Born in Adelaide, South Australia, Tran is one half of The Daily Edited (TDE), an online store specialising in luxury monogrammed purses and document holders for men and women.
In three years, Tran and her business partner Tania Liu have taken TDE from its roots as a lifestyle blog and fashion label, to being a major contender in the accessories market. And they did it whilst holding down day jobs.
“We just wanted a bit of creative freedom. We’re both lawyers and we wanted to have a creative outlet, but something that could fit in with a working woman’s life, because that’s kind of what we’re all about,” says Tran.
“Definitely growing up in that kind of family, you know, no nonsense, no frills, has put me in good stead.” Alyce Tran, co-founder, The Daily Edited
Late last year they launched their first three products, a pouch, a card holder and an A4 document holder – all of which sold out within a couple of weeks.
By December, Tran found herself wrapping orders after work until 2 am, and by June this year she quit her day job.
“A lot of people have described that as being really brave or risk taking but, what people don’t realise is that it wasn’t like on day one I had an idea and on day two I decided to quite my job.
“What it came down to was, while I was working as a lawyer, each day I was either losing money or losing a lot of time because I wasn’t able to execute things properly at The Daily Edited.”
In August this year, the pair partnered with Westfield, one of Australia’s largest shopping centre groups, to open a pop-up store in Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall.
“It was an overwhelming success,” says Tran. “It basically made our Instagram account come to life and Westfield were very happy with the amount of foot traffic that we created in their centre.”
Positioned between retail heavy weights Zara and Nespresso, they sold at capacity, meaning the company reached their quota for how many monogrammed products they could sell in one day.
“It really set a new benchmark for how you can activate a new brand on that site,” says Tran.
As Westfield looks to expand their business with stores in London and New York, Tran says they are discussing further opportunities to collaborate overseas.
“It’s all just suddenly gone from dining room to ‘let’s open a store in SoHo, in New York next year,’” says Tran, sounding slightly overwhelmed.
This week TDE launched their Summer Christmas campaign – an exclusive for VOGUE magazine – featuring Australian fashion model Lara Worthington (nee Bingle).
“We approached Lara because ‘she’s hot right now,’” laughs Tran. “She has a very aspiration yet approachable look.
“She’s a mum, she’s an entrepreneur, so we thought she’d be a good fit.”
To Tran’s surprise when they approached Lara, she had both heard of and loved the brand, and was very keen to curate the look of their upcoming campaign.
The super model selected her favorite six pieces from the collection and directed the photo shoot using the photographer who shoots her own skin tanning product range.
Despite TDE’s almost fairly-tale story of success, the 29 year-old has an unrelenting work ethic.
Her parents migrated to South Australia from Vietnam in 1985, the year Tran was born, and operated a strawberry farm before becoming more successful.
“It’s not something I wear around, but I am a first generation Australian. My parents came here with nothing on their backs and my sister and I grew up working.
“My first job was putting our labels on the strawberry punnets before there was a machine for that,” she says.
“So definitely growing up in that kind of family, you know, no nonsense, no frills, and just getting on with life and putting in the best you can, has put me in good stead,” she says.
