The mother and daughter rewriting the rules of lingerie retail
For Brava Lingerie’s Lin and Maxine Windram, empathy and technology, including Afterpay, have proved the perfect fit.
Lin and Maxine’s tips for success:
- Write your own rules
Don’t be afraid to throw away the rulebook
- Take advantage of tech
Brava Lingerie uses virtual fittings, inventory software and Afterpay to enhance customer experience
- Hire well
Brava Lingerie hires for empathy, not technical skills
- Form a two-way relationship with suppliers
It’s win-win.
It was a chance conversation on a beach that convinced mother and daughter duo Lin and Maxine Windram to go into business together.
Both were fed up with shopping for bras. Neither woman felt that their bodies were particularly unusual – they are both only around a size 8 or 10 - but their experience buying D+ cup bras in department stores and lingerie chains had been humiliating. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could walk into a lingerie store and not be treated as a problem?” Maxine recalls saying.
Despite having no retail experience – ever having fitted a bra before – the two women took the plunge and opened Brava Lingerie. Today, the brand has a thriving e-commerce business and six stores around the country, all offering “D-cup-and-up” bras.
"We just wanted to create an amazing experience for women."
The success of the business comes back to their mission to improve customer service for women with fuller breasts, and an approach that combines empathy and technology. “We just wanted to create an amazing experience for women,” says Maxine simply.
Out with the old
One of the first lessons Lin and Maxine learned was that tape measures had no place in their store. “We did all this training with our suppliers about how to fit a bra, but that training didn’t work,” Lin says. Tape measures, they discovered, weren’t helpful for measuring bust volume, and they felt the women in their store were much more than just a number. “So,” says Lin, “we threw the tape measures away. And now our fitters fit by eye.”
Trial and error
Another steep learning curve was managing inventory. “At first, we’d just choose stock that was pretty, and we liked,” Maxine says. “And we ended up with so many sizes left over that weren’t selling – mostly Ds and double Ds. We found that when women entered our store, they end up being an F or a G cup and often in a smaller back size once they were properly fitted. We just didn’t understand our customer.”
Eventually they implemented Inventory Planner, software that enabled them to better predict and manage stock levels.
Another early mistake was focusing on the popular brands that were common in big-name department stores. Lin explains they needed a different approach. “We needed to find brands that were much, much better for our customers in that they had been created for women who needed extra support – not just made in bigger sizes.”
Hiring empathy, not skills
Lin and Maxine have never wavered from their business’s core mission: to make the women who come into their store feel supported and cared for when they’re buying bras. With that in mind, hiring and recruiting the right staff to work in store was critical. But it wasn’t bra-fitting skills that they looked for. It was personality. “The interesting thing about our recruitment is that nearly everyone who has come to work for us has been a customer. I’ve had letters saying, ‘I want to be that person helping other women’,” says Lin.
"Nearly everyone who has come to work for us has been a customer."
Those are the women that Lin and Maxine want interacting with their customers, not necessarily someone who’s had years of training working in another lingerie store. “Mum does most of the recruiting, and we usually recruit on empathy,” says Maxine. “We want to know how [each employee] works with other women, cares for people and interacts with their peers. You can teach bra fitting, but I don’t think you can teach all those values.”
Don’t let digital be an afterthought
Brava Lingerie had a web presence from the very beginning, something that wasn’t universal back in 2006. But translating the personal care of their in-store bra fitting service to the online space took innovation.
During one of Melbourne’s COVID lockdowns, Brava Lingerie developed “ZoomFit”, a service where customers can have their size and fit assessed by a fitter via Zoom. “Obviously we can’t touch and play around with straps but because our fitters fit by eye, they can still look at a woman on screen in her bra, ask her to do a few movements, and assess her size,” says Maxine. “It’s especially good for women who can’t get in store because they may have small children, or a disability or anxiety. Zoom was a natural progression for us.”
Brava also offers a 'Virtual Fitter', which invites customers to upload a photo and answer a series of questions so that a trained fitter to respond with recommendations. Alternatively, if they prefer no human contact the Bra Fit Finder uses a very specific algorithm and within three minutes provides size and fit recommendations.
Additionally, the fitters at Brava Lingerie add their own personalised and experienced comments to the company’s product pages. “It might be ‘this brand is smaller than the equivalent in this other brand’ or things like that,” says Lin. “They’re comments that help women make the best buying decisions.”
"Our personalised comments help women make the best buying decisions.”
Form a two-way relationship with suppliers
The brands who supply Brava Lingerie do their best to give Lin and Maxine as much information about their products as possible, so the women can make the best buying decisions for their customers. But the flow of information goes the other way, too. “We give feedback to our suppliers to try and improve their bras after we’ve fitted them,” says Maxine. Because the suppliers trust the fitters’ expertise they often listen. “It’s a great relationship.”
How Afterpay helped Brava Lingerie to higher sales and more access for customers
“You’re not in a competitive place if you don’t offer Afterpay,” says Lin. “It’s really important to give people options. If we have a student [who] doesn’t have a high income but really needs a sports bra for netball, then she can still get it. In fact, she can get the sports bra and her runners!” adds Maxine. According to Brava Lingerie’s data, orders made using Afterpay are on average 27 per cent higher than those using credit card or cash instore, and represent 18 per cent of online sales.
Lin and Maxine’s three tips for doing things differently:
- Change with your customer
This year, Brava Lingerie launched an entirely new store concept in Brisbane. Instead of racks of bras, the store has only one bra from each style, and a QR code that explains more about its features. “You’re greeted as soon as you enter and taken into a change room and you basically hand yourself to the fitter who knows the stock really well,” says Lin. “Women can be very uncertain or a bit embarrassed when they come in and don’t know what they’re looking for. This way we help them straight away. They don’t have to go through racks and racks that aren’t right for them.”
- Reframe how you process negative feedback
Lin and Maxine collate regular feedback from their in-store and online teams on anything customers aren’t happy about. “Lin responds personally,” says Maxine. Most feedback is positive but if there’s ever a complaint, or if someone isn’t happy, they use that information to find out what they could have done better, in order to facilitate continual improvement. “You’ve almost got to be a bit vulnerable and drop your ego; you need to listen to things you may not want to hear, so you can work hard on making things better for your customers.”
- Remember why you do what you do
The experiences that women can have when they finally get a bra that makes them feel special, Lin says, is a beautiful thing. “We see women holding their shoulders back, and suddenly they’re in tears because they haven’t felt so good before. It can be life-changing, and it’s really special moment be a part of.” Being integral to that process helps Maxine and Lin keep their mission, formed on that beach walk all those years ago, at the core of everything they do.
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