d experienced 225 per cent year-on-year sales growth, primarily driven by its strategy in the US market. The US fashion market has a history of making or breaking Australian fashion labels and Leo Lin’s move into the US saw the brand double its revenue in just two years. “The goal of the brand is to really sit within this beautiful women’s wear luxury event space – I think its commitment to that is what’s made [Leo Lin] really focused,” Leo Lin’s head of brand, Laura Good, told Inside Retail. “It’s not trying to be everything to everybody. It’s trying to be Leo to the people that love Leo,” she added. Leo Lin has not only found a commercially successful design point of view but also the right customer demographic and retail partners. Point of view  According to Good, the brand’s success stems from its consistent creative direction that meets the needs of its customer base. “Leo is a luxury customer, he shops luxury constantly and his family shops luxury,” Good shared.  “So he really wanted to create a luxury-worthy brand at a more accessible price point – that was kind of where Leo Lin started from,” she added. Despite the brand’s premium price point, Leo Lin still receives feedback that the quality of its garments exceeds expectations – a reversal of the typical e-commerce feedback loop where the physical product doesn’t live up to campaign imagery. “We found that we have a really high retention rate in customers because when they receive the product it’s this creation that we can’t even get across sometimes online,” elaborated Good. With its founder and designer based in China, Leo Lin’s inspiration doesn’t stem from the same settings that ground other Australian brands – a worldly design point of view that has made the brand globally successful.  “What makes [the brand] special is it really doesn’t look like anything else,” stated Good. “I think Leo has always been so internationally minded and he has really lent into colour in a huge way – colour, print and intricate techniques are the cornerstone of the design of the brand,” she added. Unlocking key partners  Leo Lin first entered the US market in 2022, launching into 8 Neiman Marcus boutiques – before adding Moda Operandi in 2023 and Bloomingdale’s in 2024 to its roster of esteemed American retailers.  “These retailers have really helped us in that global expansion but particularly within the US – that’s really our strongest market,” shared Good. Since securing those key accounts and proving its commercial success, Leo Lin has gone on to launch with additional retail partners, such as Revolve, FWRD, Rent The Runway and Anthropologie. “We’ve recently signed with MyTheresa for later on this year, which is a huge get,” Good revealed. “There’s just some really exciting growth coming out of international wholesale because it tends to snowball,” she continued. “Once you land a number of accounts, it can keep going – but it really only keeps going if the product backs it up.” But Good doesn’t want to oversimplify the fight for Australian fashion brands to land dream retail partners, from her perspective, it always comes back to the quality of the garment and the brand’s ability to be a storyteller. “I think we truly found our direction because the first few years it was about finding that, it’s so important,” Good concluded. “We’ve really understood and learned from our customer what she wants – both internationally and locally – and they are different.”