Anna Hoang is proof that you don’t need to have all the answers before starting a business, in fact, learning on the fly is one of her specialties. When she launched her label, Anna Quan, in 2013, Hoang convinced Aussies that timeless wardrobe staples will always be chic. What she’s proven in the years since is that all businesses are tech businesses at their core.
Before launching Anna Quan, Hoang studied law and journalism but admits that it was generalised enough to buy some time to figure out what she wanted to do. She always knew she wanted to work in fashion but didn’t know that she could. “I couldn’t draw,” she admits on the fifth episode of The Flipside podcast. “To get into art school, there was a drawing exam but I had to spend a year doing night classes while I was studying at law school during the day.”
In the early years of launching Anna Quan, Hoang knew she still had a lot to learn, but in some instances, this worked in her favour. The first time Hoang showed her collection in Paris, it was because she has received emails from total strangers from around the world about Anna Quan. There were a couple of hurdles: she didn’t have a showroom to display her designs in, and she didn’t know how to get one. “I would rent an Airbnb, then buy some racks,” she says.
“At the time, we’d have buyers from Barneys [New York], and other major stores who were like ‘I just want to come and see what the fabric looks like’, and I told them to come to my showroom, which was just an Airbnb, where I’d hung some clothes up, steamed it, people would come over, I’d make them some tea.”
What’s funny is, the buyers Hoang was trying to impress didn’t view her DIY showroom as a slap-dash setup — they thought it was a bespoke, personalised experience where they didn’t have the pressure to buy from other brands at the same time.
This attitude, to forge their own path and figure out solutions along the way, is intrinsic to the Anna Quan brand. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Hoang quickly realised a pivot to digital showings and utilising mobile video to fine-tune designs was unavoidable. “During the pandemic, we couldn’t do the showroom appointments in Paris that we did every season and everything became technology-based. So we actually had to produce more digital assets, like video. So much more video,” she explains.
Interestingly, these digital assets weren’t just important on platforms like social media, but also when selling garments to wholesalers, where digital walk-throughs became the norm. And to that end, digitising the business side of Anna Quan and harnessing technology actually helped accelerate the business in a way Hoang hadn’t anticipated. “Being able to digitise a lot of things we wouldn’t be able to do [was extremely helpful],” she says, adding that because making garments is such a manual process, having other aspects of the business automated was hugely helpful, even though it didn’t come naturally. “I’ve actually been learning spreadsheets on TikTok!” Hoang says laughingly.
Of course, we couldn’t let Hoang leave without asking what she thinks the trend cycle will be serving up through the warmer months, though instead of a specific trend, she said she’s following more of a mood through summer. “People are all kind of revenging a bit, on life,” says Hoang. “In Australia — with the way our weather is — I think we prefer to show more skin anyway, so that hasn’t changed. People are still reconfiguring what they want to wear, versus what they are wearing, what they wore in the past (during lockdown) and people are still, to some extent, figuring it out.”
You can listen to The Flipside wherever you listen to your podcasts, with episodes dropping every Thursday — each with an exclusive offer from one of the Her Black Book brand partners. In this episode (which you can listen to below) Anna Quan is offering 15% off full-price items sitewide when you shop via the Her Black Book app. You have until midnight on Sunday 25 September to take advantage of the discount, so be quick! To unlock even more exclusive deals and offers, download the Her Black Book app now.
