The young Aussie women making millions
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What could possess young people to post cheeky, nearly-nude photos of themselves covered in coffee on social media?
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Answer: the women behind Frank Body, a coffee-based body scrub company that turned over $20 million last year.
The three women have been friends for almost a decade. Photo: Instagram
Frank Body was founded in 2013 by five young guns living in Melbourne, three of whom were already partners in their own communications agency.
Coming from a communications perspective, Erika Geraerts, Jess Hatzis and Bree Johnson knew just what the young brand needed to really take off.
Let’s be Frank
“We thought the fun was missing in the beauty industry,” Hatzis tells The New Daily.
“We wanted to cut through the fluff and connect with customers.”
To achieve this, they created ‘Frank’, a straight talking and cheeky character who personifies their product.
Frank talks to his customers, giving advice like “Let’s be frank, I don’t taste that good” to his now 600,000-strong Instagram fan club.
A photo posted by frank body (@frank_bod) on
“We knew we couldn’t try to dress up something that looked like dirt and came in a brown paper bag, so we wanted to be really honest and humble about it – to be frank,” Hatzis says.
In 2015, after just two years in business, Frank turned over $20 million, while today the business sells a product every 40 seconds.
Working together
While most people advise against mixing business with pleasure, it’s clear Hatzis, Johnson and Gerearts are the kind of friends who can work and play together with ease.
“Of course we hang out, we’ve been good friends for the better part of a decade,” she says.
“The most important thing for us is try not to talk about work when we go to dinner, but that’s obviously really hard.”
With a multi-million-dollar business, nearly a million social media followers and 30 staff, Hatzis admits her life isn’t quite what it was three years ago.
“My life has definitely changed, in really different ways throughout the whole three years,” she says.
“It went from us hustling all day doing everything in the business from finance to making the product, to the marketing, then your role changes [to running the business].
“You grow up a lot – we’ve all grown up with the brand. I live by my iCalendar now. We’re pretty lucky, we’ve got an amazing team here, we get to travel and you get really nice messages from people you went to school with congratulating you on your success.”
A photo posted by Jess Hatzis (@jess_hatzis) on
💋 Give a little lip and talk dirty, babe: https://t.co/UI7JmNd3Fv💋 pic.twitter.com/x7E105BRWO
— frank body (@frank_Bod) June 1, 2016
How to use me in more ways than one. Unlike other man, I can multitask: https://t.co/SfZSFYvLwH 😜 pic.twitter.com/8E8Ffhoo0l
— frank body (@frank_Bod) May 31, 2016
