Laura says.
This also plays into the business’ rebrand. Originally starting as Keep It Cleaner, in 2023 they rebranded to Kic.
“[The word cleaner] has a negative connotation to it for a lot of people, and we completely understand that, and we wanted to acknowledge that in the rebrand,” says Steph.
“We could have completely rebranded to a name that was so unattached to Keep It Cleaner and what we used to be, but we felt like it was a part of the story and a part of the evolution.”
The rebrand was a success and Steph says they were “blown away” by the response from the community.
Now with 19 employees, Kic is in a “really exciting phase of the business” according to Laura.
She also says a big goal is to become a “household name for wellness within Australia and then globally” and to build a “generational company”.
After spending time with both Steph and Laura, it’s not hard to see that they’re definitely well on their way to fulfilling this dream.
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