Episode 11
Bernadette Olivier on what it takes to scale a circular economy business, why acquisition cost broke the old model, and the database move that changed the trajectory.
Episode
Overview
Bernadette Olivier didn’t come from fashion. Bernadette was a corporate lawyer. Starting with an industry built on overconsumption, she decided to build a better model from the ground up.
What followed was The Volte, now Australia’s largest peer-to-peer designer fashion rental marketplace and one of the most recognised circular economy platforms globally. Over 300,000 monthly active users, $4.7 million raised, eBay Ventures on board, and an expansion into the UK. Not bad for those who had never worked a day in fashion.
In this episode, Bernadette joins Aleisha McCall for an honest conversation about what it actually takes to build a brand in a market that didn’t exist, how they’ve scaled, rebranded, and stayed commercially focused while running a business with purpose at its core, and what their latest venture Seamlist signals about where fashion commerce is heading next.
listen & subscribe
Tune in on your favourite platform to listen or watch Episode 11 of The Black Box of Media Podcast.
Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Watch EPISODE 11
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction to The Black Box of Media
01:13 Meet Bernadette Olivier: founder of The Volte and Seamlist
02:48 From law and hedge funds to circular fashion: the founder origin story
05:13 COVID-19 and the abrupt halt: how a crisis became a pivot
07:11 Building a high-growth brand without a marketing team
10:13 Marketing lessons: finding focus when everything feels urgent
13:11 Top vs. bottom of funnel: the gap nobody was explaining
17:10 Changing consumer behaviour in the circular economy
20:05 The Cotton On “Resell to be Rewarded” campaign: how it works
23:56 Your existing database is your most underutilised asset
26:08 What didn’t work: honest mistakes and what they cost
30:26 When strategy works: what clarity actually feels like as a founder
35:35 The $331 customer acquisition cost problem in Australia
41:08 Leadership, strategic thinking, and the case for stopping
Key
Takeaways
Building a New Consumer Category:
- Why top-of-funnel investment is non-negotiable when your audience doesn’t know the category exists yet
- How to explain a new behaviour to people who haven’t thought about it yet
- Why making circularity commercially irresistible is the only path to real change
First-Party Data and the Database Opportunity:
- How Seamlist moved from 0% to 50%+ of sales from existing customers using the same database
- Why most businesses are sitting on an underutilised asset without realising it
- The shift from broadcasting to your list to building a strategy around it
Marketing Without a Full Team:
- How to set direction and maintain momentum without an internal CMO or marketing team
- What to do when agency reports don’t match your sales reality
- Why the founder who understands their own marketing always outperforms the one who delegates it entirely
Funnel Thinking and Distribution:
- Why great content without distribution is not a marketing strategy
- How to match creative to funnel stage instead of running the same message everywhere
- The difference between building awareness and building behaviour
Founder Resilience and Leadership:
- The competitive sport traits that translate directly into founder performance: resilience, compartmentalising, resourcefulness
- Why showing the journey, not just the wins, builds more trust and more audience
- The doorway ritual: how to step into any environment 100% present
Culture, Perspective and the Long Game:
- The no-jerk policy and why team culture is a commercial decision
- Why laughter and perspective are legitimate leadership tools under pressure
- “Pressure is a privilege”: reframing the weight of building something that matters
GUEST PROFILE – BERNADETTE OLIVIER
Bernadette Olivier is the CEO and Co-Founder of The Volte and the force behind Seamlist, a new API integration turning every fashion purchase into a potential rental or resale listing in one click.
Before building The Volte, Bernadette spent her career in corporate law across London and Australia, working in global hedge funds and financial services before walking away from law entirely to co-found something that hadn’t been done before.
Since launching in 2017, she’s grown The Volte to over 300,000 monthly active users, secured a Series A led by eBay Ventures, and taken the platform global. She was named WA Founder of the Year in 2018.
Sharper thinking. Stronger marketing.
Join your host, Aleisha McCall, as she lifts the lid on the hidden strategies of
high-performance media advertising with top experts, who’ve stopped following the playbook.
Don’t miss a moment — subscribe and stay in the loop with every episode.