The young gun CEO driving rapid growth for Lindy Klim’s startup Fig Femme

It was a significant achievement for the self-care entrepreneur, who established the startup in 2020 and has since seen her Fig Femme products sold on Kourtney Kardashian’s Poosh website.

A distribution deal secured with pharmacy group Priceline had delivered modest success for the brand in Australia, but Klim knew she needed more than this to scale her business further.

“I’m great at the connections and selling the brand through interviews, PR and being me,” Klim tells Business News Australia. “But I am terrible at the back end of the business,” she concedes.

Last year, Klim enlisted online retail entrepreneur George Filopoulos as CEO and minority investor after an extended search.

Since then, rapid growth of the brand under his stewardship has vindicated Klim’s decision and led to Filopoulos to secure an 80 per cent stake in Fig Femme after hitting key performance targets.

“We just relaunched our online store in June where we have taken our business from 5,000 units a month when I first joined to 100,000 over the past 90 days,” says Filopoulos, who clocked up a full year as CEO of Fig Femme this month.

Filopoulos, who has his own startup journey as founder of Hollywood-style mirrors e-commerce business Zena which he established during COVID, has opened several major distribution channels for Fig Femme.

While Priceline remains a key network in Australia, the end of an exclusivity agreement has led Filopoulos to expand further with the company close to onboarding with a large department store chain while a separate distribution route via grocers is currently in its early stages. 

The CEO also has driven a major push into overseas markets, including a surprisingly strong take-up in Saudi Arabia and the company’s first shipment to the US currently under way following a deal with TK Maxx.

Klim, who founded skincare brand Milk & Co with ex-husband and Aussie swimming legend Michael Klim in 2010, created Fig Femme out of a personal need.

“Even with Milk & Co, I developed products that I needed at the time,” she says.

“I have four children but when I had the first child, I was miffed there wasn’t anything on the market for women post-baby.

“Going into the perimenopause space, where I am now, it was more about creating products where there was a need and want from my side.”

The Fig Femme range comprises natural, cruelty-free intimate wellness products, and is promoted with the slogan “skin care for down there”.

“It was always in the back of my mind to create something,” says Klim.

“The products that were already there were so outdated, targeting an older demographic. These are products that are needed and wanted by women.

“I didn’t understand why we didn’t have something that was beautiful, looks good in the bathroom, and also didn’t have all the chemicals in it that the other brands did.”

Why choose a man to lead a women's hygiene brand? 

As for choosing a man to drive the business, Klim says she is an agnostic when it comes to gender.

“I don’t discriminate,” she says. “I get along with George and really know we can now take it to the next level. And it has in a very short time, so I am very happy with my decision.”

Filopoulos says Fig Femme operates in a category that is starting to grow, with the brand pitched as an indulgent healthcare experience.

“It’s a credit to Lindy who was ahead of the curve when she launched the product,” he says. “But it took a different approach and strategy to get it off the ground.”

Fig Femme is taking an educational approach to promoting products with the aim of creating greater awareness of feminine hygiene via short videos primed for social media channels.

“The reason I really wanted to come into this business and attack it the way that I did was that there are a lot of misconceptions about women’s intimate wellbeing and a lot of miseducation,” says Filopoulos.

“A big part of the business is to be relatable, but we wanted to focus on a campaign that was educational. The content we have created is more about giving women tips about everyday wellness and talking about some embarrassing questions that women are too scared to ask anyone other than a gynaecologist or a doctor.

“It’s about getting the right educational content out there but also still relating with women at the same time.

“We’ve broken that taboo and created something that can be fun and friendly and commonly talked about.”

It could be said that Filopoulos had a baptism of fire in his e-commerce journey after dropping out of university to take over the family’s furniture business which was started by his father who tragically in 2020.

Aged just 20 years, Filopoulos took over the business to support his family during the peak COVID period. But with lockdowns in full force, Filopoulos was forced to start an online business, Zena, to help defray the burden of paying $10,000 per month in rent for a showroom that wasn’t even open.

“I had to learn a lot about e-commerce and how to market products during that time,” he says.

It’s taken time for Fig Femme to establish a presence in Australia, a market that Filopoulos says seemed to be lagging offshore markets.

“At the time, Europe, America and even the Middle East, which was a surprise for us, was more ahead of the curve and more accepting of these products,” he says.

“Just recently, we have seen the transition happening in the Australian market, so it’s been quite a rollercoaster.”

From Australia to the world

Fig Femme is pitched as a premium brand, which is what led Filopoulos to target TK Maxx (known as TJ Maxx in the US) as an entry point to the North American market.

“We see ourselves as a high-end brand because we use more expensive ingredients to make sure women get the best results,” he says. “The Kardashians also have given us a lot of credibility when we talk to retailers.”

However, Saudi Arabia has been “a bit of a culture shock” for Filopoulos who is surprised by the support the brand is receiving.

“They are obviously very strict with their cultural beliefs, but women’s self-care is one of the biggest markets there,” he says.

“A lot of the women in Saudi Arabia actually look up to the Kardashians and other influencers. It was fantastic to see they are accepting of the product and really wanting it.”

Fig Femme plans to initially launch in Saudi Arabia before expanding into the rest of the Gulf region.

“Saudi Arabia has really taken a stance to becoming more modernised like Dubai, so there is a pharmacy at every corner and we are launching into about 3,000 pharmacists this year,” says Filopoulos.

“We have a five-year agreement there and while we have only been there for six months we have doubled our expectations for the first year of sales.

“The Saudi Arabia deal opens up a lot of capital for the company as it is paid upfront for the containers going out. We produce products specifically for the region and we try to produce whatever they want. The growth there has helped us use that capital to grow in other regions.”

Filopoulos also has hinted at a potential future capital raising for Fig Femme to help drive growth, but for now the group is scaling its team and operations organically.