Sydney couple’s online swimwear side hustle accidentally makes $20m in a year

A young couple from Sydney started a side project as a bit of fun but it was soon earning them more than their monthly salary in just a day.

A Sydney couple stumbled upon a side hustle that was so lucrative they are now set to turnover $20 million by the end of the year.

Danielle Atkins and Alex Babich, both 35, felt trapped in the 9am to 5pm corporate grind and decided to make their own swimwear label for a bit of fun.

They launched Kulani Kinis, specialising in patterned bikinis, and were packing orders and dealing with customer inquiries in their spare time after long work days.

Fast forward six years and the couple, who have since married and had a child, have quit their old jobs and are multi-millionaires from the brand.

“We were both working full times in roles … Our weeks were the same, our years felt the same. It felt like you could continue on that life indefinitely,” Mr Babich, a former EY accountant, told news.com.au.

Ms Atkins, an ex-psychologist, said that she had been working in the “pointy end” of acute mental health care for eight years and that most of her colleagues were only “lasting the distance” because they had dropped down to part-time work.

She was looking around for a new passion project and knew she’d found it when she had an “underwhelming” experience during a holiday in Hawaii.

The pair were looking for a fun hobby but never expected to become millionaires out of it.

Alex Babich and a worker sorts through a pile of patterned materials.

The south Sydney couple met when they were just 23 and had a yearly tradition of going to Hawaii for a much-needed break.

In 2014, they jetted off like every other year but something stands out in Ms Atkins’ memory.

“Back in 2014 it was unusual to buy a swimsuit online, but because of work I was time-poor [so I did],” she recalled.

“When we got to the holiday place I tried it [the swimsuit] on and I was a little bit underwhelmed.”

Thinking there had to be something better out there, Ms Atkins thought she would try launching her own swimwear label.

Dani Atkins was the one with the spark for the idea, according to her husband.

“I’ll be really honest, Dani had the spark for the idea,” her now-husband said with a laugh.

“I was like ‘Who wants to buy bikinis online?’ She thought this could be a good side hustle.”

It ended up going way beyond a side hustle.

In its first year, the online fashion brand made $250,000. By last year, that number had swelled to $9.2 million.

And by the end of this financial year, they’ll have hit $20 million in revenue.

“It’s kind of crazy how well we did,” Mr Babich said.

Ms Atkins attributes their success to the fact that “a lot of people start it [a business] to be successful. When we started it, there was no pressure.”

Dani Atkins and Alex Babich on their wedding day, where they said they responded to customer inquiries in the morning.

The $10,000 Ms Atkins and Mr Babich usually set aside for their annual holiday went was funnelled into getting the business off the ground.

After researching e-commerce, which was a “new phenomenon” back then, Ms Atkins settled on Alibaba as their manufacturer.

They also hired designers to come up with unique prints for the swimming costumes.

In one evening, the then-psychologist made the website from scratch.

By February of the next year, in 2015, Kulani Kinis was born.

A warehouse stocked with Kulani Kinis.

Ms Atkins joked that her son’s first word was bikini.

“It was real humble beginnings,” Mr Babich recalled.

“Dani would finish her shift at the hospital, I’d come home at 6.30pm and help her.”

After three months of this, Ms Atkins dropped down to part-time work. By nine months, she quit her job all together to work on the brand full-time.

“If you start a shop online, it’s like having a shop in the middle of the desert. You have to make people find you,” Mr Babich warned.

He’d been nagging his boss for a transfer to an EY branch in the United States because “the reach and opportunity there is so much greater”.

His wish was finally granted later in September when they were able to move to Los Angeles.

Mr Babich and Ms Atkins in Los Angeles.

Ms Atkins referred the first few months of LA as her “bikini bubble” because she had no choice but to occupy her time on the booming side hustle.

“Alex worked 16-hour days seven days a week because the work culture is crazy over there,” she explained.

“I wasn’t allowed to practice psychology [because the US requires different qualifications], I didn’t know anyone, so I called it a bikini bubble. I was able to have that focus.”

She hand-wrote orders in their tiny studio apartment while her partner would deliver them from the EY mailroom.

Mr Babich remembers one time when he questioned why he was working a full-time job.

“There were days when I was sitting at my work look at daily sales which were in excess of my monthly income,” he said. “I was sitting there thinking ‘When should I leave?’.”

They poured what money they had into attending trade shows — which is where brands like theirs can show off their wares to big retailers.

Ms Atkins and Mr Babich at a trade show.

The entrepreneurs were lucky enough to nab a number of big deals with major wholesalers all over the world including the US, Canada, and even Tahiti and the Caribbean.

The big name brands they are currently stocked at include Bikini Village, ASOS, Zumiez, Tilley and Ron Jon Surf Shop.

They have previously worked with Forever 21 and their first ever wholesale order was through a subsidiary of Billabong.

More than 80 per cent of their customers come from the US after their stint in LA. The couple have since moved back to southern Sydney where they live with their toddler, Hendrix.

Ms Atkins said “persistence and a sprinkle of luck” was how they ended up where they are today.

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