Australian women are harbouring a secret: many are slogging silently through their day in uncomfortable bras.
Now a female-led tech startup is on a mission to disrupt the multibillion-dollar global bra industry to put paid to bruising brassiers.
Luxury customised lingerie company The OneTwo on Wednesday launched its online platform using technology to correctly size women.
Using a fit algorithm, it diagnoses a better size and gives customers wear tips. Over 75 sizes are catered for, many created specifically for the customer upon order.
Co-founder Margot Balch came up with the idea after struggling for years to find a decent bra.
When the “least bad” one she wore was discontinued, she searched as far as the UK and US for a replacement, to no avail.
“Initially I thought, as I think a lot of us do, that I must just have a strange body that doesn’t fit bras very well,” she tells SmartCompany.
She was shocked to learn her friends were similarly suffering in ill-fitting bras that were digging in and hurting.
Balch, a digital strategist who helped launch retail juggernaut The ICONIC, was spurred into action.
While she’d had ideas for startups before, this one increasingly seemed convincing.
“The doors just kept opening every time I asked the question,” she says.
She did a bra-fitting course in the UK, then tested out her sizing skills, taking friends bra shopping at department stores.
When the bras still failed to fit well, she set up a custom fit business.
Its success emboldened her to take her idea mainstream, with the help of technology, to tackle the undergarment dilemma more broadly.
With co-founder Maria Golushko, who brings luxury fashion expertise, the pair launched a Kickstarter campaign that netted $100,000 in sales in just 30 days.
Prominent investors offered backing, including Antler Venture Capital and angels from Atlassian, McKinsey, AirBnb and Who Gives a Crap.
An estimated 80 per cent of Australian women are wearing the wrong bra size, according to a 2008 study published in the Chiropractic & Osteopathy journal.
Balch says after listening to more than 1300 women via their virtual fitting platform, 84 per cent changed their bra size.
Retailing from $95, the OneTwo bras use proprietary fabric that has been pioneered by the company, by taking a waste product from cotton production.
Co-founder Maria Golushko says the result is a range that looks and feels beautiful at an accessible price for Australian women.
In addition, the technology is continually optimised, meaning data customers share helps enhance the experience for future buyers.
Golushko adds traditional bra and most tech fashion startups are typically run by men, which may partly explain why the Aussie women’s needs have been overlooked.
Balch says the founders are intent on disrupting the global bra industry, forecast to reach a valuation of US$46.5 billion ($67.76 billion) by the end of 2031.
“Our goal is to be a global destination for lingerie. There’s just such a huge unmet need and women are suffering and we’re feeling terrible about our bodies,” she said.
This article was first published by SmartCompany.