Women in Business: Innovative company hopes business plumps up – Perfect Again

Perfect Again was the first and remains the only Australian company to manufacture lightweight, individually customised external breast forms for women who’ve had a mastectomy.

The company, which is based in Portarlington, customises breast forms and ready-to-wear breast forms for breast cancer survivors.

But while the business idea seemed brimming with potential when Franco Pierucci and Julie Brand launched it more than four years ago, the pair have been fighting an uphill battle with many problems they have encountered along the way.

Julie said the bra a woman has to wear to accommodate the breast form is as important as the breast form itself, but finding the right bra for a woman who has lost a breast was very tricky.

“Most women with two breasts are not comfortable in their bras because perhaps they have just never found the right bra, perhaps they have changed shape and their bra hasn’t, so it’s all just too hard…there are a million reasons why they remain uncomfortable,” Julie said.

“And if you take one breast out of that equation, you have just entered the mine-field that Franco and I currently find ourselves in.”

Julie said it had been a difficult process during the past four years learning everything about her business, but had found comfort in the fact 88 per cent of the women who wore their breast forms were entirely satisfied.

Julie came up with the business idea after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002.

“We have created an entirely new generation of Breast Forms,” she said.

“They are lightweight, really comfortable and you can swim in them. Women can now easily reclaim their pre-cancer silhouette following breast cancer surgery, without all the risks and costs involved in reconstructive surgery.”

Perfect Again Breast Forms come in 14 different sizes which more or less correspond to bra sizes.

Breast Forms cost $400, which is fully refunded to a woman by Medicare.

For more information, phone 5259 1919 or 0408 502 344, email [email protected] or visit perfect-again.com.au.