Why Une Piece founder Carly Brown built a business with kindness at its heart

Inside Retail’s Top 50 People in E-Commerce is an annual ranking of the most impressive and inspiring leaders in Australia’s online retail industry. Our 2024 report features C-level executives with decades of leadership experience, alongside start-up founders and digital specialists with a wide range of skills, from marketing to logistics. You can download it here.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing in-depth profiles of this year’s Top 10, starting with the person who ranked #3 – Carly Brown, founder and CEO, Une Piece.

Here’s the story behind Carly’s mission to cultivate confidence in women and the experiences that shaped her leadership philosophy.

For Carly Brown, Une Piece is much more than just an e-commerce business, it’s a vehicle to cultivate confidence in women and build a happy, healthy, high-performance team based on kindness and empathy. 

The swimwear brand burst onto the scene in 2016 with a niche product that Vogue would later call the “world’s sexiest rashie”. 

Over the next few years, it landed a national deal to be stocked in David Jones, followed by The Iconic, expanded its range of swimwear styles and was worn by Nicole Kidman in the Hulu series Nine Perfect Strangers. 

All of this occurred even though – or perhaps precisely because – Brown had never worked in fashion before starting Une Piece. 

“I had no preconceived notions of how things should be done – either in product or in marketing. I truly believe this is one of the biggest secrets to our success. We do things very differently to other swimwear brands,” she told Inside Retail.  

One example of this is the way Une Piece markets its swimwear as luxe and high-end while still being inclusive. “Our mission is to help build and cultivate confidence in women so they can feel empowered (and therefore beautiful) by the water,” Brown explained. 

“Given how much emotion is tied up for women with regards to their body and body image, I see this as a really important purpose for our business and critical to help shift the dial, not just for our customers but for the industry as a whole, here in Australia and also internationally. Ultimately, we want to do good in the world for women.”

While Brown created Une Piece to fill a gap in the Australian market for chic, European-inspired swimwear made from quality materials that women would feel great in, she had international expansion in mind from day one. 

In 2023, the brand showed particularly strong growth in the US market, and this will remain a key opportunity for Une Piece in the year ahead. Brown also plans to continue expanding the brand’s range of resort wear and apparel, which helped accelerate growth a great deal in 2023. 

“In regards to marketing, there are many traditional paid media channels we can explore, which will be exciting for us to test as the business continues to scale. We also have so many amazing digital and social channels to continue to invest in deeper. We are constantly innovating across the brand,” she said. 

Being thrown in the deep end

Before Une Piece, Brown worked in marketing and management for multinationals in Australia and the UK, including Revlon, Coca-Cola, Uber, Domino’s and Reckitt Benckiser. She describes this period of her life as being “schooled in traditional FMCG brand marketing, management and product innovation”. 

It was during a stint as head of brand marketing and communications at Revlon in the UK that she found her passion for redefining leadership around building a happy, healthy, high-performance team. 

“I had only ever managed one intern prior to this and suddenly I was given a team of 22 people across internal team members and agencies. I really had to think about what motivated me as an employee and as a person,” she said. “Being thrown in the deep end was how I found my passion for defining leadership that could cultivate a happy, healthy, high-performance team.” 

After returning to Australia, she decided to start her own e-commerce business, Une Piece, to put this model of leadership into practice and leverage the lessons learned from her time at tech start-ups to build a global brand.   

As CEO, she focuses a lot on listening to understand what motivates her team and makes them feel good, so they can perform at their best both in and outside of work. She also has a knack for seeing a person’s potential and helping build their confidence and sense of ownership – without micromanaging – to achieve great things.

“I’ve determined that creating a culture that values respect, kindness and empathy – at the same time as giving individuals and the broader team clear, stretching goals and high expectations to help them achieve something new and great – is the most effective and enjoyable form of leadership,” she said. 

“Watching my team blossom and grow into their potential and beyond what they ever imagined they could be is truly my greatest source of joy when it comes to running the business.”

The post Why Une Piece founder Carly Brown built a business with kindness at its heart appeared first on Inside Retail Australia.