SARAH MUNRO - SARAH & SEBASTIAN
ON HOW TO OPERATE A MADE-TO-ORDER BUSINESS AT SCALE.
Sarah Munro is one half of the iconic Aussie label Sarah & Sebastian, best known for its beautiful, fine jewellery designs. In this chat Sarah tells the story of being picked up by the French high fashion boutique, Colette, and how, over a decade later, Sarah and her co-founder Robert have built the business to a team of 100 people, have stores in Sydney and Melbourne, and have expanded the brand into a whole range of services.
You’ll learn:
How Sarah approached the decision to quit her fulltime job to go all in on the business
How Sarah’s naivety in the early days contributed to taking bigger risks
Why Sarah & Sebastian actually started out as a wholesale brand, rather than retail
How they operate with a made-to-order business model, at scale
Why Sarah prefers to remain behind the scenes, rather than being the face of the brand
How Sarah learnt to hand over control and trust her team
Why Sarah prioritises her personal life (even though switching off from the business can be hard)
We hope you enjoyed this conversation – for more podcast action follow us on Instagram @lady.brains, or sign up to our monthly newsletter at www.ladybrains.com
THE BITS YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS
“I’ve always been a big believer in trusting your own instincts and just going for it. It’s quite funny, my husband now is in safety and risk. So, I come home and tell him about all these ideas and plans that we have, and he just runs through a list of every reason why this potentially could go wrong! Now, I really evaluate any plan or any decision that I’ve made, and if it feels right, I tend to go for it. ”
“There was some buzz around this new jewellery brand from Australia, but I actually can’t tell you how we were picked up (by Net-a-Porter). It was a lot of travel, a lot of emails, a lot of networking. ”
“We’ve built off what we’ve had. We’ve never had any external investment. You buy a set amount of gold, you make something, and then with that money, you buy a little bit more gold.”
“I never stop thinking about design and new forms, it’s actually crazy. It’s mostly when I’m asleep, I dream designs. It’s kind of obsessive. I’ll be sitting in a meeting and think ‘this is a really good idea’ and start sketching. It really doesn’t turn off for me. ”
“For most of my early 20 s I didn’t I really didn’t do anything else except for build Sarah & Sebastian. I was doing 80 hour weeks.”
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