Augmented reality runways, automated queuing systems, online availability checks
They’re just some of the ways Rachel Lim is using technology to reinvent retail.
It’s the omnichannel approach that’s helped take this Singaporean entrepreneur’s female
fashion line from a $300 side hustle in 2005 to a multimillion-dollar
international fashion empire.
In this day and age, where we both can get anything that we want online,
any time of the day, you really have to give people a good enough reason
to come all the way down to your store.
And it’s a good job too – because she bet the house on it.
I was bonded to the government, so I had to pay off the bond
to stop school to start the business.
The bond amounted to a five-figure sum, which I obviously didn’t have the money,
so I had no choice but to go to my mom and ask for a loan.
32-year-old Rachel Lim is the co-founder and CEO of Love, Bonito, a tech-first women’s
fashion brand that’s restyling the runway for shopaholics.
The customized clothing line today can be accessed from Hong Kong
and Australia to the UAE and United States.
But that vision was a long way off, when Rachel’s entrepreneurship
story began some 15 years ago.
At the time, she was starting a second-hand blogshop
with her school friends Viola and Velda Tan.
My friends and I were still in school and we were just thinking
of ways to earn extra pocket money.
We thought, “Okay, why don’t we sell online our preloved clothes?”
Clothes that we would wear once, or twice, or wouldn’t wear it anymore.
And 14 years ago was before the days of Instagram, iPhone, there was nothing of that sort.
People would send money via snail mail, or they would do an ATM transfer
and scan the receipts over to us.
The fashion business, for Rachel, wasn’t just fun – it was fundamental.
Growing up, her family was hit hard by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.
Her parents had to give up the family home
and take on second jobs to keep them afloat.
So when she and her friends wanted to scale their business, she knew they had to work
– hard – pooling their $300 savings to go all in.
We ran out of clothes to sell, but people kept coming back for more.
So we decided, you know what, why don’t we use the money that we had saved
to go overseas to import clothes to sell.
Soon their fashion site, BonitoChico, began to take off.
But for Rachel, something didn’t quite sit right.
A lot of international brands, they cater to European, American women that have very
different body proportions, skin tone, preferences and even climate.
So when we would import clothes to sell, there was always something that I wanted to change.
The trio were planning to create a fashion site specifically tailored to Asian women,
with smaller sizes and kinder cuts.
So they gave their business a fresh look, changing the name to Love, Bonito,
evoking a love letter to their customers – and creating in-house designs
to suit petite proportions.
Despite having no business or fashion background, the friends knew they were onto something.
People from, for example, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong would hear about us because they
chanced upon the blog or the website.
So that was when we realized that, hey, you can reach a lot of different people
from all over the world with just a click.
Southeast Asia’s online retail market has seen exponential growth over the years.
From 2015 to 2019, e-commerce revenues in Southeast Asia
grew by nearly 600% to $38 billion.
And the sector is predicted to grow another 300% to $153 billion by 2025.
Singapore, home of Love, Bonito’s headquarters, also boasts high per capita incomes, meaning
the average e-commerce purchase there is three to four times higher
than the rest of Southeast Asia.
Sensing the opportunity, Rachel decided to commit.
In 2009, with just eight months of her teaching degree remaining, she quit university to take
the lead on the business full-time.
I was juggling school and work, and I wasn’t excelling in both,
and I realized that I had to focus on one.
I knew that we had to strike when the iron is hot.
There was a lot of demand and the momentum was building up.
It was a costly decision.
The then-21-year-old had to borrow her mum’s five-figure life savings to pay off her college bond.
However, she said it was the motivation she needed to ensure her business was a success.
That was the year that my dad was going through bankruptcy.
She was already working two jobs to support the family.
And when I went to her she was really worried because online selling had barely just begun.
You know, she was really worried that this wasn’t legal, or that the government would
come after us and things like that.
And at the end, she decided to take a leap of faith.
Her mother’s loan amounted to her entire life savings.
It was really, really tough, I think, for me as well, right.
And I guess that’s one of the reasons why I knew I could not fail.
I could not let her down.
In the years that followed, Rachel and her co-founders doubled down on that dream to
create affordable, accessible fashion for an Asian market.
That included recruiting a team of designers to execute the full creative process,
from research and fabric selection to development and final production.
As well as expanding into physical stores.
In 2013, Velda stepped back from Love, Bonito.
Meanwhile, Viola has transitioned to become a member of its board.
Rachel is now the face of the brand and one of Southeast Asia’s rising women entrepreneurs.
Gail Wong, a coach and investor for female founders, tells me that’s ever-more important
if women are to follow in her path.
It’s so important to celebrate female successes.
Firstly, they are already in the minority of all successes.
But also female successes can look all sorts of different ways.
So, in the case of Rachel, she started it really young, she didn’t have that Ivy League
education that certain types of people look for,
and she had this obligation to make it work.
And it’s a really interesting trait that I’ve
seen in some female founders.
There’s something bigger than their own ambition.
Interesting
In 2019, Singapore ranked as the eighth best place globally to be a woman entrepreneur,
behind the likes of the U.S., New Zealand, Canada and Israel.
However, Southeast Asian nations in general continue to lag behind due to limited access
to support networks and funding.
In Singapore and in Southeast Asia we are seeing support, resources, organizations with
targeted focus coming up to support female founders.
So I'm already seeing groups in Myanmar, in Vietnam, that are opening out.
So what does that look like?
I think that you could characterize it in three buckets.
One is resources and learning.
The second is a bit more of a community approach, and the idea that you’re not alone.
And then the third is financial, and that could do with a lot more support.
Rachel says her business has been cash positive from early on,
which allowed her to pay her mom back in full.
To date, Love, Bonito has raised over $10 million from external investors,
including Japanese online retailer Kakaku.com.
Incrementally, I paid her back whenever I had any money at all.
Priority for me was that she wouldn’t need to work three jobs
or work so hard and such long hours and days.
Now, Rachel’s focus is on expanding Love, Bonito’s tech capabilities across its international
e-commerce business and its network of 16 physical retail stores across Southeast Asia.
But the young CEO says she also wants to focus on growing the retailer’s community services,
such as styling and wellness workshops, to help other women
realize their professional and personal goals, too.
I think the goal at the end of the day for us is to reach out to as many women as possible
– and specifically the modern Asian women.
Through the clothing that we create, through also then the workshops that we host for women
in helping them understand the different body types, body shapes, and how to dress up and
show up for themselves.
That’s something that is really, really, very close to our hearts.
It’s really true because I grew up not the top in the class.
I don’t come from a rich family.
And if I can have a chance to be able to pursue my dreams and make a difference
and make an impact in this world, anyone can.