Bree and Jess got in the shower and covered themselves in "dirt". They made $20 million.

In 2013, Instagram was beginning to boom, the argument for going organic was gaining momentum and using coffee as anything other than a liquid pick-me-up was relatively uncommon.

Around that time, Melbourne cafe-owner Steve Rowley also noticed women were coming into his cafes, asking for leftover coffee grounds to use as an all over body exfoliator.

“Was this a thing?” he would pose to a group of friends. “Could we make our own?” they would ask in return.

Together Steve, his then-girlfriend, now fiancee Bree Johnson, her girlfriend Jess Hatzis and another friend Alex Boffa created what we know now as Frank Body.

Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps you’ve seen women posing, coffee scrub brandished across their chest, face and neck, all over your Instagram feed.

"After some research, we came to find that coffee scrubs were attributed to relieving many skin conditions, and although there were a lot of DIY recipes online, no one was selling a coffee scrub as a product," Hatzis tells Mamamia.

It made sense to them. If there was demand for a product that essentially didn't exist on the market, why wouldn't you take advantage of that?

"We experimented with the use of fresh coffee grinds to get the best results, combined with a mixture of oils, sugar and salt. We got in the shower, covered ourselves in this stuff that looked like dirt and after rinsing, felt softer than ever before. We fell in love with it. It was here that the Original Coffee Scrub was born," she says.

The rise of Frank Body was rapid. Starting with $5000 and no clear marketing budget, their strategy was simple: let's market this in a way that we, as the clear demographic, would find attractive.

"We didn’t resonate with many beauty brands at the time of launching Frank and we figured that other people must have felt the same. The industry was full of jargon, hyperbole and overpriced, chemical filled products. We wanted to make something beautiful, affordable and fun," Hatzis explained.

"Our biggest point of difference was and still is, the voice of Frank. He is the cheeky character behind everything we do. It resonated with consumers, they quickly adopted his fun tone of voice, sending us emails and social posts with the same language."

Of course, the success of Frank is largely due to a cheap, quality product with simple and quirky packaging. But Frank's strength, perhaps even more than that, was creating a brand women wanted to be a part of.

Instagram almost immediately became their marketing strategy. Women of different ages and sizes would strip off, get in the shower, cover themselves in the product and upload it to the platform. It became, almost immediately, a kind of pop culture phenomenon. Many women knew the brand of Frank before they knew the product.

And therein lies the beauty of the company: it's easy, approachable, fun, and above all else? It's fashionable. They made a product consumers would brag about owning, without breaking their bank accounts in the process. (For context, not one product costs more than about $25.)

For the founders, Frank Body became a full-time role within a few months of launching. Four years on, they turn over $20 million every year.

"I don’t think we’ll ever truly think we’ve made it, there is always something else to do, but we’re really proud of what our team has achieved.

"Our first 100,000 followers, our one millionth scrub sold, our 149^th country Frank was sold in, moving into Mecca Maxima – these were all incredible moments for us as a start up from Melbourne."

Like many humble start-ups made big, none of the founders had any inkling the product would be so well-received and their careers - and lives - would be transformed because of it.

Today, Jess and Bree are the well-known faces of the company, the ones working on the brand. Steve and Alex "are leading the charge from an operational perspective."

"None of us ever anticipated running a global beauty business four years after creating the Original Coffee Scrub. We feel pretty lucky – and stressed – every day."

You can find all the Frank Body products here.

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