One of the founders of the personalization phenomenon, The Daily Edited (TDE), goes bankrupt after eight years.
The brand has been sold and continues to be traded, with the remnants of TDE Pty Ltd now in the hands of Sydney liquidators Chifley Advisory, appointed after a September 30 meeting that voted to wind up the business.
TDE started in 2011 as a blog by Perth-based Alyce Tran and Tania Liu, corporate lawyers who eventually left their day jobs in 2014 to focus on their fledgling fashion brand, featuring monogrammed leather products such as diaries, bags, phone cases, wallets and more. keychains. It became a cultural phenomenon, embraced by young women, with celebrities like Lara Bingle and Hailey Baldwin.
Just three years later, in 2017, they sold a 31% stake to historic fashion brand Oroton for $4.5 million. The following year, they bought it back for less than half that amount, paying $2.2 million.
Revenue for the company peaked at $27.54 million in FY18, before declining about $2 million annually to $23.56 million in FY20.
The company appeared to be successfully entering the online and brick-and-mortar retail space through a partnership with David Jones alongside TDE stores in New York, Melbourne’s Chadstone Shopping Center in 2018, and last year, after being stuck in Sydney’s 2021 winter lockdown. , a shop in the Queen Victoria Building.
But five years after the adventure, Tran and Liu’s relationship broke down and the former lawyers were back on old ground when Liu filed suit in the NSW Supreme Court in early 2019, alleging that her co-founder, Tran, had misused company funds for personal expenses, home repairs and other business interests.
Tran co-founded the household brand In The Round House in 2018.
Tran denied the allegations and filed a counterclaim against Liu, but the case ended abruptly in May 2021 when Tran sold her 50% stake in the company to Liu for an undisclosed amount.
While the previous two years have been scorching for the retail industry at large, Tania Liu, CEO and sole director of The Daily Edited, seemed positive in November last year as the sole owner appointed MAXMEDIALAB as the company’s communications and influencer agency.
“The team is just as passionate as we are about taking The Daily Edited to the next level as it transitions through our new brand innovation and approach for 2022,” she said at the time.
Gavin Moss of Chifley Advisory was appointed as liquidator on September 30, after the company’s business was sold.
The Daily Edited continues to act.
A spokesperson for Chifley Advisory said that in initial conversations with the CEO of TDE, she cited challenges from the pandemic and competition as reasons for the company’s difficulties.
Moss has yet to investigate the company’s financial affairs and verify the information provided by the CEO.
“The liquidator will investigate the above matters and submit a report to all of the company’s creditors, as well as the ASIC, to provide an update on the outcome of its investigations,” the spokesperson for Chifley Advisory said.