Australian business Vacay Swimwear makes $4.8m, lands deal with major Canadian retailer

Jordan Kallios and Corey Decandia are the brains behind the brand. Photo / Supplied

The business two high school best friends launched at the age of just 21 has had such roaring success, they’ve raked in A$4.5 million (NZ$4.8 million) in the past year.

Adelaide mates Jordan Kallios and Corey Decandia knew they wanted to start a company together and studied for marketing degrees while they came up with their killer idea.

“We were heading overseas together,” Decandia recalled, speaking to news.com.au.

“We went shopping one day and struggled to find nice quality shorts that weren’t boring. There were expensive ones that would break the bank, or really cheap bad quality ones.

“That was a bit of a light bulb moment.”

The pair went on to launch men’s swimwear brand Vacay Swimwear in 2017.

They barely eked out a living at first while their marketing mates earned big pay cheques.

But the economic pain ultimately paid off.

Fast forward six years and Vacay Swimwear made A$4.5 million in the last financial year and is on track for the same amount come June.

Vacay Swimwear made A$4.5 million in the 2021-2022 financial year.

Two months ago, they struck a massive deal with a major brick-and-mortar Canadian retailer, Hudson’s Bay, in a move that will see their products widely stocked in North America.

When Kallios and Decandia returned from their trip, they sunk everything they had into the business venture.

“We had about A$20,000 each, we literally emptied our bank accounts and poured it all into the business. All the money we made is from that initial amount,” Kallios told news.com.au.

Getting Vacay Swimwear off the ground coincided with their final university exams. They were 21 at the time.

“We were planning Vacay Swimwear, the logos, branding, products, samples, building the website, creating an influencer list, registering our business name, setting up a trademark – we were doing that while we were studying for our last exams,” Kallios said.

It launched as an online-only platform at first. For the first year of the business, sales were painfully low.

“We were only making A$300 a week when all our marketing mates were raking in A$80,000 a year,” Kallios lamented.

But then things started to take off.

After two years Vacay Swimwear “started getting the attention” of big brands.

Their products are now stocked in David Jones department stores and their board shorts are also available to purchase through shopping website The Iconic.

They also have a large international online presence.

At first, the business only turned over $300 a week. Photo / Supplied

North America is their biggest market, with Americans and Canadians making up 70 per cent of their overall online sales.

This is how they were able to score a deal with Canadian department store Hudson’s Bay earlier this year.

In Europe, they have customers in Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and Austria.

Vacay Swimwear is stocked on an online platform called Zalando, which attracts a lot of European buyers.

They also sell products in New Zealand.

Now 28, the pair understand a thing or two more about running a business.

They get to travel the world for trade shows.

The duo’s company turned over an eye-watering $1 million in its best month last year, in November, during the Black Friday sales.

“Given people are being conservative with their spending, lots of people were waiting for the Black Friday, so we forecasted to do a A$1 million in sales,” Decandia said. “We planned for eight months, programmed our website to make it achievable, we went all in.”

There are now 10 people who work under them to keep the business ticking along.