Sarah Hamilton strives to achieve her best in her career as Co-Founder of bellabox Australia and also as a mum. Launching the beauty subscription box service, bellabox Australia, back in 2011 with her twin sister, Sarah is a veteran in the startup ecosystem.
Bellabox was created by women, for women who loved buying beauty products and looking good, but were sick of the hassle of going to department stores every time they wanted to try out a new moisturiser, eyeliner or fragrance. Sarah and her sister were also sick of buyer’s remorse “paying for expensive beauty products that did not live up to our expectations until we got home and tried them on, and always feeling like we were six months behind the latest trend”. Delivered monthly, bellabox allows consumers a chance to try beauty samples before buying the full product.
At its peak, bellabox had more than 40,000 subscribers, primarily secured through social media marketing, which has always been the business’ biggest marketing channel. With the strong growth of the business, Sarah and her sister Emily were able to confidently step back from the day-to-day running of bellabox in order to launch their other company, Sand & Sky. Running two successful businesses, Sarah acknowledges that it hasn’t been easy and mistakes have certainly been made along the way. Seeing the positive, Sarah says the mistakes made with bellabox helped the pair set up Sand & Sky.
Sarah is very open and very honest about the challenges founders can face. While she has plenty of advice and tips, she also recommends that no start up founder should take all the advice they’re given as verbatim. On reflection, she wishes she listened to her gut and trusted her instinct more.
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