These Dentists Launched A Multi-Million Dollar Luxury Accessory Brand

Forbes

5 days ago

Zane and Omar Sabré of Maison de Sabré.
Luxury fashion accessories is a competitive space where veteran entrepreneurs usually fare better than novices. When the Sabré brothers Omar, 34, and Zane, 31, launched their leather-based brand, Maison de Sabré, they had no direct experience. Instead, the siblings were in dentistry, and the enterprise was fashioned as a means to an end during a difficult family crisis. This alone makes their brand story unique. Its ascendant success since its founding in 2017 makes it a luxury start-up fairy tale. Now, the Sydney, Australia-founded brand with global operations—whose founders were featured on the 2020 Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list for Retail & Commerce—is expanding its US distribution and gaining market share with its value-centric luxury offerings.
FOUNDING IDEA
Maison de Sabré aims to address the accessory needs of the professional lifestyle.
Initially, the brothers' calling was dentistry, with the older brother, Omar, heading to Australia first to study. Zane followed, and during his studies, the brothers' father was diagnosed with leukemia, and the family's education funds were refocused on the elder Sabre's care. In a spark of inspiration, the young dentist and the dental student devised a plan for a business to fund Zane's remaining studies. What they lacked in experience, they made up for in determination.
Their father's words also fueled the project. "Our father is a businessman in the automotive industry who worked with his hands. He wanted us to work with our minds, and constantly said we should do something scalable, which today means online," Omar recalled. "From a product perspective, we were looking for something we could sink our teeth into," he added, no pun intended.
A leather goods idea presented itself, along with the not-so-obvious synergies between the two. "Coming from dentistry, we had a transferable skillset. We learned material physics, biochemistry, natural forms, and functions. We studied the art of the smile and its composition. Everything was studied at fractions of a millimeter and microns. So, it was extremely detail-oriented," Omar continued.
Bulgari and Cartier, whose less-touted colorful leather goods served as inspiration, influenced early pouch and card holder prototypes but the duo was not enthused at the result. Noticing a Louis Vuitton trunk phone case on a stylish customer at Sydney café, the older Sabré had the a-ha moment to design a leather phone case, which in 2017 made them among the first to market for the elevated smart phone case.
With Omar on the creative and design side and Zane on the sales, finance, distribution, and marketing side, the family members had complementary skillsets beyond their dentistry profession.
SPREAD INFLUENCE
From its inception, the product was aimed at fashionable young female professionals, aged 25-35, described as 'aspirational and inspirational'. As the brand expanded into categories such as handbags and luggage, it spoke to their fast-paced, on-the-go careers and personal lives, offering a product that is both smart and playful.
A model shows off key Maison de Sabré styles.
"We built a website on a budget, with zero marketing funds. But we had a product and an Instagram account, so we reached out to 200-300 influencers a day, seeding a highly visual product to them. About a third of them responded, and 10 percent of those posted, building a following organically. By the end of the first year, we had established a network of 5,000 influencers and generated $2 million in sales. This allowed us to invest in paid marketing and hire a team to manage the influencer program and customer care, which helped drive the brand," Zane explained. "We did this working part-time as I was still finishing dental school, and Omar was practicing as a dentist. Everyone said it's all been done, but we did it," he added. The brothers pivoted into Maison de Sabré full-time, thus Zane has yet to practice dentistry.
DTC SWEET SPOT
The brand was humming along nicely as a direct-to-consumer business, as the brothers built their own supply chain, sourcing leather that could be used on everything—from the original phone case to the bags and small leather goods, such as signature charms, that were added to the mix.
A key leather supplier in the Netherlands also works with Louis Vuitton. "The leather has been designed and manufactured by our partner tannery to meet our standards. Any piece of hardware, including zippers and lining, is designed and manufactured by us. For instance, the zippers are a hundred percent brass that we designed ourselves to be extremely smooth on 2000 cycles of opening and closing," Omar said without a hint of irony for another dental parallel.
The Mister Men and Little Miss bag charm collaboration from Maison de Sabré
Sustainability was also a key component of the brand's core values; thus, material utilization is at an 85% rate. "Charms, zipper pulls, straps, interior pocket lining. We use every single piece of leather and try to find a purpose for it," Omar added.
More eco-friendly fabrics have also entered the brand vocabulary. "Every year, we challenge ourselves to branch out into new materials. The year before last, we did a material called
Resilon Nylon, a recycled nylon filament yarn made from fishing net, which we developed the previous year. In 2024, we introduced a new material called BioVeg™️, co-developed in Italy, which is a sustainable biopolymer plant-based leather alternative material," Omar noted.
With production and distribution sorted, the brand was moving along nicely. But the brothers had bigger plans. "We got to a stage where we knew what our ambitions were: to be a true player in the luxury field," Zane said, adding, "There's only so much you can do with online business. You become limited and reach a ceiling. We knew what we were building, a real modern luxury Maison. For that, you need an in-store, touch-and-feel experience."
CONCESSION STANDS
Whether by intuition or data, the duo knew that a retail presence didn't necessarily mean traditional wholesale or free-standing vertical brand stores. Maison de Sabré's entry into the post-pandemic market opened up new avenues for them.
With a concentration on Japan, Europe, and the US, the brand launched physical retail experiences. Maison de Sabré hosted pop-ups in galleries in the Shibuya, Tokyo district, and in Osaka, Japan
The Maison de Sabré kiosk in collaboration with Nikki Beach Club.
"We don't do any wholesale. We employ a non-conventional approach to retail, with our staff and stock, and don't allow retailers to place direct buys. Concession models allow us to control the narrative, which is important for a brand entering this retail experience. Hands-on allows us to control the storytelling to the customer," said Zane of the partnership that involves renting space from the larger entity, typically for a percentage of sales. Part of the story is the charms that customers select to personalize their bags. Thus, most concessions include their signature charm bar.
Currently, growth is 200 percent YOY in the last 2 years, with a customer base in over 70 countries worldwide, whose loyalty and retention rate is 95 percent.
Retail partners, which tend to secure an exclusive for a region, include Rinascente in Milan, Le Bon Marché in Paris, and a major British retail partner, which is soon to be announced.
AMERICAN FOOTING
"The Bloomingdale's flagship concession was meant to be a month-long pop-up, and it's been four months now, and it's still going strong," Zane pointed out, adding, "We aren't looking at expanding more now. We keep the selection and partnership quite tight to make sure we can mutually support each other to push it forward and maximize both customer bases to get the best outcome for the business."
Online US partners include Nordstrom, Saks, and FRWRD, whose celebrity clientele led to organic placements through a VIP seeding initiative. Boldface names seen in the brand's offerings include Naomi Watts, Oprah Winfrey, Halle Berry, Selma Blair, and Emma Roberts, among others.
Currently, Maison de Sabré has a team of approximately 60 people spread across Australia, Japan, France, Italy, and, most recently, New York, where Zane relocated at the beginning of 2025 to oversee the US strategy, as he recognizes the achievement of penetrating major retailers.
"The leather goods space is a highly competitive market with a high barrier to entry. These departments typically have carried the same brands for five to ten years. Typically, not many enter the space that frequently," he added.
COLLABORATIVE SPIRITS
New raffia styles from Maison de Sabré.
Just in time for summer 2025, a new material category, raffia, poised the brand for special concessions with the beach-y party franchise, Nikki Beach Club. Starting in St. Tropez, and expanding to Mallorca and Cannes, the hotspots will feature branded Maison de Sabré kiosks offering totes and specialized summer theme charms.
Co-branded collaborations have also been a part of the burgeoning leather goods brand. Among them are Disney, Hello Kitty, and, most recently, Mister Men and Little Miss, which debuted in gallery pop-ups in Harajuku, Tokyo, and the Marais District of Paris.
"Our collaborations are rooted in nostalgia as the main driving factor in how we decide who we collaborate with. We have been fortunate to receive inbound requests to collaborate," said Zane. For Disney's first collaborations, the brand produced Mickey & Friends—think Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and Pluto—across leather phone cases. The Hello Kitty collaboration debuted in conjunction with a
"It's the first time that anyone has transformed the original artworks from the 1970s children's book into leather accessories. We reproduced them at a one-to-one scale into charms," noted Omar, adding, "In our generation, the child within us never really went away, which makes our generation special."
FAMILY TIES
Brothers Zane and Omar Sabré founded Maison de Sabré after first becoming dentists.
While the brothers are rarely in the same place these days due to the multiple global projects and activations, the family's name is omnipresent on every product. It reflects the brother's commitment to quality.
"I think people are tired of overpaying for luxury and understand that isn't what luxury is anymore. Consumers have been led to believe that luxury is a function of price, but in reality, luxury is a function of craftsmanship, material, and meticulous construction, which adds to its longevity. That's what true luxury is about," noted Omar.
Zane summed up the endeavor: "Our success comes down to the fact that we have a timeless design and unwavering quality. The color is incredibly optimistic, newness comes at an amazing pace, and the cost is incredibly charming. It's a price point you can't beat for the value you get."