How By Billie sold $300,000 worth of T-shirts in 24 hours
Founder Charlotte Palardis talks slow fashion, securing stockists and forging a cult following.
Top tips for running a successful fashion business
- Create a sense of exclusivity
Limited-edition runs and pre-order sales models compel customers to purchase – and reduce fashion waste.
- Identify your niche
By Billie saw a gap in the market for high-quality, genderless baby clothes, before expanding into stylish, sustainable womenswear.
- Opt for organic growth
Aim for authentic and meaningful collaborations with like-minded brands and influencers, so you’re not at the mercy of social media algorithms.
For Australian fashion label By Billie, a white cotton T-shirt, screen-printed with the slogan ‘Inhale Exhale’, was a game-changer.
“To start with I didn’t really like it,” admits founder and creative director Charlotte Palardis. “It’s quite different, and I wasn’t sure if people would process it or not. The day we [dropped] it online, we’d already given a bunch of them away to friends and [media and influencers], so we only had 20 units in stock.”
Incredibly, the tees sold out within mere seconds. Palardis was stunned, and two hours later she uploaded a video on Instagram sharing that a re-release of the T-shirt would be available for pre-order.
“We sold $300,000 of the T-shirts in 24 hours,” she recalls, noting that while the eye-catching print and cool, oversized cut probably contributed to the piece’s success, the limited pre-order created a sense of urgency that saw sales skyrocket.
“It shows that when people think they’re missing out on something, they feel they need it more,” explains Palardis. “So that became our model moving forward. With pre-order, you're not having products sitting there for months that you then have to mark down or [send] to landfill.”
"When people think they’re missing out on something, they feel they need it more."
This sustainable, slow-fashion approach has proved lucrative for the label, too. Today By Billie – which started as a childrenswear brand in 2018 before expanding into womenswear – boasts a seven-figure annual revenue, more than 50 global stockists, a staff of five and a band of loyal followers.
Start small and persevere
Palardis was a first-time mum with a four-week-old baby when inspiration for By Billie sparked. She’d just moved from Brisbane to Crescent Head, a small town in northern NSW, and “was getting a bit lost in the mum world”.
Keen to start her own creative project or, potentially, a business, she saw a gap in the market for gender-neutral baby and children’s clothes. “I wanted outfits to dress [my daughter] Billie in that weren’t frilly or super girlie,” she says.
As a trained teacher with no background in design – but a strong business brain having grown up working in her family’s restaurants – Palardis started searching for manufacturers online. It took a year before she found one, based in China, that aligned with her sustainable and ethical vision, worked with organic cotton and, importantly, offered low minimum order quantities.
“For my first order I only had $1500 to spend,” she shares. “The manufacturer did 50 pieces of each colour and style, and I had two or three designs – they were extremely basic cotton baby rompers.”
Palardis created a Shopify e-commerce website, uploaded her products and excitedly launched the collection. “That night, I sat there waiting… and had one sale. I thought ‘What have I done? I’m a failure,’” she remembers. “But every day from then on, I’d get two sales, and then three sales, and the momentum kept going. I’m so glad I stuck with it.”
Eventually, Palardis generated enough profit from her debut range to create the next one. “I've used the profit I've made from each collection to build on that,” she says. “I’ve never had any loans.”
Opt for organic growth and partnerships
As a new mum Palardis had an Instagram page called Loved By Billie, where she resold her daughter’s tiny, preloved baby clothes. When it came time to launch her brand, she converted it into a business page – with a humble 150 followers.
So how has By Billie amassed 163,000 followers in less than five years?
Palardis explains that gifting pieces to micro influencers, who’ve shared and tagged By Billie, has helped boost brand visibility in an authentic way.
“We’ve never paid an influencer to post for us,” she reveals. For her, organic marketing is not only cheaper, but feels “more truthful”, as influencers and customers who post about the label are ambassadors by choice.
She has a similar approach to design collaborations. Recently, By Billie partnered with stylist and content creator Lisa Danielle on a soon-to-be unveiled collection, and has also joined forces with Luv Lou on a line of sunglasses. Each collab is first and foremost about the creative partnership, while the opportunity to tap into a new customer base is a valuable by-product.
Create a sense of exclusivity
After the ‘Inhale Exhale’ T-shirt initially sold out, By Billie did three restocks. “We didn’t want to [overexpose] it, but we wanted to fulfil that demand,” explains Palardis. “We still get emails to this day asking if we’re bringing it back, but we've sworn to never recut it… because then it becomes less valuable to the people who do own it.”
Today, those customers form part of By Billie’s very loyal following. “Sixty to 70 per cent of our customers are return customers,” says Palardis. “When I look at the Shopify statistics, on a launch we might have 500 or 600 returning customers, and 200 first-time customers.”
Secure stockists – but keep it selective
Today, By Billie is stocked in more than 50 bricks-and-mortar stores around the world, from Sydney to LA and Japan.
“We wanted to find the right balance between getting seen by people but also having an element of exclusivity in our online store,” Palardis explains. “We didn’t want to oversaturate the market where [in] every store you walked into, you’d find By Billie.”
“We wanted the right balance between getting seen but also having an element of exclusivity."
By Billie stockists are given only a select number of designs in small quantities, which amps up customer interest and desire. “We’ve had certain stores where customers have literally lined up at the front door waiting to come in and buy By Billie,” says Palardis.
Selling wholesale is financially viable for the business because their stockists pay 100 per cent up front. Overall, most of the brand’s revenue continues to come from its e-commerce store, but physical stockists play an important role in enhancing brand identity and increasing visibility.
Use sales strategically
Palardis likes to reward her customers with sales and discounts, but – as per her overarching brand ethos – she takes a less-is-more approach.
“We only do three or four sales a year, but they’re always huge days for us,” she says. “For Afterpay Day this August we did 40 per cent off, which was massive – usually we only do 20 per cent.”
The brand founder notes that implementing Afterpay was a no-brainer for her business. “I originally wanted to create my e-commerce store on Squarespace, but it wasn’t compatible with Afterpay at the time [though today it is], so I went with Shopify. There was no way that I would buy higher priced items without Afterpay, so why would I expect my customer to?”
Offering Afterpay has driven significant sales for the brand. “Last year we generated $780,000 from Afterpay; that’s 24 per cent of our total sales,” she says. “Having it as an option for customers is huge – I don’t think any business could do without it.”
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