On Building A Makeup Brand And Doing Over $3.5M In Sales

Nova Jane

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Published: April 13th, 2020

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Nova Jane

Founder, Fitcover

Founders

Employees

Fitcover

fitcover.com

from Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

started January 2018

Founders

Employees

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Hi, my name is Nova Jane. I am a mum of 2, a fitness enthusiast and the founder and CEO of Fitcover. Designed to be sweatproof and incredibly good for your skin, Fitcover is changing the face of fitness by empowering women to wear a healthier alternative to most makeup, and not to mention our makeup is Australian-owned, natural, vegan and cruelty-free!

Our mineral products have become a staple in thousands of active women’s beauty collections however our flagship product would have to be our Active Mineral Powder Foundation which is perfect buildable and ‘good for your skin’ staple foundation.

Our customers are everyday, active women who lead busy and healthy lifestyles. From mums to working hustlers, these women may not have 30 minutes in the morning to do their makeup and just need a quick application to brighten up their faces and make them feel confident in their own skin.

In just two years of Fitcover living and breathing, we have become Australia's leading fitness product making over 3.5 million in sales. This figure does not make us excited to buy expensive things for ourselves, it makes us excited to inject a lot more money back into Fitcover to be able to bring out new and improved products and packaging for our customers.

What's your backstory and how did you get into entrepreneurship?

I (Nova) suffered from cystic acne throughout my entire teens and 20's whilst also being a fitness junkie. I never left the house without makeup covering my problem skin and was always on the lookout for something that would not irritate my already aggravated skin while I sweat in my session. It was a fight I was never winning after every game or session, I would end up even worse off the skin. For many years I looked for this magic product and couldn't find it.

If you have an idea, Just go for it! You have nothing to lose and you will not regret it. If you stuff up you have learned and if you win you have learned.

So I came up with my own solution and I brought Fitcover to life. I knew that if I was going through this, other girls out there were too. I could not find a product specifically for training and sweating that could cover my acne in the gym whilst not clogging up my pores and aggravating my acne even more.

I have always had a business mind from a young age. I think this starts off when you are very young and you find you don’t want to be told what to do - this was me. Then I went on to sell door to door my little finger paintings to my neighbors around the area, to play a recorder at markets for change. I would try and make money from next to nothing and I became really creative with ideas. So becoming a businesswoman was inevitable for me.

I started Fitcover with $6000 and a 4-month-old baby. I knew how good my product was so I ordered almost 6k worth of my product and gave it all away to every fitness influencer I ever loved and admired myself. I waited until they contacted me back to tell me how amazing it was and they would love to promote it. Almost every single influencer wrote back to me and the ones that could not promote it was already under contract with another makeup company. Once they started to share how amazing the mineral foundation was, the orders started coming in and we rolled on from here.

on-designing-a-100-natural-make-up-with-over-3-5m-in-sales

Take us through your entrepreneurial journey. How did you go from day 1 to today?

Launching Fitcover was challenging as we launched when I was a new mum with a four-month-old. I worked at any chance I could get with bubba while still getting used to the new mum's life that I was not used to. I was also breastfeeding every 2 hours. I was so tired but the passion drove me.

I was told again and again that the makeup industry would be too hard to break into but with the inspiration from my firstborn child, I knew I had to take the leap and prove all the science and pharmaceutical ‘experts’ wrong.

So in 2017 I took the plunge and created Fitcover. Nova 5 years ago never would've dreamt to have owned a global company and I still pinch myself today when I think of the thousands of women I've reached with Fitcover around the world. Women I looked up to now call friends now and this is something crazy to me - they are just like all of us.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

Fitcover has big plans for the coming years. We’re looking to continue to create awareness and expand reach! Talk about Fitcover world domination through market expansion. And of course, we’re looking at the development and launch of new products aligned with the business objectives and address market gaps.

Fitcover’s vision has always been the same. It is to uphold the spirit of innovation in active and cosmetics industries. We’re bridging the gap between makeup and fitness by offering a sweat-proof makeup which is 100% cruelty-free, vegan & all-natural, navigating through the uncharted territory of skincare disguised as active makeup to nourish your skin as you sweat and empowering women to live more positive, healthy and active lifestyles. As for the changes, we’re always trying to improve our products and to look out to a larger set of women living active lifestyles.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

There have been plenty of mistakes within Fitcover. From simple typos in our emails and marketing to me trying my very hardest to run the company on my own and have my eyes over everything - doing this opens up a lot of room for error. I found it hard to accept that I could not be 100% perfect in every part of the company.

To try and save costs I would try and turn a staff member into 3 different roles and I could not understand how they were making mistakes but found out quickly that you can’t run a company like this at all. I also have found it so hard to manage staff and have had to learn this along the way. I now hire staff who specialize in one specific role and don’t try to turn them into someone they are not.

In the early days, I brought out a product and somehow forgot to print the directions on the packaging. So I had to print thousands of little booklets and insert each booklet in with the product.

The best decision I have made was sending Fitcover to influencers that held the same values as us. I never spoke to them about collaborating. I just wanted to get Fitcover in their hands and see if they loved it so much that they would reach out to me and want to collaborate. Doing this created real loyalty to the brand. The girls who promote us genuinely love Fitcover and wear it every single day/workout

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

More than the business and given that the platform that I have created, we’re connected to more than 30,000 customers in Australia and the world. One of our favorite tools to do this is social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook as we are able to share a conversation with our customers, target specifically and be creative with our content.

We have carried out multiple social media campaigns and worked with many fitness and lifestyle influencers from across the globe to get our product out there.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

Hands down the book that got my fire going again to launch Fitcover and stop procrastinating was all of Lisa Messengers' books. She writes so well. I also loved Emma Isaacs book ‘wing it’.

My favorite podcast I have heard to date would be Shameless podcast when they interviewed Zoe Foster Blake. I really feel like Zoe and I are exactly the same in a business and mum sense.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

When it comes to Fitcover, the most valuable lesson would be putting the customer at the heart of it all. Listening to them is really important whether it's positive or negative. Their insights are so valuable because they really know best! Without our loyal customers, we won’t be where we are today! We have a lot in store for them.

Also, please if you have an idea, Just go for it! You have nothing to lose and you will not regret it. If you stuff up you have learned and if you win you have learned.