ONE MONTH OF POP — What the first 30 days actually looked like

It has officially been one month since POP IDENTITI went live.

And if I’m being completely truthful, launch day was not the glamorous, champagne-popping moment I might have imagined when I first dreamed about launching a brand.

I was exhausted.

Earlier that day, I had actually felt quite calm. I had worked so much in the days leading up to launch that, in my head, I was about 95% finished. I thought I only had a few final touches left.

Then I started working.

And somehow that final 5% kept growing.

Time suddenly felt like it was moving twice as fast. The closer I got to the time I had announced for launch, the more anxious I became. My heart was beating so fast. My eyes were tired, my brain was tired, my hands were tired. I had built and edited almost everything myself, and by the time I finally made the website live, I was completely drained.

And then came the panic.

My sister called because she was trying to order and couldn’t check out. A friend messaged me saying everything on the website showed as sold out.

I had already announced that we were live.

People were already clicking.

I panicked.

Eventually, I realised there was a technical issue affecting the inventory on the site. Thankfully, because I had built the website myself, I knew enough to go back in, trace the problem and fix it.

And then my sister’s order went through.

She became the first person to purchase POP IDENTITI swimwear through the website — my very first official online sale.

My heart was so full.

After all the anxiety, all the work and all the anticipation, there was something so special about that first order coming from my sister. It felt like such a tender beginning — so grateful for family.

Mostly, though, I remember going to bed absolutely exhausted and waking up the following morning thinking: I did it. It’s live.

A few days later, it was my birthday.

It was very different from the birthdays I’m used to. I stayed in, had two friends over, we drank champagne, danced, laughed, and somehow the day passed so quickly.

I also received flowers that were part birthday wishes, part congratulations on launching POP, which made the whole week feel even sweeter. I was exhausted, but fulfilled. It was quieter than my usual birthdays, but there was something about it that made me feel grown in a way I really liked.

And I think somewhere in my thoughts, I believed that getting to that point was going to be the hardest part.

Before launch, I had this picture in my head that once the website was live, sales would simply start coming in. I had finally created a place where people could actually buy POP. Surely August would be the month where things started moving. I imagined sales coming through, money coming in, and perhaps finally being able to relax a little.

Reality was very different.

The first week, I was exhausted enough that I needed to breathe. Then came fulfilment. DHL runs. Weights. Shipping logistics. International duties. All these tiny parts of running a business that don’t necessarily appear in the beautiful launch pictures.

And once those first orders were handled, another question started getting louder.

What do I post now? How often do I post? How do people actually discover this brand? Do I run ads? Why aren’t new followers suddenly appearing?

I had built the platform. But then came the much bigger question:

Now what?

And in the middle of all of that uncertainty, something happened that gave me exactly the encouragement I needed.

I received an order from a complete stranger.

I was sitting on my couch when the Shopify notification came through, and I genuinely almost fell off it.

Someone who did not know me had found POP, chosen something and spent their money on it.

I remember getting on my knees and thanking Jesus.

That sale meant much more to me than the amount itself. It was proof.

If one complete stranger could find POP and buy it without me running ads or having some huge marketing machine behind me, then it was possible.

I’ve held onto that feeling ever since.

So when I look back at the fact that one month in I’ve sold only a handful of pieces through the website, I’m not disappointed.

I’m hopeful.

The people who have bought POP have sent photographs, messages and beautiful feedback. They’ve told me how they felt wearing the pieces and about compliments they received. I’ve also felt incredibly supported by my friends and family.

More than anything, I’ve felt seen.

Something I had been quietly building for so long finally exists outside my own head.

And that one order from someone who didn’t know me was enough to remind me that there are more women out there who can discover it too.

Of course, knowing that and knowing how to reach them are two very different things.

There is no shortcut. I’m learning that.

I haven’t bought followers. I haven’t started running ads. I’m learning, slowly, how discovery and marketing actually work, and I’m taking it one stage at a time.

I am not impatient.

I’m working with Jesus. Patience is part of the process.

And I think patience has mattered even more because so much of this first month has still been me doing everything largely on my own.

POP is still largely a one-person operation.

There is help here and there, and I’m incredibly grateful for it, but the thinking never really stops.

You go to sleep thinking about the brand. You wake up thinking about it.

Content. Shipping. Website. Packaging. Marketing. Strategy. Customers. Opportunities.

The more you unfold one layer, there seems to be another one underneath it.

Most times, working on POP by myself can feel a little lonely. Lately, I’ve found myself craving a team — even just having someone whose time is dedicated to POP, someone to sit with, bounce ideas around with, strategise with, laugh with, and share some of the mental weight.

Right now, so much of POP still lives in my head.

But I’m learning how to carry it.

And when that mental load became particularly heavy around marketing, I realised I needed to stop trying to force an answer out of myself.

So I stopped.

I sat with God.

I remember thinking: We started this together. I believe You gave me this vision. We launched it together. So what do I do now?

Not long after that, I attended a Bible study here in Bali for entrepreneurs — essentially a space for people learning how to build businesses with Jesus at the centre.

Afterwards, I started chatting with a woman I already loosely knew through the church community. She complimented what I was wearing, we started talking about clothes and even joked about going thrift shopping together.

Then we exchanged Instagram accounts.

That conversation somehow led to me telling her that I had just launched POP and was completely lost when it came to social media.

Her response?

That was literally what she did for a living.

She was a social media strategist who worked with luxury brands.

“Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”

She said it several times.

What started as a conversation about thrift shopping turned into a professional consultation. She sent me a questionnaire, we had a proper one-on-one session, and she opened my mind to an entire world of marketing I genuinely hadn’t understood before.

For me, that was God.

I had prayed because I didn’t know what the next step was.

And I didn’t receive the entire roadmap.

I received enough for the next stage.

That has become one of my biggest lessons this month:

I don’t have to have it all figured out to move forward.

Sometimes God gives you just enough for the next step.

You take it.

Then you trust Him for the one after that.

And maybe that is also why, through all of the uncertainty around how to grow POP, I haven’t actually questioned the thing itself.

I believe deeply in the brand and in what it can become.

The question has never really been:

Will it work?

The question has been:

How will it work?

And that “how” is what I’m learning now.

What has changed, though, is how real the whole thing feels to me.

Before July 25, when people asked me what I did, I would talk about the brand I was building.

Now I can say:

I own a brand. It’s called POP IDENTITI.

And I can show it to them.

They can visit it. They can choose a piece, enter their address, click checkout — and it works.

That sounds simple, but to me it feels enormous.

Before launch, POP was a dream I was building.

Now it is a platform I can build on.

Press, stockists, collaborations, marketing, events, community — ideas that once existed only in plans can now attach themselves to something real.

I feel different because of that too.

The first huge step has been taken.

And perhaps one of the smallest things that made that reality hit me the hardest happened when I realised POP could finally start doing something it had never done before: support itself, even in a tiny way.

For so long, POP has been something I have poured money into.

Samples. Production. Website. Campaigns. Logistics. Everything.

This month, POP made some money.

And then POP paid some of its own bills.

I was able to go into the business account and pay some of its running costs using money the brand itself had generated.

It was surreal.

Those few hundred dollars suddenly looked different to me.

Because I could imagine hundreds becoming thousands.

And one day, thousands becoming millions.

That little Shopify notification that says “1 order” does something to me every single time.

It represents possibility.

And I think possibility is probably the best word for where I am now.

I’m entering month two with a very different mindset from the one I had on launch day.

I want to understand marketing.

I want to take everything I am currently learning, put it into practice, create, experiment and see what begins to resonate.

Month one proved that POP can exist.

Month two is about helping people discover it.

I’m still learning on the job.

Still figuring things out layer by layer.

Still putting my head down and doing the work.

Still trusting God with the parts I cannot see yet.

Still creating.

Still hopeful.