Natalie and Gavin Robson
If you’re considering going into business with your significant other, Natalie and Gavin Robson recommend three things: that you love arguing, love each other (duh), and draw the boundaries (with a pen). Of course, it’s best to take their first point with a grain of salt. The Melbourne couple behind fashion label BUON share a dynamic that’s as playful and fun as their colour-blocked sweatshirts, which makes their constant bickering over business matters much less serious than you might think. “We often argue over totally hypothetical situations,” Natalie says. “And usually we’re arguing the same point!”
Like all good modern love stories, Natalie and Gavin found each other online. Or as Natalie puts it: “Four years ago, I got on my hands and knees and prayed for this to be the last dating app I download. Ten minutes later, I met Gavin.” They wed in 2018, and BUON was born two years later. Originally Natalie’s brainchild, BUON is her second attempt at a sweatshirt business (she ran her first in 2014). Gavin was hesitant to jump on board at the beginning – he knew how burnt-out Natalie was after her last venture, and was worried how financially sound the business would be. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to hear the ideas, I just want to hear why this is financially worthwhile,’” Gavin says. “I kept pushing her on that until she came back with the numbers and we thought, OK, we can make this work. Even if it doesn’t go great, it’s not going to bankrupt us.”
Thankfully, BUON’S trajectory has exceeded their wildest dreams. Their main hope was for pre-order sales to reach the manufacturer’s minimum order requirement of 100 pieces. Their first week of business heralded three times as much. BUON is now a full-time operation for Natalie, who takes charge of creative direction, design, packing orders and just about everything else involved in keeping a small business afloat. Gavin still holds down a day job, but spends his nights pitching in with social media and sorting out the nitty-gritty of Natalie’s endless ideas. “We work really well together because Natalie’s so imaginative and creative that she sometimes struggles with the structural side,” Gavin says. “I’m painfully analytical, which means she can unload all these things on me and I’ll sort out the schedule and resources to make it happen.”
BUON took off so unexpectedly in 2020 that Natalie and Gavin had no choice but to work day and night to fulfil orders. They inevitably hit a breaking point eight months in. “My parents worked themselves into the ground with their own business, so that was kind of the only model I knew,” Natalie says. “I could go and go and go, but when Gavin told me I was working too much, and I saw how exhausted he was from pressing t-shirts for me, I really took that on board. My parents divorced, and I always wondered if working 24/7 is part of what killed the romance.”
The experience forced them to defend the boundaries between the business and their relationship. They began outsourcing laborious tasks, agreed on reasonable working hours and instated a mandatory bedtime of 10.30pm. “We read in bed together and Gavin plaits my hair every night,” Natalie laughs. “The marriage comes first, and if we had to sacrifice the business in favour of our relationship, we would. At the end of the day, we’re more important to each other than selling sweatshirts.”