3 minute read
Supportive venture
Sisters’ uplifting message
Siblings Bianca and Bridgett Roccisano have made a career out of juggling several successful businesses
WORDS CHARLOTTE BRUNDRETT
Popular advice has it that you should never mix business with family, but try telling that to sisters Bianca and Bridgett Roccisano.
They are the names behind two successful yet strikingly different multi-million-dollar businesses — the Bianca and Bridgett womenswear label and Booby Tape breast product range.
“Bridgett and I are entrepreneurial by nature,” Bianca, 35, says. “I don’t think it dawned on us until we started our own business how much ambition our parents instilled in us growing up.”
“Dad used to say we’d have businesses one day where we’d support ourselves, so we always had an inherent drive for it,” Bridgett, 30, adds.
Originally from the Victorian city of Mildura, they moved to Melbourne as young adults to pursue their career dreams.
“I wasn’t as enthusiastic as Bianca about leaving our home town,” Bridgett says.
“It was a difficult transition and
I cried for my first three months in Melbourne before deciding
I’m never going home.”
After starting out as personal stylists in 2011, their Bianca and Bridgett label emerged in 2016. They launched Booby Tape as a side project soon after, but it quickly became a business in its own right.
“We didn’t tell anyone Booby Tape was ours for a whole year because we didn’t want our audience to think we were losing focus from our fashion label,” Bianca says.
“We’ve seen entrepreneurs dip their fingers in too many pies,
Bianca (left) and Bridgett Roccisano. INSET The sisters behind the Booby Tape brand.
so we were wary of that, but the success of Booby Tape was instantaneous.”
After seeing a market gap for breast tape that could lift and secure cleavage under garments without damaging skin, the sisters decided to create a product themselves.
Promoted as the world’s first “breast lift in a box”, Booby Tape is stocked by 1000 stockists (including Chemist Warehouse) in more than 35 countries and now includes Booby Tape Skin, featuring breast masks, lotions and scrubs.
“Things took off very quickly for Booby Tape, and I think a lot of it comes down to Instagram. We had international buyers from Canada, the US, the UK, essentially from the jump and it was totally organic,” Bianca says.
While juggling two businesses is never an easy feat, the global pandemic further complicated things.
“We were days away from a massive Booby Tape event in London and were flying over (social media personalities and models) Sofia Richie and Nikita Dragun, but the developing COVID crisis led to its cancellation, which was devastating,” Bianca says. “Good or bad, it forced us to stop; something we hadn’t really done in years.”
Rather than dwell on the situation, they used the downtime to juggle their existing businesses along with a newly launched consulting business to inspire fellow ambitious women.
“Developing our businesses over the years has given us indispensable wisdom when it comes to building a brand, so now we have a platform to share it,” Bridgett says.
“Bianca and I are a unique situation. We’re complete opposites and can scream at each other and be fine the next minute, but I don’t actually recommend working with family because it’s hard. You have to be on the same page in every aspect of your business.”
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