It was a heady summer day in Byron Bay when Rachael Calvert’s bikini top broke in the surf.
That embarrassing wardrobe malfunction is the reason she now runs Marvell Lane, a seven-figure swimwear, lingerie and clothing brand.
A petite woman with a big bust, Calvert had always hated shopping to swimwear and was almost reduced to tears several times while hunting for a new bikini to replace the one that broke that day in 2016.
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It’s the kind of task millions of Australian women take for granted but Calvert had to dig through racks hidden in the back of a department store just to find something that would fit.
“You’d rather be caught dead or naked than wearing one of the very matronly, extremely full-coverage bikini designs that were on offer,” she tells 9honey, but those styles were her only options.
Calvert was miserable as she handed over her hard-earned cash for a bikini that made her feel like crap and her husband knew it.
He off-handedly remarked that she should do something about the problem that so many busty women like her face, not realising that it would spark a new passion.
A few Google searches later and Calvert was working with a pattern maker to design bikinis for bodies like hers. Just like that, Marvell Lane was born.
Over the next months, she dedicated all her free time to making the swim brand of her dreams on top of working full time as a lawyer.
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“By the time I got to launch, including paying for all of my products and getting shipped to Australia, I’d spent somewhere between $60,000 to $65,000,” she says, then laughs.
“I wouldn’t say bookkeeping was my strong suit at that particular time. It still isn’t.”
Calvert was confident that the brand would succeed – after all, how many busty women like her were desperate for flattering, fashionable swimwear every summer?
Marvell Lane launched in 2017 from the spare room of her Byron Bay home, where hundreds of bikinis hung from cheap clothing racks.
“I remember I was sitting there looking at this product, going, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve got to sell it’ … and the selling part is the biggest challenge,” she says.
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Running the business solo was a hard slog and she had to do everything from packing orders, to answering customer emails and book keeping in those early days.
By the 18-month mark, Marvell Lane was successful enough for Calvert to quit her legal job and focus on the brand full time even though she wasn’t paying herself a salary yet.
Every dollar of profit went straight back into the brand, so Calvert’s husband supported them on his salary while she chased her dream from their garage (a big upgrade from the spare bedroom).
In fact, Calvert didn’t pay herself a dollar until 2020 – three years after launch.
“And not a big one, I might add. I’m still not getting a huge wage,” she says, adding that she now employs several staff, including her husband.
Though influencers can make running a small business look glamorous online, Calvert says the reality is very different and involves a lot more money going out than coming in, at least for the first few years.
Or when things go wrong, like when a $100,000 order of bikinis turned up with defective straps in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We had to detach the straps by hand and somehow send them back to China, get them to a new factory, go back to our original supplier, get all new straps made in all different sizes,” Calvert recalls.
“It was either that or dump $100,000 worth of product, which we couldn’t afford to do.”
She’s learned how to handle crises like that in the last seven years of business, especially since welcoming her two children.
Juggling babies with business is tough, there’s no two ways about it, and Calvert admits she doesn’t know if Marvell Lane would be so successful if she had waited until after having kids to start the business.
It’s not that mums can’t be successful founders, but parenthood and running a small business are both incredibly challenging and time consuming and, in all honesty, Calvert doesn’t know if she would have coped.
She’s refreshingly honest about the challenges of business ownership.
It’s a conscious decision she’s made after seeing so many people push starting and running a business as a “get rich quick” path on social media since the COVID-19 pandemic saw a spike in Aussies pursuing side hustles.
“There’s a lot of that stuff on the internet, because it performs well and then everyone thinks they can make money, right?” Calvert says.
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“But I look at the person giving me advice and I’m like, I’m fairly certain you’ve never done this,” she continues.
“You’re just a life coach or a career coach but you’ve never had a significant business career yourself … that’s how they make their money.”
She warns Aussies interested in starting their own business ventures to be wary of online coaches selling ‘get successful quick’ courses or claiming to know the secrets to overnight success.
Marvell Lane is busier than it’s ever been right now, especially with summer in full swing, and Calvert’s not shy about admitting it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get the brand where it is today.
Now a seven-figure business, what she’s most proud of is the look on women’s faces when they try on Marvell Lane swimwear and feel confident and comfortable in a bikini for the first time in their lives.
That’s why she believes the brand has been so successful in just seven years: because it solves a problem so many Aussie women have been facing for decades.
“There’s a whole lot of busty women out there with a lot of money who only had crappy experiences before.”
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