For Lin and Maxine Windram, bra shopping was always a frustrating and ultimately, disappointing, experience.

The mother and daughter are among the estimated 40 per cent of Australian women who wear bras with a cup size of DD or higher, according to 2009 figures from lingerie suppliers, but they found that many retailers carried only one or two styles, if any, in their size. Maxine recalls having to wear a “granny bra” as a teenager because it was the only one that fit her.

“I remember walking out of my first bra-fitting experience and feeling like I was a problem and my body was unusual because out of all the bras in the department store, there was only one that fit me,” Maxine tells IRW.

“Back then, bras were only made up to a DD. Every now and then you could find an E-cup, and that was seen as a really big size.”

After putting up with ill-fitting or unattractive bras for too many years, Lin and Maxine one day asked themselves, what if we could just go into a shop and find something that fit, something we like and something we were interested in?

The answer was Brava Lingerie, the specialty retail business they started in 2006, catering exclusively to women who wear D-cup and up.

Here, Lin and Maxine talk about their plans to nearly double their store network in the next five years and how they avoid the discounting trap.

Inside Retail Weekly: Can you give us a snapshot of the Brava Lingerie business today. How many stores and employees do you have, and what do your annual sales look like?

Lin Windram: We opened our sixth store last week in Camberwell, Victoria. The rest are in Victoria, except for one in Sydney, which we opened just over a year ago. We have approximately 40 employees across the business – all women – in marketing and buying and e-commerce as well.

Maxine Windram: We’re a little reluctant to share our annual sales, but what we can say is that our retail stores are growing anywhere between 5 and 20 per cent every year, depending on the store and what stage it’s at. Our online sales at the moment are about 20 per cent of total turnover, and they’re growing. We’re always being asked to open more stores, and we plan to open a new store every year for the next five years, so we certainly have a growth plan to meet the demand.

IRW: What goals are you working on now?

MW: Our main focus is to continually focus on customer experience and how we can replicate the in-store customer experience online, because brands have very different sizing, there’s no global sizing, and women’s bodies change many times throughout their life. So we’ve just introduced a virtual fitter on our website, which allows women to answer a range of questions and upload a photo of themselves in their bra to get fitted by one of our staff. This actually replicates what we do in-store. We don’t use a tape measure instore because they simply do not work beyond a D-cup. Instead, we fit ‘by eye’. The virtual fitter often takes as long as it does instore, so it’s still a very one-on-one experience.

LW: The customer experience is based on our values which are about compassion, integrity and respect – those sorts of things. We recently won an award from the ARA for our customer experience based on mystery shoppers, which made us really proud because
we know our values are embraced by every team member. A lot of our team members came to us as customers – there’s a lot of emotion involved. A lot of times, women haven’t had good experiences, and we try to turn that around for them.

IRW: What are some major growth drivers for your business?

MW: One of our strategies is that we’re not a discount store. Our products are very high quality because they need to be to help women feel comfortable and supported. We really stand behind our products and our customer service, which is why women choose to come to us. So while we may have the mid-year sale and try to move some stock, we just aren’t into discounting, because we feel customers see the value of coming into a specialty store like Brava.

LW: Because we are so one-onone, our staffing is quite intense. It’s a big part of our outgoings, and we have to be really careful, so discounting stock isn’t a good idea. We see so many people around us doing that too much, and they end up not trading anymore.

IRW: How do you avoid falling into the discount trap? A lot of retailers seem to find this difficult.

LW: It is part of the culture for a lot of retailers, as well as pushing KPIs for staff. Whenever we interview staff and talk about why we sell what we sell, it’s not about getting KPIs, it’s about finding the right thing for the customer. We see immediate relief on the faces
of the people we’re interviewing, because they just want to help people. I think discounting is part of that culture of trying to get more
sales, and it doesn’t work for us.

MW: To be honest with you, we’re in bricks-and-mortar stores – we can’t afford to discount and lose that margin. From a business perspective, it just doesn’t make sense. It’s actually policy at all Brava stores, and every team member knows this, to never put a sale before the customer’s needs. It’s all about the customer. The average time we spend with one customer is 38 minutes. It’s very different from normal fashion retail. Bra fitting takes more staff, and our staff go through a three-month training program, so it’s very intensive and we put a lot of investment into our staff. Our costs are probably a bit higher than the average fashion retailer, so we do stand by our pricing.

IRW: Are there any other retail trends that Brava avoids or does differently?

MW: When it comes to what we do differently as a lingerie retailer, we don’t do ‘sister sizing’. This is something in the lingerie industry where you put women in a bra size that is seen to be ‘good enough’. That’s something we don’t do. We ensure the customer is absolutely in the right size.

LW: One of the other things we do differently is that our team members are all in our target market, so they all wear D-cup and up. They try the stock on, they know the product incredibly well and why things work and what not to try on a customer. It’s a very inclusive team, they support each other to get the right thing for their customer.

MW: I think it’s also the way we nurture our customers. When a customer comes into Brava for the first time, it might take a bit longer to find the right style and brands and size for them, so we create a customer profile and add notes for her, so when she comes in the next time, we can look up that history and see what has worked for her before, what hasn’t worked for her. It saves time and it helps us get to know our customers, their likes and dislikes. It’s not just retail. We feel that we work with our customers on a very consultative basis.

IRW: Unfortunately for Australian women who wear larger bra sizes, there isn’t much competition in the D-cup and up space. How has Brava taken advantage of this?

MW: I think being inclusive has helped our growth, especially when there’s talk in the media about Victoria’s Secret and other stores excluding women who are over a certain size or transgender. We really work very hard to be inclusive. At the moment, we’re talking to community groups that are working with the LGBT community and working out the best way to be inclusive. And with our size range starting at size six and going up through 22 and to a K-cup, when women hear about that and feel that we can help them, that is a natural driver of business growth.

LW: Another part of that is our categories. We focus very much on sport. We’ve got treadmills in a couple of our change rooms. We also focus very much on maternity and helping women who are unsure about what’s happening to their body. We also do swimwear
of course, and that has traditionally been really difficult for women with bigger breasts.

IRW: A few days after the chief marketing officer of Victoria’s Secret’s parent company, L Brands, made a controversial comment about plus-size and transgender lingerie models, the CEO of Victoria’s Secret resigned, and at the same time, store sales seem to be slowing. What is your take on the business? Is there a future for the brand?

LW: They have beautiful stock, but we looked at their sizes, and they probably have 25 different sizes. Brava has 108 different sizes. It’s quite a different market from us. We look forward to them coming here, and we’ll collaborate with them as we do with other lingerie retailers. They have our business cards and refer people to us who they can’t help, because they want to help.

MW: I don’t think there’s much risk of Victoria’s Secret going down, there’s a market for their product. But it just means that they’re heading towards a smaller market share, because they’re not addressing the sizing issues. And 20 years ago, women were squeezing themselves into that size range, but we’re more aware now, with bra education and social media.

I think their biggest cup is an E-cup, so they would be offering less than 25 per cent of the size range available. So if they do stick with that range, they’ve got to expect that they’ll lose some of the market share.

IRW: The cost of rent is always a hot topic for retailers, especially smaller players that may not have as much negotiating power with landlords. What’s your take on this?

LW: Rent is a huge part of it, and it’s been very important for the areas we’ve chosen to trade in. We do have one store in a shopping
centre [Highpoint shopping centre in Melbourne] and it’s been incredibly difficult. The rents are high and the requirement for long
hours is quite difficult for staffing. It has taken quite a long time for us to work well in that store. Our customer base has improved
incredibly and now we actually bring a lot of people to that centre, so [the centre] benefits from our strong branding and customer
service. But we’re very selective with where we’ll go.

MW: The turnover in our Highpoint store is higher than our highstreet stores, but the profit margin is lower because of the high cost
of the staffing and rent. So even though you have a busy store, when it comes to the bottom line, sometimes it’s not the best store. So
moving forward, we’re certainly reconsidering whether we’d go into another shopping centre because of those reasons.
IRW: When you weigh up the pros and cons of being in a shopping centre or on a high street, what other factors come
into play besides rent?

MW: Being on a high street, you have more control over your business. You can set the opening hours that you’d like, and if you
choose wisely, you’ll have parking in front of the store. Some of our rents on a high street are one-third of [the rent in] a shopping
centre. I think from the customer’s perspective, a shopping centre can be extremely convenient because it’s where they do all of their
shopping. But I think because we’re a niche business, women tend to travel to us wherever we are. So the traffic of the shopping centre
isn’t always the most important thing. We have women coming from interstate and overseas to come to our stores.

IRW: As you look to open five new stores over the next five years, are you looking to enter new states and territories, or expand your presence in Victoria and Sydney?

LW: All of the above really. We’re often asked to come to regional areas, and someone in South Australia just created a Facebook
page to ‘bring Brava to Adelaide’. So it certainly could be interstate, but there are also areas of regional Victoria where we could expand.

IRW: How have you been financing the opening of new stores?

MW: It’s been a combination of self-financing and extending our financing. But our very first store 12 years ago, Mum put her flat
up, so we took a few risks. We don’t have investors; Mum and I are partners. It’s a family-owned business, and financing is challenging. You want to grow, but you’ve also got to look at debt.

LW: But we are incredibly careful. We won’t open stores if we feel we’re not in a position to finance them properly.

IRW: Would you be interested in taking on outside investment to grow?

LW: We would certainly be open to talking with anybody about changes. It’s a fabulous business, if other people recognised that
and appreciated why we’re here, then we’re happy to talk to them.

IRW: Third Love in the US seems to be having huge success as an online-only lingerie brands. Are you following their story, and what do you think it means for Brava?

MW: I follow them with great interest. It’s quite amazing to see the technology in use now; it’s quite different to how we started and
quite hard to keep up sometimes. We have integrated technology into our website with the virtual fitter, but to be honest, for us, having that face-to-face customer experience in bricks-and-mortar stores, and knowing our customers extremely well, that’s where our heart and soul is. These technology companies that are doing bra fittings appear to be turning over millions. I don’t know if they’re profitable or not – possibly not. We’ll keep improving our offering, but I don’t think we want to become a technology company like that.

LW: But they are doing a lovely job. They have a great website, and I think there’s been a fair amount of investment in the company. They’re very innovative, and we watch it all with interest. A lot of people are finding it’s more difficult than they thought it would be and aren’t able to last.

MW: In the end, if it’s helping women find better bras and feel better about their bodies, and the sizing is more inclusive, it’s a really good thing. Like we said before, we’d rather collaborate with other lingerie retailers, rather than work against them. There’s plenty of market share out there for everyone. The majority of women wear bras; it’s not a small industry, so there is room for new players. You’ve just got to find your point of difference.

IRW: It seems that Brava’s point of difference is all about the product. Other retailers are talking about getting the product
to the customer faster or through new channels, but your customers seem to care more about simply having access to
the product itself. Is that right?

LW: We work incredibly hard on our website and social media. They’re very important to us and they’re the drivers that get people
coming into our stores. But it’s the knowledge that our team holds that gets people coming back. We get referrals all the time. Online
is incredibly important, but what happens when people come instore is why the business is working. Things may change and who
knows what’s going to happen, but at the moment, we get fabulous feedback on our stores and team.

MW: One of the differences and challenges with our business, as we mentioned before, is that we hold 108 sizes. That’s in one
style, in one colour. It’s kind of an inventory nightmare, so you have to really love this business to be successful at it. We choose
to do that and manage that stock, so when the customer comes in, she’s not given the same experience we had at mainstream
stores when we were younger, where we were given one or two bras and told that’s all we have for you. Customer experience is just so important to us, and I think that’s the difference.