The AI Reality Check
From 30 pairs at Bondi markets to AI-assisted CRM
Liliana Rubiano is the director of Tolu Australia, a brand that began with 30 pairs of Colombian boardshorts sold at Bondi markets in 2013. Tolu now sells through major retailers and its own channels, while using AI for writing, customer management and content without giving up the face-to-face relationships that built the business.
AI has become useful where the work is repetitive or time-consuming, especially writing, CRM tasks and content planning. But the business still treats customer relationships as human work, not something to automate away.
What’s the quick origin story of your business, and what makes what you do genuinely different from the other options your customers are looking at?
I started Tolu Australia in 2013 after my uncle in Colombia offered me the opportunity to import some Colombian boardshorts. I took a leap, brought 30 pairs to Australia and started selling them at Bondi markets.
What makes Tolu different is the story behind the products. Our boardshorts are made in Medellín, Colombia—a textile hub I know well and feel proud to represent. I combine my Colombian roots with the Australian coastal lifestyle to create colourful, distinctive products that bring people together.
As a mum, the brand has also evolved with my family. I now create products that make family adventures easier and more memorable, while keeping the same focus on quality, colour, and connection.
Where does most of your new business come from today, and where do you wish it came from?
Most of my sales today come through major online marketplaces such as The Iconic, Myer and David Jones. While I’m proud to have Tolu Australia represented on these platforms, one of my biggest goals is to grow our own website and build a stronger direct relationship with our customers.
I want more customers to discover Tolu, connect with our story and become part of our community directly through our brand, rather than only through marketplaces.
What’s one thing you’ve actually handed over to AI in the last year, and one thing you tried it on and went back to doing the human way?
One thing I’ve really handed over to AI is helping me with the grammar, structure and context of my EDMs and blogs. Before ChatGPT, I often had to wait weeks for someone to help me correct my writing, or I would hesitate to put my thoughts on paper because I wasn’t confident about my English. Now I just write what I’m thinking, and AI helps me polish it without taking away my own voice. It has given me the confidence to write more.
We’ve also gone a step further and implemented AI into our business by building our own CRM system. It connects with our marketing calendar, segments our customers and reminds us when to contact different customer groups, send newsletters or run social media campaigns.
What I love most is that my husband built and refined it using Claude and AI-assisted coding, without a strong background in software development. We were able to explain what we needed, learn as we went and create something that actually works for our business.
One thing I still prefer to do the human way is building relationships with customers. I love meeting them at markets and events, seeing their reactions, listening to what they want and telling them the story behind our products. AI can help me organise and communicate with customers, but that genuine human connection is something I don’t want to automate.
Have you noticed a change in how customers find you or what they already know before they reach out? Is anyone arriving through AI assistants like ChatGPT yet?
Yes, I’ve noticed this happening. Some customers have discovered Tolu Australia through LLMs such as ChatGPT, which has been really exciting to see.
I’ve been working consistently on our SEO, blogging and backlinks, so I think that content is helping our brand become more discoverable not only through traditional search engines, but also through AI-powered search and recommendations.
It’s still early, but it’s made me realise that creating useful, authentic content around our products and our story is becoming just as important as traditional SEO.
If you were advising someone in your industry on all of this for the next 12 months, what would you tell them to actually do, and what would you tell them to ignore?
I would tell them to start small and actually use AI, rather than feeling they need to understand all the technology first.
Over the next 12 months, I would focus on using AI to save time on repetitive tasks, improve customer communication, organise customer data and create better marketing content. I would also invest in SEO, blogging and useful content, because customers are increasingly discovering businesses through AI tools as well as Google.
I’d also tell them to learn how to use AI-assisted coding and automation, even if they’re not technical. We’ve built our own CRM this way, and it has shown me that you don’t always need a big budget or a developer to solve a business problem.
What I would ignore is the pressure to use AI for everything or chase every new AI tool that comes out. I’d focus on the problems in the business first and then ask, “Can AI help me solve this better or faster?”
And I definitely wouldn’t use AI to replace the human connection. In my business, relationships with customers are still one of our biggest strengths. AI can help me organise those relationships, but it can’t replace genuinely knowing your customers, listening to them and understanding what they need.
Thank you to Liliana Rubiano and the team at Tolu Australia for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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