Lioness
building a dtc channel from wholesale roots
Inside Lioness Fashion Label's Strategic Partnership with Elephant Room to create a global high-growth DTC channel
Wendy Lin, a finance graduate from the University of New South Wales, started her career in finance but soon realised it wasn't for her. Her mother had experience with retail shops, and Wendy began selling merchandise and offering alterations at a pop-up store in Wynyard Station in 2009.
Struggling to establish herself in the highly competitive fashion industry, Wendy began making some inroads, building strong relationships with manufacturers and suppliers. The business began to gain momentum. Wendy’s first hire was Daniella Johnstone, who brought her fashion and retail sales management background— creating Lioness’s official sales and marketing team.
Understanding the power of brand and marketing, they began using social media marketing, influencers, and “It girls” to promote the Lioness label— quickly realising how far endorsements can take a brand. They worked with top influencers such as Elsa Hosk, Danielle Bernstein, and Elle Ferguson (to name a few) before influencer marketing became a widespread practice.
“By having clothes on the influencers that their customers aspired to wear and empathised with, they were able to reach and resonate with their target audience,” Brian Nguyen, Director of Finance & Legal at Lioness Fashion Label said. Still to this day, Lioness has continued to leverage influencer marketing as a strategic tool for their brand.
Now, it has grown into a sought-after international brand that wholesales its collections to world-leading retailers and sells directly to consumers in 15 countries. The label is worn and loved by celebrities, influencers and ‘it girls’ worldwide. When Elephant Room first spoke to Lioness, their online store on WooCommerce was neglected and barely generating revenue. Over the last 5 years, Elephant Room has helped Lioness grow its online income by 140x. Let’s look closer at Lioness’s backstory and their thriving 5-year partnership with Elephant Room.
- Migrating from WooCommerce— almost 5 years ago— to Shopify
- Complete international digital marketing strategy across Meta, TikTok and Google
- Klaviyo migration and strategy, as well as SMS
- Fulfillment process and operational/warehousing consulting
First meeting Elephant Room
During their first initial meeting nearly five years ago, in 2018, Elephant Room was impressed with Lioness's solid wholesale business. However, they were surprised to learn that Lioness still had healthy numbers despite not focusing much attention on its online direct-to-consumer sales.
Less than 10% of their total sales were from direct-to-consumer channels. This discovery raised eyebrows and Elephant Room saw the potential to make more improvements. As a result, they helped Lioness transition from relying on organic marketing to implementing paid advertising strategies.
"When Elephant Room came into the picture, it was like a breath of fresh air. We had salespeople come through before, but they never really showed us the magic in the box or the true value that could be added,” Brian said.
“We had a prior relationship with an agency, but it was more of a casual idea rather than a serious attempt. But when we started talking to Elephant Room, it was the first time we started to question what more could be done and what value they could add to our business."
“In hindsight, do I regret not handing over the reins earlier to Elephant Room? Probably, yes. Our market cap would have gotten so much bigger.”
However, Brian thinks they built the relationship at a good pace.
“Elephant Room took that first dollar and showed Lioness Fashion Label what they could do with it. Now, the conversations around budget are much easier."
Achieving year-on-year growth between 100-200%
Sustainable growth has always been an essential part of Lioness’s strategy. “As a brand, we’re all completely self-invested and have no outside finance. Being a family business, we want to be able to maintain our growth sustainably.” Brian said. Over the past five years, the brand has experienced significant growth, with year-on-year increases ranging between 100% and 200%.
Getting Lioness to where it is today
The partnership between Elephant Room and Lioness Fashion Label has been vital for the growth and success of the eCommerce brand. And Elephant Room has played many roles in helping Lioness get to where it is today
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