Join Laura McGoldrick as she talks to Iyia Liu, the Kiwi entrepreneur who sold $3.5 million worth of waist trainers in a year.
E-commerce entrepreneur Iyia Liu has launched a new business -- this time a clothing venture -- which has received a huge social media following overnight.
Liu, the brains behind multi-million dollar businesses Waist Trainer and Luxe Fitness, is no stranger to the opportunities social media presents and has used her knack for it to gain another large following for her latest business, Bambi Boutique.
The clothing website launched on Monday and now has more than 75,000 followers on its Facebook page after Liu posted an online giveaway worth $2000 on its page. It also has 67,000 followers on Instagram.
Liu sold Waist Trainer and Luxe Fitness earlier this year for an undisclosed amount and has spent the past two months focusing on the launch of Bambi Boutique.
"Before Waist Trainer and Luxe, my very first business when I first graduated from university was an online clothing store. I ran it for about five months and I ended up shutting it down when Waist Trainer took off," Liu said.
"It's always been a dream to having a clothing business and I wanted to try again."
Liu looks up to Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso and has always had her sights set on building a comparable e-commerce business, she said.
"I would love to be one of the biggest online retailers for women's clothing in Australasia, there are a lot of brands and businesses that I aspire to such as Princess Polly, Showpo, and I know they do really well both in Australasia and internationally," she said.
Waist Trainer, which Liu founded when she was 21, rose to success in 2016 after she paid Kylie Jenner $300,000 to post about her product on Instagram.
This time round, Iyia has used similar tactics, including stocking the same T-shirt that Kylie Jenner had been snapped wearing on Bambi Boutique.
Liu's business journey began with a failed clothing site but she has taken the experience in her stride, she said.
"At the time I had a pretty small budget so I had very limited stock and I spent all of my money on stock and none on marketing; I just assumed that because I had a nice website that people would come and buy it, and the biggest learning point from that was that you do have to have a really good strategy in place."
In her first year of business Liu made more than $3.3 million in revenue.
In June she launched a consultancy venture offering online courses on how to create a successful e-commerce business and giving talks and tips at events.
Social media is the heart and key to the success of her businesses, Liu said.
Iyia Liu. Photo / Supplied
"I learnt a lot of digital marketing strategy and social media techniques from Waist Trainer and Luxe and basically applied the same thing," she said.
"We got a lot of influencers, and a lot of different people to talk about Bambi and a giveaway, and all of that combined generated a lot of buzz and attention.
"Because our target market is Australasia we got Australian and New Zealand girls involved - some macro influencers, some micro influencers, some ordinary people, and have a few more of those [collaborations] to come as well."
Her words of wisdom for aspiring business owners: "Get people involved - all sorts of people involved - it doesn't have to be influencers or celebrities, as long as you are getting people to talk about you, that's the key."
