What does a tween want? Swimwear that’s not skimpy

Conducting Zoom business meetings was easy; online school had taught them how to be tech savvy that way. And they soon gathered a list of willing mentors, one of whom – courtesy of Olivia’s grandmother, a journalist – introduced them to former Louis Vuitton Australia chief executive officer, Julia King. “We’ve had quite a few meetings with her, and she told us if our ideas were good or bad,” says Olivia. Was that tricky? “No, we kind of just took her advice.”

Like so many entrepreneurs before them, this wasn’t their first attempt at starting a small business. Myla once had a loom band business (“I was just like, ‘Do you want to get a loom band?’ but nobody really wanted to buy them, and well, they were just rubber’“) while Olivia had tried making slime. (“I got stickers, it was called Slime Alive, I made the slimes, and then they went mouldy and I never sold them.”)

More than anything, they’ve learned how to push through the challenges of a start-up. “We have to keep going, we have to keep persevering,” says Olivia. And some small-won battles have been the sweetest, such as when South Australia-based influencer Elise Cook began following them on Instagram. “We were jumping up and down in the lounge room, [saying] ‘Oh my god, she’s really following us!’”

Speaking of social media, does being a tween give them an advantage? Nope: their parents put restrictions on those.

For this reason, both say that they’re not being bombarded with images of how they should look, but still share the same goal: “We didn’t have any [swimwear] we felt comfortable in,” says Myla. “We just want to be comfortable in our own bodies.”

But when you’re a tween, life isn’t all about work. When they’re not thinking about Cinnamon Cove, they’re at the beach or playing at the park. “We kind of forget about the business when we’re hanging out with friends,” says Myla. “We’re still kids and we want to have fun.”

Follow their journey on Instagram at @cinnamon_cove.