If you’ve ever even thought about pairing your Nike’s with your Chanel, adding a green smoothie to your meal plan, or looking you’re best while you sweat, you can thank the women spearheading the timely collision of the fitness, health and fashion worlds.
Staying ahead of the game is just the beginning. Poised for international stardom, Bianca Cheah of Sporteluxe, Deborah Symond of Mode Sportif and Noa Ries of Vie Active share how they’ve taken the business of fitness, redefined it in the digital arena and elevated it to something fresh, sexy and strong.
For these women, it’s business as usual… We find out what makes them tick.
by Anna-Louise McDougall
The Online Fitness Publisher: Bianca Cheah of Sporteluxe
Your health is your greatest wealth and everything in moderation is key. I eat 80% good every day and 20% a little bad, I don’t do cheat days.
The concept:
Sporteluxe began as a passion project; I gained a lot of attention from the inspirational shoots and stories I was putting on there everyday. When it really became a beautiful blog, I wanted to make it Australia’s’ number one online fitness, health and wellbeing destination.
That’s when I decided to do a rejig of the website and that’s when I brought on Sarah Ranawake, ex features director at CLEO magazine, and now has a small share in the company, to create a destination that’s luxe living, luxe health and luxe fitness. Every story that we’ve written has come from a credible source, with our panel of contributors they all range from experts in their fields. Ever since we were featured in The Australian, it’s been amazing – a dream come true!
The passion:
My father brought Taekwondo to Australia and has schools up and down the east coast. So, when you have someone who is into their fitness and so health conscious it flows through the family and my mum was always a good tennis player, so I was always doing tennis, surfing, Taekwondo or any sport. Tennis was probably the one that I excelled in.
I also have an IT background. I studied architecture and interior design so I’ve got a varied skill set, which contributes to the way the website looks.
The motivation:
My favourite saying for motivation is “you’re health is you’re greatest wealth”. [Just one of the reasons Bianca is an ambassador for Priceline Pharmacy’s Beauty of Health]
Results are what drive me as well. If I’m going for a run or doing a yoga workout, I’m all about seeing the small results, to make sure you keep going.
Good time management is also a key factor. It’s really good to set priorities and a good time management schedule and sticking to it, so everything flows as it should. Anyone can say they do it, but doing it well is something else.
Some days I’ll be too busy to exercise, but you just need to find what drives you to back to exercise. Making sure you enjoy your exercise is really the key there.
Online Active Wear Retailer: Deborah Symond of Mode Sportif
The best advice I’ve ever received is the follow your gut. For visions big or small, you have to really have confidence in what you’re doing and I certainly live by that.
The concept:
The concept began when I started to mix my favourite fashion pieces with the leisure pieces in my wardrobe, for example simple t-shirts and relaxed pants. As well as teaming the fashion pieces with sneakers and slides.
I really thought that there was a gap in the market for one destination to provide this off duty style. During my research I started to wear some fantastic active wear brands that really had that strong fashion focus, and I realised nowhere was mixing these off duty leisure wear pieces with fashion-focused active wear… and so that’s how it all began.
On the difference from Net-a-Sporter and Style Runner, Mode Sportif’s active wear is a mere component for us, so it’s the mixing of active wear and leisure wear that defines the off duty style and leisure wear dressing.
The passion:
I started off as a dancer and since university I’ve always been into working out and being active. Sydney is a great city for that. When I’m travelling I love to try new spin classes and I really enjoy that, so the fitness side of things with the active wear was a really great fit for me.
The motivation:
Nothing ‘s better than breaking up the day with a spin class or a yoga class, when you’re having a really long day and you want to hit the refresh button, it’s a fantastic way to keep motivated.
In the morning I like to work out so I might do a spin class, see a PT or do a Pilates session. Breakfast is very important to me – I love a good healthy breakfast!
Fitness Fashion Designer: Noa Ries of Vie Active
The way you respond to setbacks is what defines your character. Nobody expects anything to be perfect – it’s the way you deal with it that really defines you.
The concept:
I literally had an epiphany in February 2012. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon and I was sitting at my computer and I was still wearing my workout clothes, and I hadn’t had time for a shower – I was totally daggy! I thought, ‘there’s got to be a way I can align my former fashionable self (I used to get dressed up incredibly glamorously when I worked in the luxury advertising sector) but still be fit and fashionable!’
I wanted to create a range of clothing that would enable me to live an active life and not having to make this conscious decision every day about being fit or fashionable.
The passion:
After the collapse of the Lehman Brothers (and the subsequent global economic downturn), I decided to become a personal trainer, something I’d always had a passion and interest in and it was something I had always planned. I turned a catastrophe into an opportunity as it was in as good a time as any.
I became a PT but pretty quickly missed using the business side of my brain, so I launched a boot camp business for expats in Singapore call OzFit, before moving back to Sydney…
The motivation:
I came to the realisation that there’s no such thing as work-life balance in the old sense of the word. It’s important to accept that rather than fight it every day.
I do really need and love exercising and it’s liberating to exercise to clear my head. I know that exercising gives me the energy and clarity to have a really busy day. I eat healthy to gain clarity and it makes me feel happy!
At work, we get catering from healthy places around the place we stop and each lunch together. We do a work out once a week together as a team, it’s a great way for us to bond.
We also have “not bored meetings”, where we’ll go offsite and do something active, get to know each other and to talk about the next 6-12 months.
Check out Noa’s favourite Instagram accounts for fitness inspo…
Image credit: fitness and fashion images supplied, stylebistro.com and Mode Sportif Instagram @modesportif