FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Edinburgh, UK (May 31, 2014) - Babychic Designs is an Edinburgh based Australian Buggy Accessory brand that has, and continues to take an unconventional and clever approach to growth in a tough economy. For the last four years, their business has been growing steadily in Australia through two independent (commission-only) sales reps who have brought in over 100 Australian stockists for their brand.

Founder and Director of Babychic Australia Ltd, Lauren Southern, knew that the only way to grow was to take her brand international. Searching for a traditional distributor model is very competitive especially in the juvenile landscape, and with a small brand with low volumes, pricing is key.

“In order for our business to be sustainable we needed to go international! We tried to find suitable distributors, but because our pricing was so tight we struggled to secure any traditional distributor agreements. I thought there must be so many brands out there with the same problem, so I started Chic Brands Australia which is a 'non-traditional' distributor of five up-and-coming Australian brands.”

After moving to Edinburgh, Lauren launched Chic Brands Australia, a non-traditional distributor of Australian baby accessory brands. It is non-traditional in the sense that Chic Brands Australia doesn't own the stock like a traditional distributor does. Being single product company, retailers are less inclined to order and stock products, however being part of a larger group of brands Chic Brands Australia ticks the retailers boxes in terms of saving retailers time, labour, overhead, as well as shipping costs.

The fact that each individual brand owns their own stock, makes global expansion a true partnership between them and Chic Brands Australia. Chic Brands Australia now has a presence in some international territories, but lacks the qualified sales staff in the right locations to secure stockists in new countries and to really drive growth internationally.

Lauren has now decided to embrace a new online technology in her efforts to further expand her company and to make the Babychic brand available to mums and dads globally. She has turned to CommissionCrowd, an online ‘Cloud’ based platform that connects independent sales reps with companies globally. CommissionCrowd - Launching mid 2014 - also provide collaborative accounts that allow both the company and sales agent to easily manage their remote working relationships.

“As our fixed costs are tight, we need really talented sales agents who believe in our brands and who want to partner with us to help our brands become available to mums and dads around the world. We also need to ensure that we minimise administration and workload, so the platform that CommissionCrowd is creating is imperative in helping us manage our growing business, as well as keeping our brands informed of the entire selling process and lead status. We love that CommissionCrowd has challenged normal ways of doing business, much like we have. This is the only way forward in today’s tough economic climate.”

Chic Brands Australia now distributes 5 brands, Frilly Tushies, Bibska, TooshCoosh, Toddler Trays and Babychic into Hong Kong and the UK with grand plans to continue to challenge the normal routes to market, grow our brands further and expand into the USA and Canada within the next 18 months.

Contact:

Chic Brands Australia
Lauren Southern
[email protected]
+ 44 (0) 7593 655 853
Website: http://www.chicbrandsaustralia.com/

CommissionCrowd
Laura McGregor (Co-Founder, CommissionCrowd)
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +44 (0)131 618 2300 (UK) +44 (0)7817 441628
Website: http://www.commissioncrowd.com/

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