Carly and Cassie of The Base Collective are two Melbourne mums, juggling their family and their multi-million dollar business.
The two mums met when their eldest children were 3 and starting Kinder – they quickly became fast friends and went onto become business partners. Both mothers come from completely different backgrounds, Carly a banker and Cassie a pharmacist – both were searching for a creative outlet and after exploring a few ideas they decided to capitalise on Cassie’s background as a Pharmacist and a gap in the market for natural and organic skincare products.
Within two years, they are a multi-million dollar company, exporting to China and the USA, more specifically in Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie, going from placing small orders in the hundreds to placing orders in the tens of thousands.
We chat to Carly…
Tell us about The Base Collective.
The Base Collective is a natural and organic Magnesium skincare brand designed to look after the whole family. Pets included! We are also Pharmacist formulated (Cassie was formally a pharmacist), genuine no nasties and made in Australia.
What inspired you to start The Base Collective?
Cassie and I were both looking for a side project and one of the gaps we saw in the market was in the natural and organic space.
Cassie is passionate about genuine no nasties and struggled to find products she felt comfortable using on her family and that looked good – so we decided to create our own. It also helped that Cassie is a Pharmacist so could formulate our products to ensure they met our clean, green and safe standards straight from the start.
Tell us about your career and background.
I’m actually a Banker by profession. I graduated with a degree in Economics and Finance and have worked in Institutional Banking ever since.
Without meaning to, I seem to have ended up specialising in the Product Management space which, as it turns out, is actually incredible experience for running your own business. As a product owner you are responsible for the end to end execution of your product across so many different teams and operational areas which is very much the same when running your own company. You have to be across all the elements, particularly at the start, and I can do a mean process flow chart! At the moment I am combining both my banking career and my entrepreneurial adventure which is proving to be a lesson in time management – I’m not sure I’m mastering it to be honest.
Describe a typical work day for you.
My day usually starts with a wake up call from my 16month old. If she gets to 5.30am I’ve done well!
I log on and check a few emails for work and The Base Collective before getting my eldest ready for school.
Our amazing Nanny starts at 7.30am so I’m out the door and into the office. If I get a chance at lunchtime I’ll log on to respond to some emails for TBC, otherwise its a normal banking day until I’m out the door at 5pm to get home for the Nanny. The next three hours are a blur before (hopefully) both girls are asleep and I can log on to get into some serious TBC work. I’m usually online until about 11pm and then it’s bed!
That sounds like a really long day when I describe it but it goes quickly.
What advice do you have for those wanting to start a business?
It depends what day it is! Some general advice would be to learn to be resilient really early on. Things will go wrong and you have to be able to pick yourself up and keep going. You also have to learn to think on the fly and be ok with things only being 80%. We launched our website with only product renders not actual images and at the time it stressed me so much, but if we hadn’t we would have just kept waiting and waiting. It would be really easy to never actually start if you kept waiting for things to be ‘perfect’.
What’s next for you, and The Base Collective?
For me personally there is hopefully a bit more balance coming sooner rather than later. For The Base Collective we are rolling out to a major retailer in June this year which is incredibly exciting for us. We are also expanding in the US with Anthropologie as they roll out their Wellness concept across their stores.
And we have a few new products in the pipeline we can’t wait to bring to life!
