Episode three, The Sees Scandals, Sarah Stevenson's popularity was through the roof, fresh from activating hashtag milflife after the birth of her son Fox Ocean, Sarah had managed to sidestep Heer Sin three scandal, replacing controversy with baby Spam and their new house. Rnos and the masses were loving it.
But no one could have predicted what twenty twenty would hold for Sarah's day, let alone the world.
There are fears more than a thousand people could be infected with the deadly SARS like virus in China. The World Health Organization has declared coronavirus a global pandemic.
The COVID nineteen pandemic changed life as we knew it. Locked inside our homes with more free time than ever, public sentiment towards influences began to change and cancel culture took hold. The same year, the Black Lives Matter movement shook the world, with protests breaking out across the globe following the murder of George Floyd.
Cities across the United States remained in a state of high tension tonight, as the country braces itself for another wave of protests over the death of George Floyd.
Twenty twenty was a horror year for everyone, but for Sarah it was the year she got canceled as three of her biggest controversies played out in front of a captive audience in Lockdown.
We are journalist Amy Kay and Sophie Torbert and this is outspoken Plus in.
Episode two, we Left You.
In late twenty nineteen, in Australia, bushfires were ravishing the country. The new year brought further devastation as fires continued to burn out of control.
New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia are waking up to widespread fire damage. We know properties have been lost, we know many towns are without power, but the true extent is being assessed right now.
More than forty six million acres were burnt during the twenty nineteen and twenty twenty bushfires, and devastatingly, thirty four people were killed and nearly three billion animals.
Lost their lives or were placed.
All anyone could talk about was what could be done to help. Influencers and brands jumped on the cause and began sharing ways followers could help those impacted. I remember at the time Mitch Orville was getting a lot of attention because he managed to raise over two hundred and seventy thousand dollars alongside his brand Hooded Smile, and Sarah's
Day was quick to follow this trend. In November, she announced that one dollar from each of her products sold on the Bang Body would go towards a Saint Vincent Bushfire appeal Now. To put that donation into perspective, Sarah's Lebang Body products ranged from sixty ninety five to fifty eight ninety five now. The backlash was swift. People labeled Sarah's.
Promotion as an underwhelming offer of charity, while others said one dollar per product was a cop out. Another commenter wrote, go fifty percent or one hundred percent of proceeds for forty eight hours to be genuine. It's currently a cheap trick to boost profit now.
Sarah jumped onto her stories on the afternoon of the fundraiser announcement, complaining that she couldn't train because she was receiving so much hate.
Here's what she said.
The amount of hate we just got is actually disgusting. Like we were trying to do something fun that was going to give back to everyone, and yeah, I'm really disappointed in like twenty percent of the people because this was coming from a really honest, authentic giving place, like bushfires is something really real and like personal in my family. And when Labang called me with the idea, I was like, Yeah, why would I say no? Like this is awesome.
Sarah was late slam for her use of the word fun, which people found insensitive and said she didn't understand the issue. Sarah went on to say this this.
Is a classic example of your damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. Like if I hadn't done anything with my products to support the Bushfire Foundation, I would have got hate. If I promote one hundred percent of the profits, I still get hate for promoting my products. We say a dollar activation, still get hate.
The story made mainstream media and the campaign was stopped, with no party disclosing if the money raise was donated. Now, off the back of this initial failed campaign, Sarah launched a three day e book sale to raise money for bush fire relief charities.
The three charities.
Chosen were Food Bank Australia, New South Wales, Rural Fire Service, Port Macquarie, Kohala Hospital and.
The Salvation Army.
As part of the promotion, Sarah discounted her ebooks by twenty percent, and this time she said she would donate one hundred percent of the sales made to her four nominated charities. Now, Sarah announced that the sale raised a whopping three hundred and ninety one thousand, six hundred and sixty dollars, with the profits said to be split equally between the four charities.
Now.
Rather than being met with great fanfare like Mitch Aorble, Sarah's fans started getting agitated when she did not provide an update on the status of the donation. So six days after the sale ended, Sarah released a vlog where she briefly touched on the fundraiser. She explained that she had emailed the charities to let them know they would be receiving a huge donation and asked them how to
go about transferring the money to them. Now despite confirming she was in talks with the four charities, a member of gossip forum Guru Gossip, she had an open letter to Sarah where they revealed they had reported her to scam Watch for not showing receipts of the donations she made. The user wrote, I believe you will donate and this was a genuine good deed you were doing. But this
is just a gentle nudge in the right direction. It's too much money and too important a cause for you not to have posted an update yet, especially when other influencers have now. This letter spurred on others to start contacting the Australian media publications who had covered the initial story about the one dollar bushfire appeal.
It's safe to say by now the pressure was mounting on Sarah. People were beginning to lash out on Instagram, with many comments getting swiftly deleted. This stress led to Sarah having a complete meltdown in her outside of a bank ten days after the fundraiser had ended. So the day prior, she had updated her followers saying that she was unable to donate to the Koala Hospital because her bank wouldn't allow her to make a transaction that big.
So the following day, Sarah complained the bank had only let her transfer money to two of the four charities because of the transfer limit, and that she would need to come back the next day. It's important to note that Sarah did visit the bank at four pm when it was closing. She said I'm just trying to do this nice thing and donate all this money for my
country and the animals. Sarah went on to complain that she'd been trying to pay everyone for over a week, but none of the charities were accepting the bank transfers because the daily limit on her account was one hundred thousand dollars. Now, when you consider that Sarah was trying to transfer each charity around eighty nine thousand dollars, wouldn't have only taken her four days to finalize these transfers.
Yeah.
I think the fact that she was complaining and putting a lot of the blame on the charities really caused a sour taste in people's mind. I mean, obviously it sounds like it was a bit of a complex process to do, but I think, don't share the struggles.
That you're having with online. Yeah.
So, on the twenty second of January, five days after Sarah's meltdown at the bank, Sarah confirmed that all four charities had received their donations. Sarah shared a screenshot of handwritten calculations and wrote, all charities have received their donations? Were who When I contacted the charities to let them know they'd be getting eighty nine thousand, thirteen dollars and seventy five cents. They were absolutely overwhelmed and so grateful.
Originally some people were complaining that the sum Sarah provided didn't add up, but they were forgetting about the GST. So it's important to note that according to a chartered tax accountant, Sarah did everything completely within the rules of the tax legislation in Australia.
It's very likely that she would.
Have an accountant providing advice on how to maximize their profit and cash. So in this case, what people appeared to have an issue with is with Sarah promoting that she would donate one hundred percent of sales rather than saying one hundred percent of profits. I mean, I think it's a bit tit for tat at this stage.
Yeah, in this instance, I do feel like people were very harsh on Sarah, considering that she did raise such a huge amount of money for charity. I do think people are forgetting that there were so many celebrities and influencers jumping in and trying to raise money without actually thinking through the process of how they would end up transferring such a huge amount of money to a charity.
I think if this was a.
Campaign that she had set up with a lot of preparation time, it would have been fair to sort of launch this criticism at her, But considering it was something done on the fly, I do think it was a little bit unfair.
I think it is really interesting to look back at this scandal three years on when you're removed from the
emotions of the situation. So in times of crisis, when people feel out of control, generally they do look for someone to blame, and at the time, influencers around Australia really were being put under the microscope by sections of the Internet who were trying to determine whether or not influencers were trying to help out out of the goodness of their hearts, or whether they saw this situation as an opportunity for self promotion and being charitable at the
end of the day is good for your brand, but it's also something I would like to think that a lot of people genuinely do to help out and make a difference. And I personally felt uncomfortable by the backlash that was thrown at Sarah during this time because, as you say, Kate, she did use her platform to raise over three hundred thousand dollars for animals and communities in need. And I'm sure if she didn't use her platform, she would have copt the same amount of flack and abuse.
And it sort of was a situation at the time you're either damned if you do damned if you don't.
Yeah, I actually remember she did say that. And it's important to remember that whilst influencers may come across as these huge entities, most of the time they are individuals running startups which don't have the support of a professional team or strategists or lawyers behind them helping them make these big business decisions. And I think there's a lot of talk about how Sarah is in a bit of a cronulla bubble, and I don't think equips herself with
the right team. She often employs friends or relatives, and I think this is a situation where perhaps she didn't have the right guidance in place.
Yeah.
And in terms of the criticism about her not donating the money quick enough, I think over time it has become quite evident that donating large sums of money isn't as easy as it looks. And this was the case for Australian comedian Celeste Barber, who raised fifty one point three million dollars in a record breaking Facebook fundraiser for the New South Wales Rural Fire Service and brigades donation funds.
So Celess said that as donations grew and grew, she attracted a fuck ton of people telling her what she should do with it. And things got really complicated when the deed which governed the New South Wales Rural Fire Service Trust outlined that money donated could only be spent on purchasing and maintaining equipment, training and administration cost So this meant that the money wasn't really allowed to go directly to those who had been impacted by the fire.
And I'm sure Celeste never imagined that she would have raised that amount of money, and I'm assuming donors would have thought that she would have the ability to allocate funds to other bushfire charities if necessary. Now there was a court case and the court ruled that money could be given to the families of Fullen firefighters and used for trauma counseling, but could not be given to charities like the Australian Red Cross or animal welfare groups, which
upset many of those who donated their money. One month later, Sarah's bushfire fundraiser controversy was all but forgotten as the COVID pandemic took over our lives.
The World Health Organization has declared coronavirus a global pandemic.
As our lives ascended into the unknown. With stay at home orders and five kilometer radius parameters in place, we became increasingly infuriated by anyone breaking the rules or those in positions of privilege complaining about being confined to their mansions. Influencer behavior became a.
Major talking point.
We were beginning to question whether influencers were doing enough to deserve the privileges bestowed.
Upon them now.
On the twenty fifth of May twenty twenty, George Floyd, a black man living in Minneapolis, was murdered by police officer Derek Sharvin. After being handcuffed and pinned to the ground, Floyd repeatedly told the police officer he could not breathe as the officer knelt on his neck. The horrific event was captured on camera, sparking protests around the world.
Chaos, violence, fire, and looty unfolding on the streets of Minneapolis.
Black matters were at the forefront of the public psyche. We were just two months into the pandemic and tensions were boiling over. Social media was a wash with support for the Black Lives Matter movement, with black tile shared on June second, twenty twenty to show solidarity for the protests and riots happening in the US.
Meanwhile, back in Cronulla, Sarah was getting set to launch her third active web collaboration with White Fox Boutique. The campaign was called Reboot and was based around the idea that her line was being elevated. Sarah took followers along for the ride, capturing behind the scenes footage of her campaign shoot. Followers were left astounded when Sarah revealed how
she had been styled. She was unrecognizable. Her short blonde hair had been woven into thick fluot braids, and she was quickly accused of cultural appropriation.
Now, for those who are unsure, cultural appropriation occurs when members of a majority group adopt cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative, disrespectful, stereotypical way. This can include a hairstyle, piece of clothing, and a manner of speaking. Now, to put all of this into context. Just three days after the murder of George Floyd, Sarah's Day was forced to pull her new reboot activewear campaign. She did decide to reshoot the campaign with a different look a couple
of days later. Now, I remember the moment I saw Sarah's hairstyle on Instagram. I instantly screenshot it and sent it to you, because I couldn't believe that she didn't foresee that this would be a problem, especially considering what was going on in the world.
It was just so tone deaf.
Yeah, the fact that Sarah's Day, as well as the White Fox boutique team thought that this was acceptable really shocked me.
How did no one flag this with her?
Oh? I mean, the hairstyle was just highly inappropriate. West African woman Safie, who chose not to give her last name, gave some really insightful comments to news dot Com about the incident because at the time, there seemed.
To be a real divide.
There were those who were deeply offended and then those who didn't understand the gravity of the situation. So Safie said, for her, it came down to differentiating cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. She said, sadly, so many people can't tell the difference. She explained that what Sarah did was take this hairstyle, capitalize on her refer to it as ghetto, a neglect to pay proper homage or acknowledge that she
was inspired by women of color. She continued to quite simply, she used a significant part of our culture to make money off it. This is what so many black women of color, like myself class as cultural appropriation. Had she done her research and understood the cultural significance of this hairstyle, it would be considered cultural appreciation, but she didn't.
Now Following the backlash online, Sarah released a three hundred and eighty word apology on her Instagram feed alongside a series of Instagram stories to her one point one million followers. Sarah apologized for the hairstyle, causing any offense, and explained why she made the decision to wear braids. She basically said it was her idea to wear braids because she always wears them and wanted to incorporate Coachella and festival vibes into the campaign.
Let's throw to what she.
Said, so specifically, we need to talk about the braids because this is where the controversy comes and the accusations and issue of cultural appropriation. So in the first and in no way I've said this in the caption, I'm not made excuses or trying to justify. I'm literally just trying to give reasoning because everyone's asking me questions, like even if they're mean questions, Everyone's like, why the f do you think it's okay to wear braids? Like this is me answering, This is me answering.
Yeah, this is a very serious topic and like for us to be put in this category, it's very scary for us because this is the complete opposite of what we're about.
Yeah, I'm I'm like the last person to judge anyone or to try to be controversial or cultural appropriate, Like I just want everyone to be happier. What everyone anyway, I'm derailing. So I was the one who first came up with the braid idea, and I showed I make a mood board for everything. I made a Pinterest with like mostly Coachella stuff. It was like these big braids and they were pink and it was fun, and so most of the pictures that I showed everyone were like Coachella festival.
It was really fun.
Yeah, So that was the pin.
I had that like electric feel that was tied in nicely to the whole idea of this campaign that we sort of up with in the first place.
And that's the thing. I don't know if I'm just like not educated.
In this or it's like I don't know, because not.
Once did I even think about cultural appropriation. If that even crossed my mind, I wouldn't have done it, because you guys know, I hate conflict, I hate controversy. I don't want to offend anyone. If I thought it would offend anyone, I would have never, ever, ever, ever done it. So again not making excuses, but you guys know, I
always wear two braids. Even when I had long blonde extensions, I got my hair braided, and even now I'm not gonna lie even doing Yeah, I'd be lying if I said I completely understood what's okay and what's not okay, Because even after researching so much, asking people, asking my friends, of all different cultural backgrounds, of all different races, everyone has a different opinion, everyone has a different It's a.
Very fine line. So I don't know.
So I don't know what's offensive. I don't know what is cultural. I don't know, so That's why I'm like, you know what, we had a call.
With White Fox. White Fox.
They don't want to offend anyone, Like the whole team who worked on this campaign are heartbroken. That would put us.
We worked on it for like three months or so in the making, and now read for everyone, it's okay.
Initially, many people took Sarah's apology on face value and accepted that she was ignorant and uneducated. It is important to note, however, that the apology was not directed at white people, but at people of color. Therefore, it's not up to us to accept the apology. Opinions started shifting though, when it appeared Sarah wasn't as remorseful as she had made out originally. Firstly, both Sarah and Kirk kept the sneak peak of the campaign up despite deciding to pull it.
The video included Sarah wearing the braids the evening of her apology.
Sarah was also very passive.
Aggressive on her Instagram story about having to reshoot the campaign. Now it was very clear she was feeling sorry for herself. She made a snide comment about it apparently being a tough day for everyone, not just her, to make matters worse, a screenshot from Sarah's Day's Facebook came unity surfaced where she was warned of the cultural appropriation weeks before when she first posted about the campaign to her story. However, at the time, the post was deleted and deemed as trolling.
Sarah's apology post was also highly moderated. It only had messages of support. The original comments calling out the hairstyle as cultural appropriation were also deleted, despite it being an educational, well balanced discussion. Now, White Fox Boutique did not comment on the controversy or issue an apology for their involvement, and I thought this was really poor because it wasn't solely Sarah's decision to launch the campaign, yet she was the only one who.
Faced up and apologized to it. Yes, the apology was not fantastic and it did not seem genuine, But I find it really strange that White Fox Boutique, which is a large brand, didn't come out and give a statement and apologize because they at the end of the day, they gave the all clear for this. This was their brand putting out the activewear.
Yeah, they were collaborating with Sarah's Day on the project. You think they'd have a say in the campaign.
They really seemed to hang her out to dry, which is really confusing because they still do use her as the face of many of their campaigns.
Yeah, it was very odd.
Now it didn't take long for people to start piling on Sarah. It got to the point where Sarah and her young son Fox were receiving death threats. Receipts also started coming out of the woodwork. An alleged image of Sarah's husband Kurt, playing scrabble emerged with a homophobic slur spelled out on the board. A screenshot of an apparent Bible verse Sarah shared saying people who don't believe in
God will get COVID also spread around. Despite the backlash, Sarah's activewear campaign sold out in a matter of minutes, and in October, they launched a restock of the Reboot collection.
As part of the.
Restock, they filmed a new video campaign, which Kurt directed, and of course, Sarah v log behind the scenes of this campaign. She described the campaign as the most extravagant and highly planned, biggest campaign they've ever done. It sounded strange to describe a restock campaign as that, but it was quite clear they were trying to make up for the canceled campaign.
Yeah it was.
And what I found very odd was the actual concept of this video. So the new video campaign slogan was rise above. And the video starts out with Sarah driving in a g wagon and she flicks around on the radio channel and there's a news report saying good afternoon. She then flicks to another channel that says.
God comefully she actually wore that, which he.
Is so canceled.
Sarah then struts into this garage past a flickering TV that has Sarah's Day's campaign on the TV screen. She walks up to this motorbike and then is shown waving flags as two motorcycles speed pass and do big jumps on their bikes. There's a lot of fire, which to me suggests this rising from the ASHES messaging. And one noticeable addition to the campaign are the models Kate Jones and Lola tomp So. Kate is a curve model and
content creator. She's known as Dedicated Lifestyles on Instagram and it has one hundred and eighty five thousand followers, while Lola Thompson is a black model, dancer and content creator with one hundred and eleven thousand Instagram followers and one hundred and thirty thousand on TikTok, Sophie, did you think it was a deliberate move to have more inclusive models in this campaign?
One hundred percent.
This was a deliberate move, and I think after the backlash, Sarah needed to be more inclusive in the campaign. But it just made it feel really awkward and tokenistic. There was it was very performative.
Yeah, I did find it really awkward. I do remember that many people were surprised that Kate and Lola agreed to be in the ad, but to be fair, it was a big opportunity for their modeling careers.
And for Kate and Lola, it was an opportunity for them to reach out to a section of Sarah's audience who probably hasn't felt heard or seen before.
Yeah, I totally agree.
Now, at the end of the vlog, when Sarah and Kurt throw to the finish clip of the video, Kurt looks visibly agitated and he makes what appears to be a snide remark, saying enjoy rise above. Now. Interestingly, in this part of the video, I noticed that there was an awkward cut which makes it seem like Kurt was actually edited and that what he said in full wasn't
included in the video. To me, the messaging was all about rising above the backlash they received, and I think it was a strange concept to follow and came across as very petty and unremorseful. This campaign had to be reshot because of cultural appropriation. Don't use this as an opportunity to talk about your own agenda.
It does.
It doesn't come across that they're very remorseful or sorry for what they did.
Yeah, it was almost like they were the victims in the situation because they had to reshoot a campaign. Now, Sarah's horror year wasn't done yet, if you can believe it. Sarah's final major scandal for twenty twenty was sparked by missing rock and pillow inserts.
Yeah.
On the sixteenth of November twenty twenty, Sarah decided to puply name and shame small business Sabi and Soul under the guise of helping others. She shared a total of thirteen Instagram stories where she alleged that the brand had debited one hundred dollars from her account but not delivered the three Moroccan cushion inserts she had ordered. Sarah provided screenshots that showed she had placed the order on the fifteenth of October, alongside unanswered follow up emails and Instagram
dms to Sabi and Seoul. After sharing the apparent receipts, Sarah finished up by writing, so now I'm just like, okay cool. Was that a scam or She then went on to say it wasn't about the money, because she is financially comfortable, but it's about the customers who saved up their menial wages only to be scammed. She said, I remember working in a fast food job getting paid around twelve dollars an hour. If this happened to me, I would have been so devastated that essentially a ten
hour shift had gone down the drain. Thank god, she's looking up for the little guys, isn't it. She went on to say. Anyway, I'm genuinely not doing this to hate on that brand. I'm just sharing my frustration of this brand's negligence and lack of customer care. I could never imagine doing this to my ebook Activewear, Body Bloom,
First Protein Pity Party, or Butter Me Up customers. Humble Brag I put so much effort, time and care into customer service and the teams that run them on my end that I simply cannot understand when a brand chooses to go mia on emails dispatching, but yet continues to take people's money with nothing in return. That's just fraud, my friend.
I found it really amusing that Sarah had to itemize each individual product she has sold with Trepeka and Lebang to make herself sound more important. As you said, it was a bit of a humble brag. It's a strange flex though, because apart from her ebook, all of the products that she listed are owned by separate businesses who have their own customer service team, so she's got nothing to do with that process.
And as for her ebook, the customer.
Service is taken care by the company that created it, which is Hello Hello Studios. So a very strange brag.
And Sarah was quick to update her followers that she wasn't the only one who had been scammed by Sabi and Soul. She claimed that she had received over twenty dms from her followers, claiming they had also fallen victim to the small business. She ended up sharing three of the dms she received. It is important to note that she blurred out the senders identifying features. You could see that Sarah had responded personally to their messages. One of
the messages said, I just ordered off them. I bought some pillows intending to give them to my mum for Christmas. I'm only thirteen and I worked for that money.
I think it was this screenshot which had people quite confused, because they're like, how does a thirteen year old have a debit card or access to PayPal? You've got to be eighteen to have a PayPal account. And people started thinking, well, maybe Sarah's Day Stands are just coming up with these fake claims to actually talk to her, because she was responding individually to these people's dms. Now, it wasn't long until Sarah's Stands had flooded Sabi and Soul's Instagram account
with hate. There were negative comments on nearly every single one of Sabi and Soul's posts, with people writing scam or scammers, and people also began claiming that they had experienced bad customer service too. Interestingly, the comment section was a mix of Sarah's Stands and Sarah's Day haters. Now, the owner of Sabian Stole went on the defense and started responding to the hate. She wrote, if everyone from Sarah's Day's followers could please cease messaging me while I
resolved this with Sarah. There has simply been a huge misunderstanding here. I will explain more soon, but there is no scam, just a genuine human error now. The business went on to call Sarah's claims slanderous and misinformed. The owner also hit back at people's claims of being scammed, writing people are desperate for attention from influencers, unfortunately saying me too.
Now.
The owner also challenged those claiming that they were scammed, asking them to provide details around their identification so she could look into the system. There was a particular person from South Africa who was a nurse that she looked up and said that there was no record of her ever purchasing, so a lot of people were confused if these were actual customers or just Sarah's stans trying to get Sarah's attention.
The owner of Sabi and Soul also shared that it stated on the Frequently Asked Questions page that as of August twenty twenty, cushion inserts had to be purchased with cushion covers, and those who purchased only inserts would have their orders automatically canceled due to limited stock. Unfortunately, this information was not available on the individual product page, but was added the day Sarah called out the brand. Now, seeing if Sarah only ordered pillow inserts, it appears her
order was automatically canceled the moment she placed it. However, there weren't any follow up customer service emails to let her know that this was the case, or any replies to her follow up emails. After all of the backlash, Sarah ended up deleting her Instagram stories and shared an update. She wrote, Okay, I've written this post numerous times, but let me get straight to the point. I've decided to delete my previous stories about how money was taken out
of my account for a product I never received. I made an online purchase for our homewares. I stand by everything I said, and I don't want any other customers falling victim to this. But I've seen the negativity it has created on this brand's page and that doesn't sit well with me. I just don't like that kind of commenting and language. I value honesty, kindness, and compassion, and
I am now practicing the third. Yes, the money was taken out of my account and the issue remains, but I have this platform to promote kindness and love above anything else. Yes, I feel a responsibility to spread awareness and protect others from potentially having the same issues as me, But I want to spread happiness even more. Anyway, It's all good, guys. Let's just be good people. Research before you purchase online, and don't leave hate comments no matter what the circumstances.
Jeez, that's a very interesting update from Sarah.
Now.
We covered this story on our podcast at the time, and we ended up following up with the owner of Sabi and Sal to hear her side.
Of the story.
Now, she was willing to share a few details with us, but she did say she was taking legal action against Sarah, so couldn't say too much. She did share a screenshot with us, though, which appeared to show that she had given Sarah a refund on the day that Sarah had
purchased the pillow insert, which was on October fifteenth. Looking back at this drama, it just shows how sure you need to be as an influencer before you start calling out a brand because there's no denying that the customer service was very poor and the communication should have been a lot better. However, the fact that Sarah had received a refund immediately and didn't bother to check her account before calling out the business publicly is really terrible, I know,
especially labeling the brand as a fraud and scammer. It's just affametory and I'd love to know if the brand ended up taking legal action against Sarah.
Yeah, particularly because at the time, Sarah had one point one million followers on Instagram, and by sagging Sabi and Soul in her stories and saying that she'd been scammed, she literally directed one point one million people over to their Instagram account as retribution. And she would have known, as Stanz would cause drama and that's probably why she tagged them.
Oh it's just crazy to think how much damage this actually caused this small brand, And when you think about the fact that Sarah's job is to influence people and she literally sent people after this brand, it's really heartbreaking. I mean, at the time, we were in the midst of COVID, small businesses were really struggling to stay afloat,
and then something like this happens for this brand. It appears that Sabi and Soul have sadly shut down, since their Instagram page hasn't been updated since March twenty twenty, and their online store no longer exists. This was a one woman show that was trying to operate during COVID, and from a PR perspective, it is just such a shame that the owner didn't notice that Sarah had placed an order, because it really could have been turned into
great brand exposure. A lot of people do follow Sarah for her style.
Obviously she talks a lot about her home renovations, and it could have been something where it could have kept her business afloat and really got her name out there.
I do really question Sarah's claims that she was trying to warn her followers.
Sarbi and Soul was a small.
Business, which we have mentioned several times. I mean, they only had around two thousand followers on Instagram. It's not this big business that a lot of people were going to get scanned by. And I stand by what I said back in the podcast in twenty twenty that I think it was immature and reckless of Sarah to call out the brand yeah.
And the owner of Sabi and Soeul they did share with us back in twenty twenty that Sarah had purchased the cushion inserts through PayPal, and PayPal is of course renowned for its scam protection because there's a simple process you can go through to get a refund. So I don't understand why she didn't do that instead of publicly slamming a small business during COVID.
I did have a laugh because I remember back in twenty twenty that taddle Life suggested starting a go fund Me page to help fund Sabi and sols legal claims against Sarah.
I would love to know what happened.
If the owner of Sabian Soul is listening, please reach out to us, so if anyone knows.
Any more about it, I would love to know.
How do you come back from the worst year of your life when the brand you build has been battered and your army of followers have turned to detractors. In next week's final installment, we cover Sarah's attempt at a rebrand, how the Wellness Warrior tried to evolve into a wholesome, pilates loving mum with strong Christian roots with lucrative brand deals to compete for, and a hungry community of new
mums yearning for connection. Mummy blogging is a high stakes business venture, but what happens when your kids start becoming content and a heartbreaking diagnosis makes.
You evaluate at all. That's on next week's final installment.
This podcast was recorded on the traditional land of the Ganna people of the Adelaide Planes. We pay respect to elders past and present. If you are enjoying this series on Outspoken Plus, we would love to see you post it on your Instagram story.