Active Truth was created by co-founders Nadia Tucker and Stevie Angel after a number of negative shopping experiences trying to buy beautifully printed tights that would perform as promised through a workout.

We started the business in 2016 with an initial investment of around $10K each. In our second year of business, our turnover was $2million. We recently won a Queensland Telstra Business Award in the ‘Emerging & Energised’ category.

We saw a gap in the market for a brand that not only serviced the activewear needs of all women but celebrated them too. We produce high-quality activewear in sizes 6 to 26, including a maternity range. Our brand celebrates women of all shapes, sizes, and stages of life, by showing our clothing on a diverse range of women and never photoshopping or retouching our models.

The initial planning stages of the business took over a year and just before we launched in May 2016 we both returned to the workforce in our previous careers after a period of maternity leave and part-time work. For the first 9 months, we worked nights and weekends to grow the business including picking and packing orders from Nadia’s house where the stock eventually took over her living room and spare bedrooms. In March 2017 Nadia moved to the business full-time, followed by Stevie in July 2017.

We moved our distribution to a 3PL warehouse in September 2017 and moved off our kitchen benches and into an office in February 2018.

Keeping up with demand and managing cash flow has been our greatest challenge to date. Our current challenges are around implementing back-end systems and expanding our manufacturing capacity in order for us to continue our growth.

We have found that starting the business on such a small budget means that we know all the aspects of the business well – we’ve done all the jobs! And having no extra money for paid marketing meant we had to use our creativity to promote Active Truth and find customers. Organic social media was (and still is) a large driver of customers for us. Having a strong point of difference in our product and our marketing has helped us grow our social following to over 50K.

 Stevie Angels

stevie@activetruth.com