'It’s not about the biggest title in the room': Love, Bonito co-founder Rachel Lim on CLOSER conversations

At a time when most brands are still figuring out how to build communities, Rachel Lim, co-founder of Love, Bonito, is focused on something else entirely: how close those communities actually feel. 

As the founder of CLOSER, part of her broader RachReflects universe, Lim is moving beyond transactional content and surface-level metrics such as reach and virality. Instead, she’s prioritising proximity. 

“Most brands today are still optimising for reach, I’m far more interested in how close people actually feel to you,” Lim said during a fireside chat at Content360 Singapore 2026. 

Don't miss: Content360: How CHAGEE replaces traditional media with content ecosystems

“I realised I’ve always been building community,” she added. “It just evolved from fashion into conversation.” 

Speaking of her early years launching Love, Bonito as a blogshop, Lim shared that content creation was always a way to express herself and build trust with her audience. 

The instinct didn’t begin with CLOSER. It started in the early days of Love, Bonito. 

Taking the audience back to the early 2010s, Lim recalled a time when eCommerce was still in its infancy, with orders sent via mail and cash payments tucked into envelopes. Blogging became a way to bridge that gap. 

“Back then, we needed people to feel like they knew us and trust us,” she said. “So we shared everything, the process, behind-the-scenes moments, even my weekends, so people understood who we were.” 

Today, that instinct has evolved into CLOSER, a community and conversation platform spanning live experiences, content and storytelling, centred on identity, wellness and personal transition. The goal, she said, is to build intimacy at scale. 

Fast forward to today, Lim says this shift is tied to her personal “zone of genius”, a term coined by Gay Hendricks in his book The Big Leap. 

For Lim, this meant recognising where her natural strengths and energy align, and moving away from areas where she may be effective, but ultimately depleted. 

That realisation led her towards live conversations, storytelling and building deeper connections with her audience. 

While grateful for everything Love, Bonito gave her as a platform to understand how women express confidence externally, CLOSER was designed to explore what sits beneath that confidence. Lim said: 

I stay close to my community, I listen deeply, and I build from there.

Redefining the self  

Building CLOSER also required Lim to step back from the day-to-day operations of Love, Bonito, a shift that became inevitable as the business scaled. 

Today, under CEO Dione Song, the brand has grown to approximately 27 stores across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines, alongside a steady stream of campaigns celebrating women across Asia. 

But for Lim, the transition was not just operational. It was deeply personal. 

“I had to be honest with myself that I wasn’t necessarily the best person to take it into the next stage of growth,” she said. 

Letting go of that role meant confronting an identity she had held for nearly two decades. 

“My self-worth, my sense of who I was, was all tied to the brand. I realised I had been known as the co-founder of Love, Bonito for so long that I didn’t really know who I was outside of it,” she said. 

The shift, she added, was not about losing relevance, but redefining it. Lim noted: 

It’s not about having the biggest title in the room. It’s about having the courage to pursue what feels true to you.

Trust in the community 

By 2024, Lim began intentionally carving out time away from Love, Bonito to build something new. The decision marked a clear turning point. 

It came with a pay cut, and a level of uncertainty that extended beyond business. At the same time, her husband had lost his job of nearly three decades during the pandemic. 

“It was a very difficult period,” she said. “I was asking myself if I should go back to stability or continue building something with no certainty.” 

She chose the latter. 

The principle guiding that decision was simple: value first, monetisation second. 

“I’ve never been afraid of starting early,” she said. “If I stay close to my community, I trust things will follow.” 

Today, Lim sees Love, Bonito and CLOSER not as separate ventures, but as parts of the same ecosystem, one built on product, the other on conversation. 

Both, she said, are anchored in a shared goal: not just scale, but intimacy at scale. 

Related articles: 
Is community the new currency for Love, Bonito?   
Women who lead: Love, Bonito's Dione Song on redefining Asian fashion leadership   
Love, Bonito and LinkedIn tackle career questions women hesitate to ask