She Started a Multi-Million Dollar ‘It-Girl’ Bikini Brand in Her Twenties
Would you start a business with a guy on your second date? Erin Deering did, and it became Triangl, a multi-million dollar bikini brand iconic to an entire generation of women.
After launching in 2013, Triangl became a favorite for celebs like Kendall Jenner requesting a pair of bikinis. Here's how she made it happen.
Erin was on a second date at the beach when she and her date noticed a gap in the swimwear market. He suggested they started a business, which ended up being a pretty solid idea. Erin was 27, still new in her career and thought why the hell not?
Three years after launch, Erin made the BRW Rich List in Australia, but Triangl wasn’t an overnight success. After launching in January 2013, they started to see slow traction into the summer.
“We always saw growth. Even if it really was tiny, tiny growth, we always were growing. It would be one or two sales a week, to three or four a week.”
Although Triangl eventually saw some explosive growth, they weren’t an instant success right out of the gate. Erin says this was actually a really good thing since they were able to test and grow without a ton of eyeballs on them yet.
“Everyone wants a big launch. And if you get a big launch, that's not gonna necessarily mean continued growth. You might have done this great launch plan and then afterwards you're like, what do I do now? Because everyone's already burnt out. You've put your best stuff out there and you have no plan after launch.”
Erin kept her operations super lean. They borrowed money to buy their first round of bikinis, but once they made their first sale, never borrowed again.
The cofounders did almost everything themselves, allowing them to stay really nimble. Up until Erin's exit in 2018, they only had six staff members!
Triangl initially relied on influencer gifting to get the word out. After sending bikinis to a ton of smaller creators they wanted to start sending to some mega-influencers.
Her mind instantly went to the Kardashians, and Erin thought Kendall Jenner would be a perfect fit—definitely a “Triangl girl”.
Instead of reaching out to Kendall herself (almost impossible to do) or going through an expensive agency, Erin got creative and started sending bikinis to all of Kendall’s friends, hoping that she’d get FOMO and want a Triangl bikini herself.
“This was the first time we gifted a group of friends and left one of them out on purpose.”
A few weeks later Erin woke up to an email from Kendall’s personal Gmail (yes, even Miss Kenny Jenner has an embarrassing personal email she probably created when she was 13).
“It was like, ‘Hey, like a lot of my friends have these bikinis. They're so cool. Am I able to get some too?’”
Kendall ended up posting about her bikini on Twitter and it really sparked a new era of growth for Triangl.From that moment, getting a PR package and being a #trianglgirl was a major status symbol for influencers.
Ok, ok, we know what you’re thinking: A lot of Triangl’s success was timing, luck, and the magic of Instagram way back when, but that wouldn’t work for me now. We hear ya bestie, so we asked Erin what tactics she thinks are still replicable in 2023.
Triangl's tactics you can copy and paste for your biz in 2023:
Customer-centricity: Listening to what the customer wants never goes out of style.
Small tests all the time: Have the persistence to try new things, even if they don’t always work out.
