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FEMALE FOUNDERS
KATH PURKIS AND KERRY OSBORN Her Fashion Box: herfashionbox.com
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hey’re young, savvy, driven and gorgeous. Not much could stop Kath Purkis and Kerry Osborn, the founders of Her Fashion Box, Australia’s first fashion and beauty subscription service. A subscription to Her Fashion Box costs $39.95 per month and each month subscribers receive three on-trend fashion accessories and four to five beauty products, along with a print magazine they publish. At 27, Kath is known on the Australian start-up scene. Her Fashion Box is her second startup, at just 21 she founded one of Australia’s first online retail destinations, Le Black Book. After seven years working in online retail she was after a new challenge and was inspired by subscription model businesses such as Birchbox coming out of the US. “After working for so long in online retail I was able to predict the fashion trends every season and could pick the hero products which would sell in high volumes. I connected with a few founders of subscription commerce businesses locally and saw it as a very attractive business model,” Kath says. Kath met Kerry, 26, a beauty brand manager on LinkedIn when she was pitching to partner with a beauty brand for Her Fashion Box. They got on so well, they decided to go into business together and launched Her Fashion Box in March 2013. Like most things associated with fashion and beauty, everything looks glossy from the outside, but Kath and Kerry have had their own rollercoaster ride of a startup journey. “Our biggest challenges have been creating a business that has monthly deadlines like a traditional magazine would. We are managing inventory and producing a magazine on deadline every month. With traditional e-tail, it’s easy to pop a purchase
LAUREN MCLEOD
Flightfox: flightfox.com
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auren McLeod seems built for the bumpy ride of a startup journey. In 2011 she was the first Australian to cross Mongolia’s Gobi Desert entirely on foot. That need for adventure has led Lauren, 28, to found two startups. In 2010 Lauren co-founded Globetrooper, a social network for adventure travellers, bringing together like-minded people to climb mountains, cross deserts and push their limits. Then Lauren and her co-founder Todd Sullivan sold the business in 2011 to take on a new adventure and have since been focused on Flightfox, their second startup. It was also inspired by Lauren’s love of travel and exploring. Flightfox is a marketplace that connects travellers with flight experts. Instead of searching and booking flights yourself, Flightfox’s experts do the work for you. They work for a flat fee, which the traveller decides and Flightfox takes a percentage of it. They aren’t ordinary travel agents; they’re genuine flight experts who have a specific interest in global routing, airline pricing and loyalty programs.
in a packing box and send it out, however with subscription commerce you have deadlines that need to be met. “Subscription commerce is still relatively new to the Australian market but is very evolved in the United States and parts of Asia. We have been first to market, which has meant we’ve had to educate women on exactly what we do and why it’s going to make life better,” Kath says. Kath and Kerry are thinking big. Kath already had a very large and engaged database with Le Black Book and on launch of Her Fashion Box they received a 20 per cent conversion rate. They are working with international brands and hope to be sending their hot pink boxes beyond our shores soon. “If we can send one million boxes out in three years, I will feel I have created a brand that has really changed the way women experience fashion and beauty.” Kath is keen to see more women enter the Australian startup scene and is generous with her advice. “‘Disrupt or be disrupted.’ One of my mentors said this just before I dreamt up the Her Fashion Box concept and it stuck. If you want to be the next Zara or a billion dollar business, you have to do something different from the pack and take a risk,” she said on the website shoestring.com.au. To budding female entrepreneurs Kath says: just do it. “I have always encouraged friends and my team members to follow their entrepreneurial dreams. I already see some of our team with the entrepreneurial spark and I can’t wait to see them take ideas to fruition when they are ready. If you never give something a go, you never know what you could achieve and the dreams you could make come true. Life is short, why not make your mark and create something you are passionate about. My advice is find great mentors, take risks and celebrate the wins big and small; Kerry and I high five on a regular basis!”
“I lived and travelled across six continents and always found it difficult to find the best flights. For the average person that may sound a li"le trite. But for intrepid travellers and frequent flyers, the problem is clear. Unless you become a flight expert, you’re destined to fly like a novice. Our experts recently built a round-the-world itinerary
LAUREN! MCCLEOD!HAS! A!PASSION!FOR! TRAVEL&
to six continents, all in business class, for just over $2,500. No traditional travel agent or flight website could deliver even double that price,” Lauren says. Many entrepreneurs have complained about the difficulties of finding funding in Australia, but Lauren raised $800,000 in funding, with half of that from Australian investors. Flightfox was chosen to take part
in Australian startup incubator Startmate and was then accepted in to Silicon Valley mentoring program YCombinator. “Startmate focused more on the mechanics of building a business from an idea, while YCombinator focused more on thinking big, growing fast and raising money from investors. Both helped us get into the right mindset. Instead of caring about the li"le things, like tax or small product features, they helped us concentrate on our customers and on growth. Most of the challenges Lauren has faced with the setup of Flightfox have been a result of it being a marketplace. “Marketplaces are inherently chickenand-egg. Without one side working well, the other side won’t stick. We tried to get experts to join Flightfox, but without customers, they weren’t convinced. We soon realised that marketplaces typically need to ‘seed’ one side first, which just means they have to fake it ‘til they make it. So initially I played the role of 15 experts and worked around the clock for our first customers. As soon as we had real paying customers, the experts came in droves.” “Once we achieved some level of success, we had to uncover our best channels for
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