Founded by Melbourne-based friends, Ebany Mclees and Olivia O'Neill, ELLORE is an Aussie fashion label with a difference. Responsibly-sourced and proudly Australian-made, the loungewear label has quickly gained a cult following of eco-conscious buyers — who are eager to turn away from fast fashion and invest in good quality, timeless wardrobe staples that support local manufacturing.
The powerhouse duo, who had no prior business experience ahead of launching ELLORE, celebrated becoming a six-figure business just seven months in — and are headed towards hitting seven-figures by June 2023. They share the news and story behind the start up with BuzzFeed here.
1. Tell us in your own words what Ellore is.
"Ellore is a brand that cares about our impact on the world and the people we meet. At it's core, it's an Australian-made clothing brand that values the creation of pieces that feel timeless and that will last."
2. Why did you want to launch this brand and what does Ellore mean to you both?
"We couldn’t find Australian-made clothing that was to our taste, so we decided to make it ourselves. We strive to make responsibly made fashion more accessible. After finding our feet and knowing we wanted to make clothing, we needed to educate ourselves on what was best for our customers and the environment.
Australian-made apparel always came out best, as opposed to manufacturing overseas — due to the strict regulations and the high standards here in Australia, when you buy Australian-made you know that you're investing in something made to last.
Australia has a reputation for manufacturing and producing some of the highest quality products in the world. We wanted to bring the best of the best to our customers and by manufacturing on-shore, we were able to make that possible. Ellore to us is our baby, we have so much love and passion for the work we do each day. We feel incredibly proud to have built something so meaningful to us both so early on in business."
3. When did you first come up with the idea for it?
"We had always wanted to run a business of our own one day, because neither of us could find passion in the industries we had both worked in. Then, during a hungover breakfast at the Crown in Melbourne after our separate work Christmas parties, starting our own business came up in conversation and we decided why not do it together? We knew how hard working and valuable we both would be to each other and we haven’t looked back since."
4. Roughly how long did it take from idea to the brand launching?
"The idea started on Dec. 18, 2020 and we registered and paid for our business name on Dec. 27. The hustle then really began, all before launching our official website with the Comfy Collective on Mar. 1, 2021."
5. Can you tell us about the planning process? What was involved in actually bringing the idea to life?
"Our business plan to start was simply a pen to paper and a google search of what you need in a business plan — so don’t think it needs to be anything too intimidating, this is just a guide to get your feet off the ground.
Marketing for us has luckily been pretty easy, being that social media is everything and we grew up with it. Our marketing plan was simple to start. We wanted to start with one Instagram grid post per day, 5–10 Instagram stories per day, one TikTok video per day and one email out to subscribers per day.
This allowed us to be across the two biggest social platforms for our demographic and nurture our email subscribers — and between the two of us, this was very manageable. You don’t need to complicate things, just do what’s manageable and the key is to be consistent over everything — rather than all at once and becoming overwhelmed and giving up."
6. Sustainability is a key focus for the brand — how did you go about choosing a manufacturer? Was it important to the brand to keep production in Australia?
"Google and door knocking found us our very first manufacturer and every manufacturer since. Don’t over complicate things, pick up the phone and call every number on google that is connected to what you want and ask as many questions as possible.
After speaking with our first manufacturer on the phone, we turned up to their factory straight away to look at their showroom of garments and plan the production of our samples.
Even though they were incredibly busy manufacturing for some of the biggest Australian made clothing companies, they took the time to speak with us and nurture us. They are still the biggest manufacturers for ELLORE and we owe a lot of our success to them believing in us and backing us when we were just two friends with a big idea.
Once we had done our research, our decision was final — being Australian-made is at the core of ELLORE now and our customers love that we support local Aussie businesses, while creating ethically-made pieces that will remain staples in the closet for many years to come.
There are pros and cons when it comes to importing clothes made overseas into Australia — but for us, the cons outweigh the pros. For example, yes, it’s cheaper to manufacture overseas as opposed to onshore, but it’s kinder to the environment to be manufacturing onshore.
Buying locally also means a reduction in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, that result from importing products from overseas. We always want to do our best to make our pieces as responsibly-sourced as possible, all the way from design ideas to sampling, production and freight, to our finished garments.
We want to create garments with a timeless design that will never go out of style, in high-quality fabrics that are durable and easily maintained, and as kind as possible to our planet."
7. What were the biggest challenges along the way?
"Our biggest challenge was understanding stock levels — and our advice to others would be don’t over order on stock! You would far rather sell out of an item and put it up for pre-order, than have 500 units of something that nobody wants.
Another big challenge for us was understanding our cash flow from day one. Cash flow is king and without understanding the basics of how a business operates — which is investing money to make a profit — then you will quickly learn how easy it is to spend money vs. how hard it is to acquire a paying customer.
With an accurate cash flow statement, you’ll know the exact amount of funds you have available at any given moment. This is information vital to you and your business because any plans and decisions you make must be supported by accurate information. If you don’t manage your cash flow carefully, then you could be making bad decisions that put your business at risk."
8. And of course, what were the highlights?
"We became a six-figure business after just seven months and we are headed towards becoming a seven-figure business by June 2023. Setting up a sustainable business for us to leave our full time corporate jobs and go all in with ELLORE was a goal we had from day one — and we were able to take the leap in June 2022, which was just 16 months after launching."
9. Can you tell us roughly how much it cost to launch Ellore initially?
"We poured all of our personal savings into ELLORE, which came up to around $25,000 AUD. We had to make this work, there was no other choice — we gave it everything we possibly could financially and we made sure we would give all we had physically, mentally and emotionally.
It was just us when launching ELLORE and we don’t come from business savvy backgrounds. We had no one in our immediate family that had started a business quite like what we had planned for ELLORE. We really leveraged off our working relationships, podcasts, courses and hours on google to educate ourselves.
There is so much between an idea and an end product that is live on a website for people to purchase. We will never look at a website, product, or advertisement the same again, as we know all too well the amount of work that goes into each of them."
10. Can you take us through how you felt embarking on the process of launching the brand?
"I don’t think there was a single emotion we didn’t feel, to be honest. It is a complete rollercoaster from start to finish. It was all so exciting from the initial idea, it dawned on us pretty quickly the amount of work we had yet to complete to get this off the ground — which at times, felt really overwhelming.
Luckily we had each other, because during the days where we worked from morning to night on the business, we still made it fun even though we felt exhausted. We went viral on TikTok before launching, which most brands dream of and we felt amazing that we had made that happen.
Launch day was a funny day for us, as we had such mammoth expectations after going viral that were quickly brought down to reality. We felt nervous, scared and ecstatic about launching ELLORE and after letting the dust settle, we realised we hadn't hit the targets we originally set for ourselves and we had a lot of stock to continue to push even after the launch.
We definitely felt underwhelmed, somewhat disappointed in ourselves, but also determined to turn the ship around. In business, you really do taste the sweetest of highs and the darkest of lows. The process from idea to launch gave us a snippet into the feelings we had yet to experience as business owners."
11. What did it feel like on the day/week after Ellore went live?
"A week after launch, we felt extremely motivated as we were in the midst of full hustle mode. We had a handful of items to initially launch with and after going viral, we decided to order ten times the stock we had on hand to ensure we had ample stock for the hundreds of thousands of people commenting on our video — that gained 9 million views on TikTok.
One week after launch, we still had 60% of that stock in a spare room. We had to pull our socks up and continue to show up everyday to nurture and convert our followers to sell the stock, as the majority of our cash was tied up in stock when we first started."
12. Finally, what advice do you have for anyone who wants to do something similar? Or anything else you want to share about the brand?
"Find someone to do it with if you can. The lows are a lot easier when you have someone to pick you up who just gets it and the highs are the best feeling in the world when you can enjoy the benefits of all your hard work with someone who has been there every step of the way."
