Sally has led a very interesting life, she grew up on a farm in Toowoomba but a career in entertainment took her to live and work all over the world.  Sally has lived in London, New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Sydney, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast for the past 7 years.

Being a “Carnie” and producing Russian Clowning shows and Burlesque circuses around the world has given her a unique set of skills and experience that taught Sally to think outside the box and never be afraid to take a risk.

Life is a bit different these days but no less rewarding. Sally loves being on the Sunshine Coast, it’s a wonderful place to raise her two boys and be closer to family.   It’s also a wonderfully supportive business community which has allowed her business to thrive.  When Sally left Sydney she didn’t even conceive she would have been able to grow Infectious into one of the  leading medical uniform suppliers in the country.

Sally, tell us about Infectious Clothing and what made you start working in this area? 

If someone had told me 20 years ago I’d be running a Uniform business based on the Sunshine Coast I would have bet a million dollars that was not my future. But here we are!

I married into the scrubs business! Pete was working as an ER Nurse in Sydney at that stage nurses were still in corporate style uniforms, which are not the easiest thing to wear when you are trying to save lives.So he designed and developed some scrub uniforms and started selling to his work mates. People loved them and it really took off. He moved from manufacturing to also importing world leading brands Dickies Medical and Wonderwink.

It was an easy decision for me to join Pete in the business, we have very complimentary skills and styles and once we both made the decision to leave our “regular jobs” behind the business has tripled in size. I look after the finance, human resources and sales side of the business, whilst Pete oversees logistics, product and website operations. We have a dedicated team of 7 working in warehousing, logistics and sales.

I know that you travel a lot, how do you juggle your working life and personal life when you have such a busy schedule? 

Yes the juggle is real!  I used to think I was busy working and travelling in entertainment, but I don’t think you truly grasp what busy is until you start working with kids!

Google calendar is my saviour for keeping everything on track, if it’s not in the calendar it doesn’t happen. A detailed schedule is great but being adaptable and flexible is so important things often don’t go to plan and you have to be ok with that.

To ensure we aren’t “on” all the time for work we make sure we go away each school holidays to really switch off and spend time as a family without work interruptions. The kids have been amazing growing up with a business being run in the house, but I hope they are seeing what hard work looks like and also the rewards.

My non-negotiable is exercise, if I don’t keep up with exercise, I find all other areas start to suffer so much like the oxygen mask on a plane I try to exercise each first thing in the morning to set me up to tackle whatever the day throws at me.

There is a lot happening in the world right now, tell us about some of the adjustments you’ve made at Infectious to stay at the forefront and to adapt? 

It is such a challenging time right now in all areas of life. As a business we have been following developments closely to ensure we were prepared. We made a move to shut our retail space a number of weeks ago to minimise interactions, we have some team members working remotely to ensure physical distancing as much as possible.

We have seen unprecedented demand for scrubs in the past month almost doubling our workload. There are a number of factors that have helped us to cope at this time. We are always investing in new tech to streamline both our customer and team experience, these are new website platforms, shipping and inventory management software and customer help desk software. These have paid off as we have been easily able to scale up to meet demand.

Technology can only do so much though, our team has been amazing through this period, they have stepped up at this challenging time and brought new ideas and procedures to the table so we can ensure an excellent customer experience. We are so proud of what we have achieved at Infectious in the last month getting much needed uniforms out to our front line workers in record time.

What are some of the challenges you are facing in the current climate and how will you overcome? 

We are fortunate to be in a business that is thriving at this time and feel for so many others that are struggling.  Our main challenge is keeping supply chains intact given the global shutdowns.  But thanks to long term relationships with our suppliers we have had no interruptions at this stage.  Communication and spending time on these relationships over the years have enabled this to happen.  Never underestimate a quick call to check in or a thank you note, when times are tough like they are now it’s when people remember those things and will go the extra mile for you.

We don’t treat suppliers as just a supplier they are essentially partners in our business so we respect and work on those relationships all the time.

And what’s next on the agenda for Sally Doran?

Once social distancing measures are over it will be a great big get together with family and friends all in one place!

Favourite food and why?

Japanese it’s like delicious art!

What do you do in your spare time?

Getting out in nature with the kids or curled up on the couch with a good book and also now Zoom catch ups with girlfriends to keep me sane!

What mantra do you live by?  

Magic happens outside of your comfort zone!

To find out more about Sally head to:

Website
https://www.infectious.com.au/

Facebook
@InfectiousClothing