Introduction
Discover the remarkable fashion business success story of Aimee Smale, who built Odd Muse from a small startup into a $30 million per year fashion brand by age 26. In this exclusive interview, Aimee shares her journey from creating £10 logos during the pandemic to launching a mid-luxury fashion brand that’s now taking the world by storm.
Founder Success Story QnA
What inspired you to start a fashion brand and what kept you motivated to make it a full-time business?
I think for me I was working at Asos at the time and for me I had just graduated University. I had gone into like my first ever role and I was on women’s wear premium department. Funnily enough, we were working with a lot of Australian Brands and that mid luxury price point was not a thing in the UK. All we had at that time was fast fashion. Here in the UK, we are very dominated by a pretty little thing, boohoo, especially towards a younger consumer, or we have your high luxury price points that are completely unattainable. I graduated from uni kind of like I’m not a pretty little thing girl, I don’t want to buy fast fashion but I literally have no other option. How fast fashion was in the UK, all I kept thinking was the amount young people are spending on these websites could be better spent elsewhere. It can’t be collected and put into luxury because it is unattainable, but we are missing that mid luxury price point. I kind of started Odd Muse as a project on my commute to Asos. I had come up with this mid-luxury brand, the idea was investment fashion. My target market was young women like me. I was, I believe I was like 22 at the time, and who wanted to implement their spend into one good piece. I understood that to get a woman that’s very young, 22 years old, to spend over £100 on something, it does need to be something that she can wear over and over again.
How much capital did you save up to launch Odd Muse?
I actually launched Odd Muse with a six piece collection but the Blazer was what really stuck. The Blazer was actually the only thing that sold and that really taught me throughout the whole brand that I only really need one product to really change the game for this brand. I’ve experienced that so many times in my journey. So we had started to slow at one point in 2022. It just got to a point where everyone had had a Blazer and I released this pear dress and it was everything she loved about the Blazer. It was feminine, it had a good shape to it, it was so Odd Muse if Odd Muse did a dress. I remember in that quarter alone we gross like 1.5 million just off that dress and we became a dress brand and that was again one product. So I actually launched Odd Muse with six pieces, the Blazer sold very very well and in total the capital invested was £12,000 and that was mainly just on stock. I did my website myself, I did the branding myself, I did all the socials myself. I really saved in every area possible to be able to buy that stock.
How did you find your supplier and choose materials for your products?
I would have started my brand a lot sooner if I had more visibility on literally the manufacturing and the supplier side. It is the hardest thing to find the information about. Once you get connected with someone and start having conversations, I always say my supplier at the very beginning was almost my mentor. I told myself that I just needed to ask the questions and I just needed to speak to someone and have silly questions about fabrics and components like zippers and buttons. My sketches were very sort of like amateur at the time. But I learned very quickly that I wanted to manufacture in China because of just where I was working. I was working on the premium Women’s World Department, it was with a lot of mid luxury Australian brands that I wanted to associate myself with and a lot of my job was importing that stock into the UK for Asos. So I had full visibility on them all being from China and exactly where they are in China. So from that I just started to Google manufacturers in China and I had honestly I had about 50 conversations with 50 different suppliers. A lot of it was a simple just like Vibe check and the other part of it was what are your minimum quantities. If anyone came back to me and said their minimums are a 1000 pieces or 2,000 pieces, I knew that anything over 50 I wouldn’t be able to do. So that was narrowing a lot of it down. What are your minimum quantities, what is your lead time, whether or not they’re willing to work with a small brand.
How did the collaboration with influencer Lor Lux come about?
The way in which Luna discovered the Blazer was there was quite a lot of noise early on because pretty little thing had ripped off the Blazer. At the time I’d only had like 500 followers and someone messaged me like you should put this on Twitter. I was like I’ll try anything, I’m just like they’ve copied me, I’ve got 500 followers, this is I quit my job. So I put it on Twitter and it started to get really really viral, like lots of retweets, people were replying saying I bought this Blazer, we got a few sales from it. And then a couple days later Luna Lux had posted on her story that she just purchased this Blazer, it’s coming tomorrow, she’s going to wear it in Paris. And immediately I think we had about 80 units left on site and they just sold out within 5 minutes. And I had loads of people asking me when are you restocking, when are you restocking. This was like a real pivotal moment in Odd Muse’s history and in its lifespan, one of the reasons why we’re still self-funded today.
How do you deal with copycats in the fashion industry?
With clothing, if you are a mid-luxury brand, the one thing fast fashion can never do is replicate quality because they don’t put spending to Quality Control, they don’t put spending to good quality Fabrics, they don’t put spending to product development. So yes, pretty little thing copied me but my God it was an awful version. And whenever people copy us, it’s always an awful version because we do stand on quality. So that’s with fashion, that is the one thing we always have, they’re never going to touch our quality. Also, what I’m learning as we grow, I don’t let it bother me at all anymore, it’s just expected now. Whenever we really release a collection, fast fashion brands are going to release their version of it. But it doesn’t bother me, is the quality factor but also my customer no longer shops at pretty little thing because that was our mission all them years ago. We have so many customers that can vouch for us changing their spending habits and changing their shopping behaviors to a more slower side of fashion. So I don’t see us competing with fast fashion at all.
What were some of the biggest challenges in scaling so quickly?
When I think back to when it was just me starting the brand, the main challenges was facilitating the growth. So having the customer service behind it, having the ability to get the orders out, get the returns in and offer a good service. I think that has really taken us a long time to perfect and we’ve perfected it this year and we’ve seen how much more we can scale. So I think just the stress of that and also I’ve always put my face all over the brand, I am the face of the brand. So when the customer service isn’t there, the first person they’re blaming and coming to is me. So I think you know, putting myself at the face of the brand at the time where the brand wasn’t equipped to get orders out quick enough and offer emails with a good response time. Now our email response time is like 4 hours worldwide, before it would take me like we sometimes would have automatic responses basically giving us like 5 days to get back to your email which is not acceptable.
Can you walk us through your creative process for new designs?
One of the moments that really changed the game for Odd Muse was when we introduced more regular launches and that doesn’t necessarily need to be like a big collection every single month. Some months it’s just like one style. Obviously fast fashion new in pages are like thousands of options new each week. We needed to find that sweet spot, mainly from a point of having a bit more conversation on social. So we introduced sort of more products but still in the grand scheme of things it’s still like only 50 products a year but it’s kind of like staggering them. So the creative process behind that really just goes back to our customer. So we don’t necessarily look at Trend reports, we’re very much with Odd Muse we’re very much inspired by Odd Muse and that has created a really strong brand identity. So when you look at all our products lined up, you can tell it’s Odd Muse. And whenever you see a dress out in public, like when we were shooting in New York recently, a girl came up to me like oh my God your dress is Odd Muse. It was not a release dress, no one had ever seen it before, but the product we design has such a strong identity to Odd Muse.
How did you build such strong customer trust and loyalty?
I feel like I started the brand with my customers. I feel like we were all in lockdown and they you know I’m so grateful to them and everything we do is for her and we always speak about her in the office. I think that is just like me injecting my personality into the brand because I am just so grateful for everyone who has enjoyed Odd Muse at any level for the last four years, whether you’ve not bought anything and you have just enjoyed watching our content and you’ve engaged with our TikToks. I think that really shows in what we do, I think people feel that energy from us. We’re not a salesy brand, we just want to have fun with whoever loves the brand. I always speak about how I didn’t get into this to have a growing business and I think that translates well to our customer. I think that’s built a really amazing community and obviously I’m all over the content, it’s a very founder-led brand so people have like a story to support.
How do you approach influencer partnerships?
Our influencer policy is very very unique. When I started the brand, Luna Lux told me this very very quickly. She organically bought that Blazer and posted about it and that is why we saw such amazing sales from it. So from the GetGo, I told myself I am going to continue creating amazing product that influencers want to buy and if they don’t want to buy it they will accept gifting. I just know how much the word ad diminishes credibility. It was my product, it was my baby, I wanted to know people loved it and they weren’t ever going to be paid to say that. So originally, really up until this year, all our influencer partnerships have either been gifted or they’ve bought it themselves. Now this year we have introduced a commission platform which I think all brands should do. I think it’s fair for the influencers but I think it also protects the brand. So a lot of influencer partnerships in the UK when it is a branded ad, you may have to spend quite a lot of money upfront on that ad, you don’t know what you’re going to get out of it, and you also have the ad that the word ad that is going to diminish where people want to convert.
What advice would you give for building a strong organic presence on social media?
I always said from the very beginning that I was going to try and be as appealing to a customer and to an influencer as well. I always said that I wasn’t going to chase influencers, I was always going to create a brand that influencers would chase. I think that’s what had me so laser focused on the brand. I wasn’t looking on Instagram for who was going to grow the brand and who was going to wear Odd Muse, I was so laser focused on that Instagram feed. I still to this day think Instagram is where you build the most Community. I think TikTok can be super loud and it’s got this virality piece but it hasn’t got that loyalty piece that Instagram has. So I would say Instagram is like my favorite place to communicate to our customers and TikTok is where we have just like a bit of fun and it builds the community. It seriously is in having a good product and having a good story, communicating that story in the least polished way possible.
When did you decide to make yourself the face of the brand?
When I was starting the brand and I was thinking about the brands that maybe my customer was shopping at already and who I was kind of going up against, I asked myself what do I have that they don’t. When you’re putting yourself up to brands that have been running for a long time, you know you’re with that question for a long time: how am I competitive, what is different about my brand. I kind of landed on me. I’m different, my story, no one’s got me Amy Smale in their brand. Then I looked deeper and I was like well none of them even have their founder face fronting. So for me it was kind of like a marketing advantage. I always say to people you are your biggest advantage. No one is you, no one can even when I do my TikToks now, I talk about my day because no one’s to point blank had the day I’ve had. So it was more so as a 22-year-old thinking I had a competitive edge putting myself out there. Also, it was all I had. I’d spent all my money on my stock, all I had was to very candidly tell people my story in the hope that they would find it interesting.
How did you allocate your time in the early days between content, customer support, and product development?
At the beginning, I remember I used to do one content day a month. So I used to do one shoot a month of the product. But pretty much every day I was finding 5 to 10 minutes in my everyday to just candidly tell Instagram stories and TikTok what I was doing and what I was working on. I think that’s the beauty of where we are now. TikToks like that reach a lot of people, 10 years ago there was no way you could upload a video of you just sitting there in your working clothes and just talking and it could reach, if it goes viral, it can have the same reach as like a huge ad and a huge celebrity endorsement. TikTok has given you that ability to do that and social media too. So I think now is the best time, when would that have ever been a thing. So I would always find five to 10 minutes of my day to really candidly speak to people. We’ll do that one content day a month for actual product because I think you do need to have that in order to really make a product desirable.
Would you describe yourself as fearless in taking business risks?
I wouldn’t say I’m fearless but I can say I’m quite impulsive and I’m just a dreamer. I really just thought Odd Muse would work and I really had it in my head and it would just keep me up at night like how good this idea was. So I wouldn’t say Fearless because there’s definitely this side that I’m showing a little bit more this year where I panic and I’m scared. But I think the difference in that is I don’t let the fear stop me. I’m scared but I do it anyway. Whenever you’re taking big steps to grow your brand, a lot of stuff like that you know it is scary and I sit at night and I think what if this doesn’t work out. It’s all self-funded, it’s literally my own money, what is going to happen. But we do it anyway. The 700 Blazers I ordered that I didn’t know was going to sell but I definitely couldn’t pay my suppliers for, I had a couple sleepless nights where I thought what if no one buys these and what if I had to pay all that money. I have so many moments like that but we do it anyway.
What was the investment for your New York pop-up store?
Our New York popup was around a £300,000 investment. We’re there for three months. With the New York popup, I really wanted to showcase who the brand is now. We opened a tiny store in London last year, we’ve signed a 5-year lease, it’s tiny. In an ideal world it would be a lot bigger, we’ve grown so much since then. So when we went to New York, I was kind of like we need to go big, we need to show ourselves that we are this luxury brand, a mid-luxury brand that can compete with key players. So we went quite hard with the New York popup. Also, one thing I would say is we needed help from a production company, none of us was based in New York. We had to lean into a lot more labor than we would have in London. But it’s been open for 12-13 days and we hit $200,000 in sales today. Opening weekend was just shy of $100,000.
Why did you decide to set up retail stores instead of sticking to direct-to-consumer?
For our community, she has grown our brand so much, why would we not put spend into her being able to experience the brand in real life. Every time we’ve done a popup or open a store, we have queues of people who are so excited and that’s really why we do it. That’s really why we push it to the next level each time because our customers love it. We had queues around the block for Odd Muse in New York which was just wild to me.
What’s next for Odd Muse?
I think next year for Odd Muse we are really trying to become more of a Lifestyle brand. We’re very confident that she gets every dress for any occasion from Odd Muse but we want her in Odd Muse every single day. We want her to smell Odd Muse, we want her to wear Odd Muse to work, we want her to wear Odd Muse to bed. We’ve done pajamas this year, we really want to just be in every area of our customers life. So that’s a big thing for us next year, product and our categories are a big thing next year. And also just building on that International expansion piece. We get orders from all over the world, we have amazing sales in Australia and we have amazing sales in the US. So keeping that New York store hopefully and seeing where else in the world we can pop up.
Aimee Smale Business Stats
Aimee Smale built Odd Muse from scratch into a thriving fashion business with impressive growth metrics. Here’s a look at the key statistics behind her success:
- Started Odd Muse in 2020 during the pandemic with just £12,000 in savings
- Generated £60,000 in sales in the first month after launching
- Grew to £24 million in annual revenue within four years
- Currently achieving approximately £2 million in monthly revenue
- Remains completely self-funded without outside investment
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Initial Investment | £12,000 |
| First Month Revenue | £60,000 |
| Annual Revenue (2024) | £24,000,000 |
| Monthly Revenue | £2,000,000 |
| Funding | Self-funded |
Aimee Smale Method
Aimee’s approach to building Odd Muse combines strategic thinking with authentic brand building. Here’s how she did it:
- Identified a gap in the market for mid-luxury fashion between fast fashion and high-end luxury
- Created timeless, investment pieces designed to be worn multiple times rather than seasonal items
- Built authentic relationships with customers through founder-led content and transparency
- Leveraged organic influencer marketing by creating products people genuinely wanted to wear
- Used pre-order model to validate demand and fund growth without outside investment
Aimee Smale Tools
Aimee utilized various tools and platforms to build Odd Muse efficiently while maintaining quality and authenticity:
- Shopify – Built and managed the e-commerce website herself initially
- Adobe Illustrator – Self-taught to create initial designs and logos
- Instagram – Primary platform for community building and customer engagement
- TikTok – Used for viral content and reaching new audiences
- Shop My – Commission-based influencer marketing platform for performance partnerships
Key Notes
Throughout this interview, Aimee shared valuable insights that aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from:
- Start before you feel ready – Aimee began sampling and supplier conversations before having full funding
- You are your biggest advantage – Aimee’s personal story and transparency became a key differentiator
- Focus on quality over quantity – One standout product (the blazer) was enough to launch the business
- Don’t be afraid to pivot – When sales slowed, Aimee introduced new products like the pear dress that revitalized growth
- Build community, not just customer base – Authentic engagement created loyal brand advocates
Get Started in Just 5 Steps
Inspired by Aimee’s journey? Here’s how you can start building your own fashion business:
- Identify a gap in the market – Look for unmet needs, as Aimee did with mid-luxury fashion
- Start small with one standout product – Focus on quality and uniqueness rather than a large collection
- Build authentic relationships – Engage directly with customers and share your founder story
- Validate demand before scaling – Use pre-orders or small production runs to test market interest
- Leverage organic marketing – Create products influencers genuinely want to wear and share
Conclusion
Aimee Smale’s fashion business success story demonstrates how authenticity, quality, and strategic thinking can transform a small startup into a multi-million dollar brand. By identifying a gap in the market, staying true to her vision, and building genuine connections with customers, she grew Odd Muse from £10 logo designs to a £24 million annual revenue business—all while remaining completely self-funded. Her journey offers valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs about the power of starting small, being authentic, and letting your unique vision guide your growth.