Meet the Aussie mum behind Mama Movement’s wonderfully vibrant activewear

What started as two boxes of sports bras and two boxes of leggings on the floor of Mama Movement founder and mum-of-two Faye Tan’s garage quickly grew to just under $300,000 in sales in the activewear label’s first year.

Mama Movement is a sustainable, colourful and high-performance activewear brand that inspires women to celebrate their bodies with colour, features Australian artists, and celebrates self-love and community.

Today, over $1 million dollars of colourful dopamine-inducing activewear has already been sent to women all over Australia, with the business approaching its third-year anniversary.

In the midst of a pandemic

Tan said that when she quit her job in January 2020 she had not anticipated that she would end up launching the business right in the midst of a global pandemic. 

“In some ways, it actually sped up the pace at which the business took off, after all, everyone was shopping online, staying home in comfy activewear, and looking for a little bit of joy and colour to break up the bad news cycle (which a colourful Mama Movement parcel definitely was!),” she said.

“And so we grew rapidly online, with women excited to see a fresh, colourful, body-inclusive take on activewear.”

And despite Tan also giving birth to a baby last year, Mama Movement has continued to grow.

“We launched the business in July 2020 in Melbourne, where we were in harsh lockdown — obviously not the way I had planned it to happen, but there we were,” she said.

“I started with two boxes of leggings and two boxes of sports bras on the floor of my garage, and shared our journey and our story on Instagram. I was completely blown away by the response we had!

“On launch day itself, we sold over half of the stock we had. And once the first round of women received their activewear, and shared their beautiful photos on social media raving about how good our leggings were, we were sold out. 

“So I had to quickly ramp up the business, design more pieces to expand the collection, and now here we are, out of my garage, in a warehouse, and with a small but wonderful team, continuing to grow rapidly across Australia, spreading our message of #SprinklePositivity.”

Mama Movement now operates out of a commercial warehouse space instead of Tan’s home garage, with a team of five mums who all work part-time.

The inspiration

Faye said she has a history of disordered eating, and since then has been on a crusade of self-love, and wanting to make a difference for little girls, like her daughter, to grow up in a world where she will hopefully not have to go through what her mum went through.

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“As a woman who had an eating disorder for almost eight years, I once thought of food as “naughty” and exercise as “punishment”, she said.

“I tried to overcome it for so many years, in the end, it took giving birth to my daughter to finally help me overcome it. Because I knew that I did not ever want her to feel the way I did about my body. 

“So I went on a journey of healing from the inside, and part of that included reframing food as both enjoyment and nourishment, and exercise as something we do because we LOVE our bodies, not because we hate them. And once that clicked for me I wanted to spread that message far and wide!

“I believe wearing colourful happy exercise clothing is such an important part of reframing what exercise is, that it should be something we enjoy, something that makes us feel GOOD, and wearing happy clothes while exercising is one big step towards that. 

“Both of these parts of who I am, and my story, translated into a dream to start an activewear label that was about JOYFUL movement, with the belief that exercise is something we should do because we LOVE our bodies, not because we hate them. And so Mama Movement was born!”

Leveraging social media

Tan said the initial growth of the business was purely through Instagram.

“After all, we couldn’t actually get out and do any in-person marketing,” she said.

“So I shared our journey to creating an activewear label on a mission to spread body positivity on an Instagram page. My story and our message were one that resonated with so many women. And I included these women, our online community, in the design process, asking them for feedback as I showed them new styles, dodgy sketches I made of ideas I had, and built the label based on their feedback. 

“And I think that’s what I attribute so much of our growth and success to, our beautiful online community who felt so invested in our story. And really, Australian women are tired of fashion being exclusively one-size, especially in activewear, and so I think our inclusive approach to activewear is one so many women want to and do get behind.”

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Tan, who is also Mama Movement’s Creative Director, said the business had built a strong following.

 “In a highly saturated activewear market, we have been able to build a strong following very quickly because of our eye-catching bright colours and prints, a growing reputation for being the most comfortable leggings you’ll ever wear, but most importantly, for our amazing imagery featuring women of all shapes and sizes rocking colour!” she said.

“We are growing an incredible online community, and each quarter we invite applications from our customers to become a “model for a day” for us in the name of body positivity! We want to show how the clothing looks on women of all shapes and sizes and to demonstrate that strong and beautiful is not one size fits all.

“Our activewear really stands out because of how bright and fun they are. They are instantly recognisable when you see a pair walking down the street! 

“But that’s how we attract new customers. How we get them to love us and stay with us, is that the quality is second to none. They are designed by a woman (me) for women. Thoughtful features like pockets for your phone in our leggings, sewn-in pads for the crops, and just styles that fit real women’s bodies really really well.”

Tan said there are many exciting future plans in the pipeline for Mama Movement.

“Continuing to collaborate with female Australian artists on the colourful prints we feature on our activewear, and really hero-ing (or shero-ing!) their wonderful talents,” she said.

“Continuing to grow our sizing range, we go from an XS to 4XL at the moment, and it’s still not enough, I want to do more. We are also just launching ourselves into actual physical stores this year too, by bringing on stockists across Australia, because we know some people (lucky them) don’t live on social media, they live in the real world, and we want to reach them too.”