d I have a Pilates business called Go Chlo Pilates, but the concept of Nala came during Covid when I was on the hunt for some new underwear. I wanted something that was affordable and sustainable, but also cool. There wasn’t really anything quite like it on the market, so I identified an opportunity for a new brand to come in and shake up the industry.  Chloe de Winter (in denim) co-founded Nala after finding a gap in the market. Supplied IR: A lot of people have ideas for products they wish they could buy, but not many people actually build a business around them. What drove you to do that, and how did you go about it, not having a background in fashion design?  CDW: My co-founder Bill, my husband, comes from a business development and sales background, so he has more of a business mind, but I had also learned a lot from building my pilates business, so we sort of saw the opportunity together, and we made sure that we partnered with people who could develop a quality product.  The opportunity we saw with Nala was more around how we wanted to market the brand and the specific customer we wanted to talk to, and that’s where we knew that we could get some cut-through. IR: How would you describe Nala’s communication style and how it connects to your target customer?  CDW: When we looked at the landscape of intimates brands in Australia, it was very tokenistic. You would see a token big body or a token Black model on a brand’s Instagram feed, but it felt like they were just doing it to say they were inclusive without actually creating products for those customers.  When you would deep-dive into them, you would find that they offered a size 20, but only in one brief, and it was sold out because they probably ordered in really small quantities, and bras only went up to a DD or an E. We knew there was an opportunity to create a truly inclusive brand – both building it into our product offering, and reflecting it in our marketing.  One of the things we focused on was size inclusivity, and you’ll see that reflected on our website and socials. It’s very intentional, the models we use, the sizes we incorporate…It’s very important that we represent a truly diverse range of people. But more than that, we wanted to be gender-inclusive as well, so in our first range of product, we developed the Everybody Tuck Brief and the Everybody Scoop Crop, which are gender-neutral products that have certain design features that fit people with different anatomy who want to wear sexy underwear.  The Tuck Brief has been designed specifically for trans women who want to create a flattening effect through the front, and that is something that I haven’t seen reflected in other intimates brands. It was such an eye-opening experience for us to test wear it on different customers with these needs, getting their feedback, redeveloping the product. We’re currently in development for another product coming out in the next few months – a Tuck G-string.  There are people out there who have specific needs, and with Nala, we have created an openness with our community, so people are very open with what they need. We are here to solve those problems and fill those gaps in the market, and we try to communicate that through imagery on social media.  IR: There’s clearly an opportunity for brands to cater to groups that have been traditionally overlooked, whether that’s plus-size customers or the trans community. But I’m guessing some brands are hesitant to venture into these spaces due to the potential consequences of getting it wrong, whether the product isn’t quite right, or the marketing is off. How have you approached this? CDW: That’s a good question. I’m standing here as a cisgendered white woman in a small body, and that’s me. I’m not going to be the one to try the Tuck Brief. I’m not going to be the one to try the H cup bra. The important thing is to get those products on the right customers.  We started working on Nala for a year before we launched. It’s much harder to approach people to ask for feedback when the brand doesn’t exist, but one way we did it was by connecting with an organisation called The Equality Project. They are one of our charity partners that we donate 1 per cent of sales to, and they helped connect us with amazing women in the trans community to test wear our products and tell us exactly what they wanted.  They were invaluable in helping us develop our first product, and we’ve been able to tap into that community to help us develop future products. It’s an ongoing process, and there’s no way to speed it up. If you take shortcuts, the product isn’t going to land where you want it, and that’s when you face those consequences.  We did the same thing in terms of test wearing on different sizes. Before we launched, I did a survey on my Instagram to ask what people were looking for in bras, what size they were and what they thought was missing from the market. We were able to develop a database of people, and then I could go back to them to ask if they would test our products. We had people come into our office and give us feedback, and we posted products out to people and they did videos for us about the fit and feel. That’s just part of our process now – getting our products on as many bodies as possible before officially going into production.  One thing I want to add about the risk for brands looking to tap into this market is cost. If you want to place an order of G-strings, for example, and you have minimum quantities, the more sizes you add to the order, the more it’s going to cost. If you offer bigger sizes, they’re going to use more fabric, which is also going to cost more. So new brands have to toss up whether they want to risk going into these sizes, or if they’re limited by budget and can only start with a smaller range of sizes with the hopes of expanding it more in the future.  We went in with an aggressive strategy to be as inclusive as possible, but, no joke, we launched and the next day, we had requests for more sizes, and the next day, we put in the work to try to extend our sizes even further. We’ve done it a couple of times now across a few different products, but it’s hard to take that risk at the start. Nala offers products in sizes XXS to 6XL. Supplied IR: What sizes do you currently offer at Nala? CDW: It’s different for different products, but we have products that go up to an H cup and a band size of 22, and we have plans in the works to expand that to a J cup and a size 24 band. We have briefs that go from an XXS to a 6XL. IR: You have a unique fit guide on the Nala website, which is a gallery of bare breasts in all different shapes and sizes. The idea is that customers can choose the photo that best represents them to see what the product might look like on their own body. How did you come up with this idea, and what has the response been like?  CDW: We knew our biggest challenge would be getting people to buy bras online. Most people are used to going into a shop and getting fitted, and it’s usually not a particularly enjoyable process, especially for anyone with a bigger bust, so we wanted to make buying bras online a little bit more fun and accessible.  We had this idea to create a library of chests and breasts where people could scroll through and hover over an image to see a description of that person’s breasts – because everyone has very different shapes – and what size they were wearing. And then when you click on the image, you actually see that person’s body in Nala products, so instead of just scrolling on the website and seeing the product on different models, you can actually get a visual representation of what the product looks like on a body that looks like your own.  The shoot day for the library goes down in history as one of my favourite days ever, and the response has been incredible. People love seeing such a diverse range of breasts. We had someone who was breastfeeding as part of the shoot, we had an amazing trans woman, we had someone who had a double mastectomy and reconstruction. We plan to expand the library even further, so we can get more bodies in the mix. IR: Can you share how the business is going in terms of revenue growth since launching last October?  CDW: It’s going really well – better than our expectation, which is a plus. We built some really good momentum early on, and we did some big activations that went really well. In terms of revenue, we’ve had about a 40 per cent increase each month, which has been great, and we have a good returning customer rate as well. Over 30 per cent of customers who bought from us in the first couple of months have come back and bought more.  IR: Speaking of activations, you were behind the giant inflatable boob that floated down the Yarra River in Melbourne earlier this year. What was that about?  CDW: That came about because we were facing a lot of issues with censorship. A lot of our products are mesh, so you can see the nipples through the products, and when we would try to advertise with different platforms, or even just put different images out there, the big corporations didn’t like it. Meta didn’t like it, TikTok really didn’t like it. It took five months to get approved on Google. Everything was hard, so the big boob was just in your face. We taglined it, ‘It’s just a boob’ and created a giant inflatable breast, which was 10 metres long. It was enormous. We put it on a barge in the Yarra River. That was another one of my favourite days.  Nala’s “big boob” activation garnered headlines. Supplied IR: What’s happening on the advertising side of things now? Have you finally managed to get onto some of these platforms? CDW: We actually have. It’s been a lot of work, I’m not going to lie, but just a few weeks ago, we finally got our permanent ban on advertising on TikTok lifted, and we’re able to advertise through Meta, and Google has now gone through as well. We are super cautious with what we put out there – no nipples. On TikTok, you can’t show a bum in a G-string, it has to be full coverage. We’re just trying to be cautious because, at the drop of a hat, these corporations can ban you, and it would have enormous repercussions on our business. So we need to fight back in other ways – like the giant boob.  IR: What do you see as the biggest growth opportunities for Nala? CDW: I think the opportunity lies in creating solutions for customers who haven’t been able to find products in an affordable price range. I think sustainability should be a bare minimum for all businesses, but I don’t think that’s going to differentiate your brand from another. It’s about actually creating products that serve a purpose, like creating our Tuck Briefs, wirefree bras for bigger busts, and our strapless bra that caters to a J cup without making your boobs look four sizes bigger than they actually are.  You also can’t go past comfort and quality. I think Covid really changed what people were looking for when it came to underwear. People want wirefree bra options and underwear that might not have a perfectly seamfree finish, but has nice elastic and doesn’t give you a wedgie.  I also think there’s an opportunity for brands to have more fun, be more playful, and take risks with their products. You don’t have to create a sustainable range that is beige and neutral. You can have more fun with it and still be sustainable. IR: Hearing you describe Nala, it seems to me that you’re aiming to create the ‘anti-Victoria’s Secret’. Do you feel that’s the case? CDW: I love that. Yes, I do. As a Millennial, I grew up glued to the screen and counting down to the Victoria’s Secret runway show. I used to watch with friends, and we used to pick which Victoria’s Secret model we most wanted to look like. ‘I don’t want her, I want her.’ Now looking back, it makes me sick. That imagery is drilled into my mind. And I feel like Nala is the antithesis to that.