Lucy Hosken - Director, Nearly Nude Lingerie, B.A., (Marketing, Management, Sociology Majors), University of Tasmania , 1999.

"I would like to make Nearly Nude Lingerie a brand that everybody in Australia knows."

Following a number of years in the advertising industry in various marketing roles, Lucy Hosken's career continues to flourish. Whilst still in her twenties, Lucy rose to the position of National Advertising Manager for ACP Publishing before starting up her own company, Nearly Nude Lingerie, an exclusive undergarment business. As Director of Nearly Nude, Lucy counts approximately 100 domestic retailers and over 25 international retail chains including prestigious UK department store Harvey Nichols, as her customers. Lucy is also Business Development Manager at "Woman's Day."

This is the story of Lucy's career success.

In the beginning.

"I knew I wanted to do something in advertising, but I didn't know exactly what. In primary school, I wanted to be a teacher."

Lucy's decision to work in advertising evolved while she was studying at university. "I knew I wanted to be involved in advertising or the marketing area and that's why I decided to major in Marketing." But it wasn't until her 3^rd year at university that Lucy started to seriously think about what she wanted to do.

Influences on career choice.

"Dad works in advertising and even from a young age that probably influenced me without realising it. I was drawn to the creative side of advertising. I liked the fact you could deal with a tangible product. I could see what Dad was doing and got to see the results of his efforts."

First job.

"While I was studying, I had a job at Red Earth, in Hobart . At that stage, Red Earth, [a store selling body care products and cosmetics] was a happening business and I was working there about two and a half days per week. I got to see the commercial side of things." From that experience, Lucy developed good customer service skills and believes no matter what area you choose to go into, if you are good with people and have good customer service and sales skills you can apply that to any career. "Even if you are a Futures Trader, like my husband, you still have to have really good interpersonal skills to be successful."

Influences while at uni.

"Rhett Walker , my marketing lecturer. He had a grey beard and a moustache, and he used to wear a bow-tie everyday. Rhett was an American and quite a character. He always looked at the practical side of things, and everything that we did and studied would be related back to a case study or a practical example. Rhett often referred to FedEx for his examples, which were hilarious. He used other examples as well but the FedEx ones were the best. Rhett made the subject real - he made it feel like you were working for a company and you'd have to come up with workable solutions to problems. He was definitely the best lecturer I had at uni." Rhett motivated and inspired Lucy as a student and guided her through the course. "He definitely had a positive impact on where I am now." Lucy knows of a number of people who were also in Rhett's classes at university who have all obtained excellent jobs. One of them, Sarah, Advertising and Marketing Manager of "If" magazine, is about to start a new job with Full Circle Entertainment. Dominic, originally from Devonport in Tasmania , is now Marketing Retention Manager for Amex.

Expectations following graduation.

"I was pretty overwhelmed at first. I didn't know where to start. I was fortunate in that I knew I wanted to travel and potentially get experience overseas." Lucy headed off overseas. She didn't get a working visa and as a result, wasn't able to take up employment whilst travelling. However, an employment opportunity did arise whilst she was overseas - but it was back in Australia .

Getting started in her professional career.

"A friend, Fiona, also originally from Tasmania , who was working for ACP Publishing at the time, called me when I was overseas to say they were looking for a Marketing Coordinator to work on "Women's Weekly" and "Woman's Day" magazines." Lucy applied for the job. The next week she returned to Tasmania and had an interview over the phone with the Editor of that department. "I was offered the job, over the phone! It was unbelievable. I was so fortunate. She said "Move up to Sydney and if you're happy with us and we're happy with you, the job's 100% yours". It was a case of being in the right place at the right time." Networking has been a really important factor in Lucy's success. If it wasn't for networking, Lucy admits she probably wouldn't have got any of the jobs she's had.

Career progression.

When Lucy started with ACP Publishing in 1998, she was appointed Marketing Coordinator. At the end of 1999, she got a job as an Account Manager on "NW" magazine and worked there for 2 years. Since 2000, Lucy has worked on "Woman's Day" magazine. At "Woman's Day", she started out as Account Manager, moved up to Senior Account Manager, then NSW Advertising Manager, and finally to National Advertising Manager, a role she undertook for 2 years. Lucy swapped jobs a year ago to start her business. At the time of writing, Lucy is Business Development Manager at "Woman's Day," a role created specially for her.

Career preparation.

ACP Publishing invest in their staff and provide a lot of management training which has helped Lucy's career. The training was provided at work during business hours. ACP had a program called "Future Leaders" and Lucy was part of that program. She spent approximately 1 day every 6 weeks for a year on the Program. "We'd have to come up with case studies, projects, and examples of management issues. There was almost one-on-one tutoring provided. I found that to be really helpful. You could say to your tutor, "I don't know how to deal with [a management issue], how do I approach it?" For example, in my team there were 9 Account Managers and all of a sudden, I was their boss. One day I was on the same level and the next day I was in charge of them. That was one of the biggest hurdles for me, especially gaining their respect. When I was made National Advertising Manager, I was 26 years old and there was only one person on the team who was younger than me, the rest were a lot older (in their early to mid-30's). I had to recognise that I had a job to do and I had to be professional. I could no longer be as matey with everybody, we still got along and had a laugh, but I had to remove myself a little to do the job at hand. I did that for 2 years and learnt so much in that time but it was an interesting and challenging experience."

Qualities Lucy attributes to her success.

• Patience
• Being a people person, being friendly and upbeat all the time
• Being level-headed
• Having good, solid values
• Having good guidance and training while at still at school and later on at university

Attributes Lucy developed while at the University of Tasmania included:

• Good time management skills
• Basic administrative skills
• Presentation skills.

"I was hopeless when I first started university. I had no idea what a bibliography was, or to how to present a business plan or a marketing plan. A lot of those things came into play when I was promoted to National Advertising Manager. Every year, I had to prepare a 200 page business plan, and if I hadn't had my university training I would had struggled a bit. Quite often I'd refer to funny little charts I'd prepared back then and to Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" (Organisational Behaviour), or other things learnt whilst at university. You do draw on them."

Ambition and career success.

"I've never set my career out in the form of a plan. I did have two managers at the beginning of my career who said "You're the most ambitious person we've ever met." You don't realise such things yourself. When I was 24 years old and I was the NSW Advertising Manager and I was saying "I want to do this" and "I want to do that", they probably thought I was a bit gung-ho, but at the time, I just thought I was doing a good job and having fun. I think I've always been really career-focused but now I've got my own business, I'm putting all my energy into that instead."

Starting her new business.

Lucy's business, Nearly Nude Lingerie, is a range of seamless lingerie. Lucy refers to her products as "fashion solution" underwear, so designed because she got tired of never being able to find the right kinds of undergarments to wear beneath revealing fashionable clothes. "I remember being at my engagement party wearing a low-cut top and complaining to my fiancée (now my husband) about finding something to wear underneath it and he said, "Why don't you design something yourself. You've always wanted to have your own business". To me that was the fundamental core of it, I've always wanted to have my own business." It wasn't Lucy's first attempt at having her own business. About seven years ago she set up an online accessories business but it failed. "I learnt a lot from that experience as I'd started that when the whole internet boom came in. Back then, I knew that I wanted my own business in something related to fashion but I hadn't quite worked it out."

When the opportunity to set up Nearly Nude came up, "I was like oh, okay, I'm going to try. So I did a bit of research and worked out what sort of fabric [the underwear] had to be made of. I found some fabric in Australia , chopped it up into 60 pieces and together with a letter and various other bits of paper, sent it off to 60 different manufacturers around the world [obtained via Google on the internet]. Eventually, I heard back from 4 or 5 of them. Then I heard back from one that was really outstanding, who is now manufacturing my goods."

It took Lucy about 8 months from her initial dealing with the manufacturer, doing the sketches and drawings (the first drawings were done by a close friend), to having a finished product. It was a long process. At the end of April in 2005, Lucy launched her business.

"I literally just launched it while I was still working full-time as National Advertising Manager. I used to hop into my car and drive around to shops and show them the products to see what they thought. All those skills I'd learnt at ACP Publishing; being a sales person and a marketing person, came into play. I knew how to present my product. I knew how to do a presentation. I felt really confident. If I hadn't had that background I probably would have been really scared. The first 7 shops I went to all said yes, they'd take it. I realised then that I was on a winner. I had this whiteboard in my house and I kept ticking off the shops that I'd been to. When I'd ticked off about 30 shops, it started to get quite busy and that's when I had to say to ACP, I can't be National Advertising Manager as well as run my own business and they created a special role for me as Business Development Manager, working 3 days per week. This has been great because I've been able to get income and cash flow while still running my business on the other days of the week. To be honest, I work on my business every night until about 1am."

One of the other secrets of Lucy's success has been her willingness to work really hard when the situation demands it. "Everyone said to me, when you run your own business, you work twice as hard as you do when working for someone else, and you'll be working long hours. I never realised how hard. It's probably made more difficult for me because I'm still working for ACP 3 days per week. Regardless, it's a lot of hard work but because I love it, I don't care. I'm down in the garage packing orders at 1 o'clock in the morning and most people would be really annoyed about that, but because it's my own thing I don't mind."

Lucy moved into the overseas market only recently. "I found a distributor in Australia who could help me with what I'm doing here. They got me into about 20 new retail outlets in Australia . They've also got links in the UK and got my product into approximately 22 small top end boutiques in London . I also got an appointment with Harvey Nichols department store. I went to present to them and they took my products straight away. They said in the meeting while I was sitting there, "We love it! This is great! We're stopping a big US brand to put this in instead." I couldn't believe it. I was in the meeting with my sister, who'd been temping for the distribution company for 3 months when she was in between jobs, and she'd set up the meeting. We were kicking each other under the table in disbelief. We came out of the meeting thinking this was the easiest meeting we'd ever had. The team from Harvey Nichols thought the product was awesome and the packaging, presentation and proposal were fantastic."

Lucy agrees that over the years, she's been helped so much by what she's learnt through working in advertising and marketing. Even though she has her own business now and is a jack of all trades and doing everything, Lucy believes it is her background in advertising and marketing that is the real strength.

Lucy recently found a distributor in Canada . "They've got my products into about 15 stores there, and are about to enter into negotiations with a major department store with over 350 outlets." Things are looking good. Lucy's grand plan is to run the business full-time at some stage. "I'll have to employ people because the business is growing at such a rate. My aim is to take on the Pacific brands (Bonds, Berlei), the Gazal Group (Mambo, Marcs, Lovable, Love Kylie) and Bendon (Elle McPherson Intimates), as those are the major players in the underwear trade. My aim is to shake things up."

Advice to students.

• Don't think things are out of reach or too hard to achieve. "I used to think "Oh my God, imagine just doing work experience for a well-known fashion brand like Sass & Bide or similar, that would be amazing", or thinking, "I'll never be able to get a job there", or "That's too hard." It's actually not hard."
• Display good manners
• Be polite
• Be proactive. "Be able to ring up and say "Hey, here's my CV. What do you think?" Give it a go, people in business are] just normal people. Like my experience with Harvey Nichols, they were just normal people doing their jobs and they were the nicest people. Yet, I always perceived that side of things to be so hard and unattainable."
• If you've got a dream or a passion, follow it through and don't give up.

How to be competitive when searching for employment opportunities in marketing.

• Get as much practical work experience as you can (even unpaid work experience)
• Try and get some professional work experience while you're at university. Perhaps a day per month at an advertising agency if you can, so by the time you complete your degree, you've got a basic understanding of things and you've got some contacts in the field that you can seek advice from (networks)
• Be proactive by sending your CV to business organisations, even if they're not looking for people, it's so hard to find good people these days. One of my friends, Sarah, has got every single one of her four jobs here in Sydney by sending her CV to companies she has wanted to work for.
• Have a good attitude. "A lot of people don't have the right attitude. We've found at ACP, that we get so many young people straight out of university here in Sydney who have the wrong attitude, they don't want to do things you should be prepared to do in your first job (like getting the mail, etc.). If you've got a good attitude that's really key."
• Networking.is really, really important. "Don't rely on just looking for jobs in the newspaper or on Seek.com. By the time you do that there will be hundreds of other people applying. If you're proactive and send your CV around with an explanation and follow it up with a phone call, it gives you a chance to say hello as well."

Career plan.

"My career plan has been totally unstructured but I've been lucky to get into a company that recognised and rewarded hard workers, and I've had a great time." Despite having an unstructured career plan, Lucy is a highly organised person who writes herself 'To Do' lists every day and makes sure everything she does is always in order. "That's how I work and it's worked very well for me" (and probably explains why Lucy has been able to successfully manage combining a job with running her own business).

Staying motivated.

"I think the drive I have comes from running my own business and wanting it to succeed. I just love it and I'm so excited about it all the time. I do work hard and to be honest, I don't get enough sleep. This week I've probably had a total of 8 hours sleep all week and I'm a person who usually needs 8 hours sleep every night. Though I'm really tired I just keep marching on because I have to. I love what I'm doing and I'm determined to make it work."

What does the future hold?

"Hopefully lots of business success with Nearly Nude. I think my career at ACP Publishing is quite limited now because I want to focus on other things. ACP have said they would like to keep me on in a consulting role if I choose to focus on my business full-time."

"I would like to make Nearly Nude Lingerie a brand that everybody in Australia knows."

With a fully-fledged commercial career that's really taken off, Lucy is still learning. She advises getting help from experts in the field and not to try and do everything on your own. "When you run your own business, there is so much that you have to do that you can't do. For example, I'm hopeless at things like MYOB and the accounting side of things, the shipping and customs and tax, etc., but I have to do it because I have no choice. I get people in to help me and give me tutoring on how to do these things, and I'm learning lots. It's an approach I've used throughout my career. I've never been afraid to speak up if I don't understand something and I always ask for help or advice from the best people, when I need it."

"If you've got good practical skills and you're hard-working with a desire to succeed, you can do well."

Ingrid Apsitis
Faculty of Business
University of Tasmania
2006