01 — THE MOOD
Hi divas 🤍
There’s something in the water in Sydney right now. Thursday I was at the NORA retail leaders forum in the morning and at a startup party that night with Georgie Healy, the Claude team, the Notion team and about two hundred people who have clearly been practising. Everyone had their line. Who they are, what they’re building, what they need, in the time it takes to get from the bar to the balcony.
I didn’t have mine. I’ve hosted stages for Amazon in three countries, I run a community of a thousand women, and when a founder I’d never met asked “so what’s MOODY?” I gave her four different answers and none of them was the good one. It’s a funny thing to notice about yourself at thirty-something: I can sell anyone else’s business in a sentence and I still fumble my own.
So that’s the homework this week, mine and maybe yours. Not a mission statement. The sentence you’d say in the lift. The girls in this chat are getting very good at asking for exactly what they need (scroll down, it’s the whole issue), and the pitch is the thing that turns a good conversation into an introduction. I’ll post mine in the chat on Wednesday. Hold me to it.
Love Brooke x
02 — THE ROOM
The girls are getting things done. Businesses launched, a website rescued, creators found in hours.
THE WINS
→ Britt launched State of Brand Coaching. Two programmes for founders and creators ready to take their personal brand seriously. Front Door is four weeks; The Build is twelve. Early bird closes 1 December. Explore → · @stateofbrand.co
→ Claudia launched Season Style Club across Australia and New Zealand. Share, sell, borrow or buy outfits at season.style. She’s at Melbourne Fashion Week this week. @season.styleclub
→ Four more from the room: Bianca Le Page released her free Q3 Australian Beauty Industry Report, Sam Freidin launched a free Brand Voice Mini Course, Sia hosted her first MerryMakers & Co Creative Ritual, and Catherine opened memberships for The Modern Menopause Manual. Charlotte Riggs, new to the chat, launched COMPARTMENTO from Noosa.
THE INTRODUCTIONS
→ Paige connected a founder paying $5,000 a year for a website she couldn’t edit with her boss, Jake Shelley at Jiffi. He fixed it in an evening with his product, Palate, and he’s said anyone in the chat can email him: jake@jiffi.co, say you’re from MOODY.
→ Natalie needed a creator. Pardis found Lilly in three hours. Emily needed a social freelancer. Vee introduced Udoka. Clare needed Melbourne workshop hosts. Four volunteered in forty minutes.
Also new in the room: Petra, building FASI AI for small businesses navigating sustainability, and Magdalena, scaling her second business from Brisbane. Say hi.
THE CHAT
→ The Yap Challenge hit the editing wall at day 24. Amelia, Cha and Lisa all said it: filming is fine, editing breaks the streak. Ari’s fix is CapCut’s transcript edit, cut the text and the video cuts itself. Wendy is on day 25 and has not missed one.
Francesca came back from Melbourne with an acronym: B2A, business to agent. Marketing now has a third customer, the agent shopping on the human’s behalf, and it reads product data, not ads. Shopify opened that feed the week she said it.
Sababa started @sydneytechowl because the Sydney tech scene is “so gatekept.” Events, founder interviews and open-source tools for non-technical founders, filmed on an iPhone; three MOODY girls found each other at Startup Street Social because she posted the Luma link. She’s after an iOS or visionOS developer for the Apple x ElevenLabs hackathon, details here.
Not one of those introductions needed me. That’s the room working.
03 — THE VLOG
The Melbourne launch, and running in drag for charity. Eighteen minutes: 180 of Australia’s most ambitious women in one room in Melbourne, the bit where I realise what the room has turned into, and then Bridge to Brisbane in heels and a wig with Lulu LeMans for Small Steps 4 Hannah. Watch it on the train. Watch →
MOODY SPOTLIGHT, this week: Mel Drennan. The MD of Napoleon Perdis on bringing the brand back without throwing away thirty years of recognition. She kept the name on every box. Read →
04 — THE READ
Record $4.2bn quarter for Australian startups; women-founded and mixed teams raised $114m, down 14%. Strip out Firmus’s $2.85bn and the quarter is $1.31bn, up nearly 80%, with female and mixed teams at 9% of that capital, down from 18%. The headline is a boom and the number nobody put in the headline is going backwards. Cut Through · Startup Daily
Cue is closing 26 stores the week Forever New announced its first in Texas. Both shortlisted bidders for Cue and Veronika Maine rejected the same 26 leases, leaving about 20. Forever New hit about $400m turnover, half of it offshore, across 466 stores in 24 countries. Same category, same country: one lease book nobody wanted, one that’s an asset. Ragtrader · Ragtrader
Lush will let all ten of its Westfield leases expire. It wants “the right locations” and still plans to grow here, a year after its one-day national closure over Gaza when Westfield reportedly covered its window posters. The first national tenant I can name that walked away from a landlord after a values dispute and said so. Inside Retail
Reese Witherspoon and Mediawan are buying a majority of Hello Sunshine back from Candle Media for “low-to-mid eight figures,” per Axios; Candle bought control at a US$900m valuation in 2021. Bumble agreed a US$1.3bn take-private the same week, more than 90% below its IPO peak, with Whitney Wolfe Herd stepping back as CEO. Witherspoon took money off the table at the top; Wolfe Herd held through the slide. Axios · Dealroom
Hailey Bieber kept the decisions at Rhode; Isamaya Ffrench no longer works at the brand with her name on it. Rhode did about US$390m last year, up roughly 80%, and e.l.f. let Bieber keep “nearly all” the calls. ISAMAYA has been dark for twelve weeks and Ffrench told a customer on 9 October she’s “not associated with the company anymore.” Bieber kept the decisions because e.l.f. bought the brand with her in it; Ffrench’s name is on boxes a company she left is still shipping. Fortune · Cosmetics Business
Mamamia is launching a 24/7 channel on Samsung TV Plus “in the coming months”; more than 30% of its podcast consumption is already video. Netflix cut 6% of staff and moved on chief content officer Bela Bajaria the same week. A women’s publisher turning podcasts into television while the biggest streamer cuts tells you which way the money is leaning. Mumbrella · Variety
Shopify opened its billion-listing catalogue and Shop Pay checkout to any AI agent; Google’s Universal Cart went live in the US two days later. An agent can now search, fill a cart and pay inside a conversation with the shopper confirming the total, and merchants weren’t asked. Your product data is now the sales pitch: fix the variants, stock flags and returns copy before an agent reads them to a customer. Australia timing unconfirmed. Shopify via EcomCrew · TechCrunch
The Digital Duty of Care Bill landed with a “My Feed, My Way” rule: users 16 and over get periodic prompts to switch off algorithmic recommendations. Anika Wells also floated a right to sue platforms; proposal, not law. If your reach is built on the algorithm, count how many people you can reach without it. B&T
05 — THE DEEP DIVE
Gisele’s Victoria’s Secret contract was reportedly worth US$25 million. This year’s Angel won her wings on a YouTube reality show, and the prize was a contract with IMG Models. Here’s my read, plainly. The Angel was never really a model. She was a media budget, and Victoria’s Secret has worked out how to spend it on 16,000 people instead of one.
What actually happened. Victoria’s Secret took more than 100,000 applications for its first new Angel since 2021, cut them to three across Angels Among Us, a seven-episode YouTube series, and crowned Solange Omon, Maine-based and signed to a regional agency, on a free runway stream this morning, Brisbane time, beside Kylie Jenner in the first Fantasy Bra since 2018. Every look was tagged to buy, with a creators-only shopping window the next morning. In retail terms that isn’t a fashion show. It’s an eight-week campaign with a sales window bolted to the end.
How the budget gets spent. The internet spent last week arguing that the girls want the unattainable back, and they’re half right: unattainable sells the dream, attainable sells the bra, and Victoria’s Secret has built a machine that does both at once. Kylie in diamonds is the dream. The mall casting is the door. Underneath both sits the VS & PINK Creator Program, running since October 2023 with more than 16,000 members, mostly customers and small creators, in tiers that open up higher commission, gift cards, reposts and, for the top advocates, a seat at the show.
This is the content factory every brand is building right now.
Shapermint has more than 5,000 TikTok Shop affiliates who have made over 20,000 videos since January; it briefs them weekly in a Discord channel, penalises anyone who takes a free sample and doesn’t post, and is on track for about US$10 million there this year. What Victoria’s Secret has added is the thing a creator army needs to keep marching, which is a ladder with something worth climbing for at the top. The Angel is the top rung, televised, and every customer filming a haul now has a story where the rungs go all the way up. She films it on commission, not a retainer.
The retail problem nobody is saying out loud. Victoria’s Secret doesn’t have an awareness problem. Tracksuit’s US brand tracking puts it at 87%, against 44% for Skims. Its problem is the roughly ten million active customers it has lost since the peak (about 25 million now, against 35 million), and every one of them knows exactly who it is. A free show built for reach is aimed at the problem the brand doesn’t have, unless the tags turn viewers into buyers.
The business can afford the experiment: second-quarter sales rose 10% to US$1.61 billion and full-year guidance went up to US$7.1 to 7.18 billion. What it hasn’t published is the number a merchant would actually ask for: conversion from the tagged clips, lapsed customers reactivated, cost per piece of content. The last network broadcast, in 2018, drew 3.3 million viewers, and the company now talks about 1.7 billion impressions. Impressions are lovely. Show me the second order.
The cost of spending it this way. When selection is the content, rejection is content too. Romee Strijd, 31, mother of two, the Angel who closed the 2018 finale, posted two TikToks last Monday: she’d trained all summer, flown to New York for the standard model casting, heard nothing for five weeks, then been told by her agency she “wouldn’t fit in the show this year.”
The brand told Vanity Fair she was released on 6 September and that it “communicated directly to her representation.” Technically airtight, and beside the point. Her first video passed 3,000 comments, one reply cleared 35,000 likes in a day, and nobody in those comments cared which party dropped the email. A brand that spends a year selling the moment someone hears yes owns the moment someone hears no. Anyone running a creator army carries the same exposure at a smaller scale: thousands of people who applied, sampled or posted, and heard nothing back.
My call. As a media plan it works: it runs for eight weeks instead of one night, and it turns 16,000 customers into a sales force on commission. The only proof that counts is the active-customer number at the next results. If 25 million hasn’t moved, Victoria’s Secret made a very good television show.
WHAT TO DO ON MONDAY
Build the ladder, not just the army. If you run an open call, an ambassador intake or a creator tier, give people visible rungs (better commission, a repost, a seat at the event) and film the climb. Your applicants are the warmest audience you will ever have.
Write the no before the yes. Decide the wording, the date and who sends it, and send it to the person as well as their rep. Five weeks of silence was the whole story.
Ask for the second order. Every time you report views, report the number that shows someone chose you: the repeat purchase, the lapsed customer who came back, the waitlist that converted.
Sources: VS&Co Q2 2026 results · YouTube Official Blog · Glossy · Puck · Fortune · Just Jared, 12 Oct · VS statement via Just Jared, 17 Oct · Fashion Times · Ynet · Daily Beast · W Magazine · VS Fantasy Bra · Rolling Out · Martin Cid
06 — THE DIARY
Here’s where MOODY girls are showing up.
→ Wed 21 Oct · Online, 1pm AEDT. Pippa on recyclable packaging and greenwashing, Boomerang Labs. Free. Register
→ Thu 22 Oct · Sydney, 4pm. Canva’s free hands-on website workshop, Surry Hills; Hollie’s going. Details
→ Thu 22 Oct · Melbourne, 5:30pm. ELEVATE x Radical Yes leather-charm painting with Jacqui; four spots left. Tickets
→ Sun 25 Oct · Sydney, 8am. ZIISH x She Walks for Breast Cancer, Clark Park, Lavender Bay; $25 minimum to BCNA. [links needed]
→ Sun 25 Oct · Online. Emily’s free Make Your Expertise Make Cents masterclass. Ask Emily in the chat for the link.
→ Wed 28 Oct · Sydney. Marika’s invitation-only founder dinner, ten seats. DM Marika.
→ Wed 28 & Fri 30 Oct · Brisbane. Coffee at Industry Beans 7:30am, cocktails at Wild Legs from 5:30pm, via Jen Garner. Confirm in the Brisbane chat.
→ Mon 2 Nov · Sydney. Mel Drennan cooks at OzHarvest’s CEO CookOff. Support her
→ Thu 12 Nov · Sydney, 6pm. Bills to Business Class at WeWork Barangaroo, co-hosted by Priscilla; early bird $69. Tickets
Further out: MerryMakers Creative Ritual, Sydney, 21 Nov (DM Sia); FoundHER Summit, Sydney, 24 Nov (Renate has details); Wendy’s Walk & Talk mornings in November, book here.
07 — CLASSIFIEDS
What a girl wants. What a girl needs.
→ Hiring: part-time Events Coordinator, Sydney (DM Sandy B); junior marketing project assistant, Brisbane CBD (DM Elise).
→ Creators wanted: paid BTS and social filming at a Wynyard speaking gig, 11 Nov, iPhone fine (DM Sharon); Sydney and Melbourne creators for Georgia McFarlane’s client referral list (DM Georgia).
→ Available: Emma, newly in Sydney, for copy, SEO, photo, video and editing (DM Emma); Alexis Fenton, fractional CMO, one-month incubators and go-to-market to year end (LinkedIn).
→ Founders wanted: Petra at FASI AI needs SME owners who want a sustainability plan without a consultancy bill (DM Petra).
→ Mudgee retreat, early November: Zensi wants facilitators, photographers and videographers. EOI
→ For a good cause: Lisette’s Glimmer Luncheon raffle for the Mater’s stillbirth research centre, $28,000 in prizes, no need to attend. Enter →
No link means she’s in your city chat or General. Don’t know her yet, ask; someone in there does.
Forward this to one girl who’d get it.
Then bring her in: the chat is here, and I’ll add her to her city.
Love Brooke x
MOODY is the intelligence, culture and network for ambitious women. Founders, operators, investors, corporates and creatives in the same group chat. These are the girls who get it.
@get__moody · getmoody.co · est. 2026