Podiatrist Tish Tily is a committed exercise lover who knows how difficult it can be to find a sports bra that’s right for your size and body shape. In 2013, she decided to do something about it, teaming up with business partner Matt Morgan to open Australia’s first specialty sports bra store, in Hawthorn, Melbourne.

Today, She Science stocks the country’s largest range of sizes and brands, and offers a specialist fitting service in person and online. Here, Tily discusses the challenges of her first year in business.

What made you think there was a gap in the market for a sports bra store?

One of the issues with the lingerie industry in Australia is the fact that international manufacturers don’t really want to play an active part in it. There are a couple of major retailers that have a virtual monopoly on sports bras and, if brands can’t get into those retailers, there’s no point being here – the market is too small for them to take them on alone.

Size-wise, those big retailers tend to stock the middle of the bell curve with great depth but, for people on the edges of the curve, there aren’t many options. They can’t walk into a department store and find a sports bra on the rack. That leaves so many women feeling like they can’t be active because of their breasts because they’re unable to find a support solution that fits them.

We saw specialty products being developed in the US, Europe and the UK to cater to this segment of the market, yet no one in Australia was doing it. To me, that was an opportunity.

Did you encounter any roadblocks getting She Science off the ground?

Getting the brands we wanted to work with to come onboard took some doing. I hadn’t worked as a bra fitter and was new to the lingerie industry.

Some of the specialty brands are quite protective of who they allow to sell their products. Convincing them to give us trading accounts when they hadn’t heard of our business was tough.

So was finding premises that represented value for money in the right spot. For that reason, we ended up opening six months later than we’d originally planned.

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Was cash flow an issue for you in those early months?

No, but only because we set She Science up with a decent cash cushion – my business partner Matt and I both put capital into the business so we weren’t having to run things off the smell of an oily rag. I’m very grateful we were able to do it that way, particularly because things didn’t fly in that first 12 months in quite the way people always hope they will when they start something new.

What was the biggest challenge you encountered in that first year?

Not realising how hard it would be to create a new niche within the lingerie industry. We’re a sports bra store but nobody was typing ‘sports bra store’ into Google back then! Women weren’t looking for us and we didn’t have a big enough budget, or the know-how, to get in front of them, to let them know there was such a thing as a sports bra store. We had to educate them that this was now ‘a thing’ in Australia.

You have a very strong online presence – was that part of your plan from the get-go?

It was, and it’s been the secret of our growth and success in the past couple of years. But the way we managed it in the beginning probably represents our biggest failing.

In the early days, we didn’t have the right technology partners to help us and push us to really embrace the world of e-commerce. The platforms we used were more of a hindrance than a help and we definitely made some mistakes around what was and wasn’t right for our business. It took a couple of years for us to develop the confidence and knowledge to realise we needed to make changes.

Is there anything about becoming a new business owner that took you by surprise?

Just how much work it would be and how all-encompassing it is. You never really get to turn off, particularly in today’s world where people can instant message you on your website, or via Facebook or Instagram, at any hour of the day or night. The notifications are relentless. Somebody did say to me in those early days, ‘You’re going to have a to-do list that never ends, for the rest of your life, until you let go of that business’. I definitely know what that means now!

Do you have any advice for others thinking of striking out for themselves?

It’s important to have a solid marketing plan and to develop a strong ‘paid customer acquisition strategy’ using Google Ads and Facebook. In the digital marketing era, it’s an easy thing for new businesses to master and an important part of your growth strategy. These days, you can’t just wait to be found.