Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Saving 30,000 bras from landfill, with Harper Wilde's founder Jane Fisher

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Saving 30,000 bras from landfill, with Harper Wilde's founder Jane Fisher · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Jane Fisher for Female Startup Club.
• 0:12
  Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Today we're learning from Jane Fisher, the founder of Harper Wild. Founded in 2017, Harper Wild is a direct-to-consumer under things brand for women. Frustrated with the overpriced, hyper-sexualized, intimate apparel industry, Wharton graduates and co-founders Jane and Jenna set out to change the conversation by building everyday bras that are ethically made, fairly priced, and comfy. Okay.
• 0:41
  Beyond the products themselves, HarperWild is focused on a larger mission to support and empower future generations of independent women through cause-related and philanthropic initiatives, including a 1% donation of all proceeds to Girls, Inc.
• 0:56
  This commitment extends to the company's environmental responsibilities with the industry's only of its kind bra recycling program, which is called Recycles Bra. And to date, it has saved over 30,000 bras from landfills. This is her story, and I also highly recommend checking out her TikTok because it is full of laughs and boob puns. Let's get straight into it. This is Jane for Female Startup Club.
• 1:25
  Jane, hi. Welcome to the show. Thanks. So happy to be here. I'm happy to have you here. I'm excited to learn all things about your brand. We usually like to start by getting you to give us a little bit of an introduction and the ethos behind the brand. Yeah, absolutely. So our brand is Harper Wild. Our tagline is Lift Up the Ladies because we are an online bra company.
• 1:48
  So we not only lift up your ladies, but we have a social mission part of the business too that's really core to who we are. That's about giving back to girls' education to help lift the next generation of women.
• 1:59
  I love that. Lift up the ladies. That's so fun. You guys have such lots of boob puns with us. Lots of boob puns. I have noticed those on my travels around your website and social media, and I appreciate it. It's so funny. They're hard to miss, right?
• 2:19
  so good. You have a great copywriter, whoever comes up with those ones in the business. Let's go back to, you know, circa starting the brand. I think we're talking 2017-ish or maybe even a bit earlier. What was getting you interested in starting this particular business? Where does the light bulb moment kind of happen for you? Yeah, it was actually back in 2015, the end of 2015, when we first started just
• 2:46
  Playing around with the idea of it, we were, my co-founder Jenna and I were in business school together and we had no plans to start a bra company or start a company. So it wasn't like this light bulb moment of, okay, here's the idea.
• 3:01
  let's run with it, we've always wanted to launch a company. It was much more just noticing what was happening within the retail space more broadly, not even specific to lingerie. It was with all these honestly really boring commodity products in our lives, mattresses, eyeglasses, luggage, socks, razor blades, there was
• 3:20
  a cool D to C brand focused on millennial customers for each one of these boring products, making it not only cheaper to buy these products, but just easier and cooler to have a great experience where you were actually proud to be buying from the brand you were buying from for these. And we looked at that and saw one of these for each commodity items in our lives, except bras. And we were sitting there in class and
• 3:48
  you know, nice suits and nice shoes and purses. We clearly cared about what we looked like. We were willing to spend on ourselves. But underneath it all, you can probably relate to this as a woman that, you know, there was a 10-year-old bra under there with a hole in the back band. And it was just this weird, I guess, like light bulb moment, whereas, you know, we're looking at this slide in a marketing class in business school, looking at what's happening in the retail space and sitting there as a
• 4:15
  female consumers without a good option for this really, really core commodity product for women. And so that's when it hit us that
• 4:23
  that maybe there was an opportunity, not that, oh, we absolutely need to run with this, but let's explore why there isn't one of these brands, but for bras. And maybe there's a very good reason, and maybe we shouldn't pursue this path, but obviously we're sitting here today because there was just such a huge opportunity. The industry was enormous. The margins were crazy big.
• 4:45
  And there was a huge demand for brands like this. Women weren't proud of where they were shopping from and they weren't excited about shopping for bras. Hence why they had 10 year old bras they were wearing. That's how bad of an experience it was. Yeah. And that's when we decided, okay, there is a big enough opportunity here to explore this even further.
• 5:04
  That's so cool. And you are like, speaking my language, you've tapped into my consumer behavior 100%. To my husband's dismay. Talk to me about that exploration phase. What are you actually doing? You know, how are you kind of like proving out this idea or researching? What does that early phase look like for you in exploration? Yeah, it looked like,
• 5:30
  a lot of different things. It wasn't, I think, one route that we took. The biggest thing was what you just said, was talking to women that what you said was our personal experience, and we wanted to know if we were in the minority.
• 5:44
  or if other women felt this way. So we ran focus groups and just talked to women very open ended without an agenda of would this specific company with these value propositions appeal to you, it was what helped us shape what the value proposition was, and if there was a space in the market for this. So
• 6:01
  Everything from just asking about her current behavior, you know, how many bras do you have in your drawer? How many do you wear? How often? What kind of bras are they? How do you shop for bras? How frequently do you shop for bras? Why? Why not? And what we saw and heard from that and focus groups was that women were not replacing their bras. They had 16 bras in their drawer on average and wore two of them 90% of the time. Fake in your head. We all know it's that black or...
• 6:30
  nude t-shirt bra or now bra love oh my god it's almost embarrassing you haven't seen my wardrobe but you're describing it and men would be like oh my wife my girlfriend she she washes her bras every day you know she doesn't wear the same one without and we're like no not you are
• 6:50
  Definitely misled there. You know, we just wear the same one over and over again. And why the reason why they weren't replacing it wasn't, you know, because they couldn't necessarily afford it or something. It was more like the process of going and shopping for that bra again was such a hassle and it cost so much money. She would literally rather do anything else, spend on anything else than go bra shopping. And so that part of kind of like research phase helped inform what we should do.
• 7:19
  if we were to build a brand, what it should look like. It had to be a very palatable price point. It had to be a really curated option set so it was easy for her to buy. And a brand that she actually was proud to be buying from. We heard a lot of people say, yeah, I go to Victoria's Secret today, but honestly, I'm so embarrassed. I take that pink bag and I shove it in my work bag because no one sees that I shopped there. I just go there because it's the only place I know. So,
• 7:44
  That was the real like, okay, we need to create a brand that really stands for her value, stands for the modern woman and the current incumbent does not. So that was one side of it. The other was just,
• 7:56
  you know, is it possible to create a bra that is at that palatable price point? Or would we create something that is not sustainable from a business perspective, you know, assuming the margins are not big enough? Or for us, we really wanted this to be a huge opportunity in the market and create something really big. And so is the industry big enough? So that's where we did some research around what the industry looks like today.
• 8:21
  You know, when you're saying you're doing the customer feedback piece, not customer feedback piece, but like the consumer feedback piece rather, when you say you do these focus groups and stuff like that, how many people do you think you spoke to in that process? And I ask this because I feel like it's a piece that's often overlooked. People can go down this, like, and I'm guilty of this too, going down a rabbit hole of being like, yes, like this is the idea, this is the idea, and you just forget to like actually go out and talk to people and be like, well, what do you think and what do you like and what's your experience?
• 8:51
  Are you talking like, you know, 10 folks in a focus group or are you talking about like 300 people over the course of six months? Both, I would say. So focus groups were definitely small. We would probably have five to 10 people we'd talk to at any given time because you want it to be a very conversational, casual setting where people are opening up about this very intimate shopping experience, right? So it's not something that women actually talk that much.
• 9:20
  to their friends about, you know, we know what our friends are wearing, what lotion they're using. I mean, there's so many products we know what our friends are wearing, but not bras, really. So we needed to create an intimate environment where people felt comfortable opening up. But we ran a lot of those. We also there's some things that are great for a focus group, there's some things that are great for a survey, you know, what I've talked a lot about a palatable price point. But what is that exactly? And how do you
• 9:46
  measure what people are willing to pay. That was a whole separate analysis that we did through surveys. So, you know, in aggregate, yes, hundreds of people in those focus groups, definitely a smaller five to 10 person range, I'd say.
• 10:02
  And getting yourself from this kind of early research phase and exploration phase to launch, which I think was around 2017, what else are you doing to get the brand ready? How does that kind of translate into being like, okay, let's actually do this. Let's start a business. Let's go make some product. What happens after that phase? Yeah. So a few different things. I'd say the big thing we worked on that was ahead of launch was we ran this...
• 10:31
  So at the time, we believed that we should offer free home try-ons because a lot of what we heard was women didn't like going in store, but they weren't sure what their size was. So we said, okay, let's bring the dressing room home to her.
• 10:44
  And we wanted to test that and we wanted to test a lot of attributes about that. How many should we allow her to take home? What type of bras should we make? Even down to what should the company be named? So we ran a, it was almost like a replica of free home try on, but the in-person MVP form of that.
• 11:02
  So we worked with our marketing professors to help lay this out. But what we did was we had women come over to my house in Philadelphia and we replicated the online experience. So we laid out, we bought hundreds of bras. We floated the money on my parents' credit card because it was a lot of bras. We bought bras similar to what we felt like we were probably going to end up producing ourselves, nude t-shirt bras, really simple, no added embellishments and bought from some pretty, you know.
• 11:29
  big brands at the time where people were buying from. And so we said, okay, let's lay them out on a table. Let's show them front and back, just like you would see front and back on a website. Don't let them touch or feel it just like you can on a website show price, but not brand. We don't want them to be influenced by, um, Calvin Klein brand for instance, because we're not going to be selling Calvin Klein bras. So we don't need to test that. And then we let them take home three or five bras. Cause at that point that was a variable we were testing.
• 11:58
  Um, and we took their phone numbers, just like you would take someone's credit card. And then a week later we had drop-off locations like their USPS drop-off locations.
• 12:07
  where they could return their bras to us. And if they returned, they weren't charged anything. And if they kept, they were charged for what they were kept through Venmo, just through their phone number. That's so cool. And then we returned everything. Yeah, it was fun. It was really fun. And, you know, we said to them, hey, you know, it's actually not helpful to, we know you're doing this to help us out. It's not helpful if you behave in a way that is not real. You know, if you're taking home bras just because you think it's helping us,
• 12:37
  that's actually not helpful because we need to understand how you would actually behave in real life. And that was like the last big step I'd say that we took before we, we started putting money toward the business where we started investing in R&D, develop our own bras. We started working on our website, some more substantial work that required us, you know, taking a big step after that. But that showed us some level of appetite
• 13:04
  for the company generally, the value proposition generally. And then it helped inform some of the decisions within that, how many bras we let them take home, what the price point should be, what the bras should look like. And then it also, you know, you learn a lot of stuff along the way that you didn't even think you would be learning or asking about. But just by, you know, having that kind of...
• 13:27
  test run, you end up surfacing things you otherwise wouldn't. That is so cool. So cool. My gosh. What did you learn that you weren't expecting or what did you uncover that was interesting? I think that one of the biggest unexpected pieces was around the bras themselves. So I think that
• 13:48
  Prior to that, we hadn't focused as much on such a curated selection as being a huge part of the value proposition. In retrospect, it makes a ton of sense. Even in store, you and I don't like sorting through hundreds of different bra styles. You're kind of like, it's the same thing as razor blade aisle and CVS. You're like,
• 14:07
  I don't know, you're comparing boxes. You're like, is it the aloe strip that's different about this? Like, you know, you're like, I don't really care. Is it going to shave me? I'd rather get on with my life and get out of this CVS. Same deal, right? Online, even more so. You can't touch and feel the bras. I think through that test that we did, it became very clear to us how critical that was.
• 14:29
  that simple assortment being a North Star of ours as something that was important to her, you know, make it the best t-shirt bra, make the best strapless bra, the best bralette and do the work for me. So I don't have to sort through these things myself. And then some specifics about the bras themselves that people liked, you know, there was one that had some kind of, um,
• 14:53
  it was a distinct quality about it. Um, but it wasn't like a rhinestone or like a red bright red bra that like let it, um, that made it clear it was from that brand, but there was something beautiful about it. Something about, I can't remember exactly. And, and we learned from her that, you know, there was something about, you know, something nice about the bra, just how it looks that is still important. And so that's why we have an X between the cups on our, um, wired bras because, um,
• 15:20
  you know, there needs to be something between the cups anyway. It's not added gems or rhinestones, but it's really beautiful the way it sits on her body. Oh my gosh, that is so interesting and so cool. What a fun process to be kind of going through in that early phase, which kind of leads me to, and you've touched on this, is the money piece. You know, obviously you said you had to invest in R&D and I assume that took some time and some capital and the website and, you know,
• 15:48
  you know, you were obviously adding in that layer of being able to ship things and then, you know, the try on at home model, which I'm sure adds another layer of complexity. What did you need to invest yourselves to get started? And how were you thinking about funding and the money piece in the beginning? Yeah. As in like, were you thinking we already know we're going to have to raise or we're aiming to bootstrap this baby forever? Or what's the vibe?
• 16:18
  how we were building the company and where we wanted the company to go informed our choice of going the VC route. But I am a strong believer in that not necessarily being the necessary route to take. I think it can be glamorized a bit and it's almost today, like the more you raise, the better you're doing. And that's just one part of the picture, how efficiently you're using capital.
• 16:44
  Like, you know, why did someone need to raise that much money? I think is a really important question. But, you know, it's like if there's a flashy tech crunch, $50 million raise, that's you kind of just take that as, oh, they're doing great. And, you know, I think there's a lot, a lot, a lot of benefit to bootstrapping and and or bootstrapping in the early days and taking VC money later. We took the VC and I think, you know, the criteria with which you should filter to decide
• 17:10
  It has a lot to do with like how much upfront capital you need to get the business off the ground, how much capital you personally have to support that or not. And then what the end goal of the business is, because the VC route is a high growth, you know, I think like really, really quick growth process where there is an exit that needs to happen. And it needs to happen pretty, pretty quickly. So it's, you know, going public or getting acquired,
• 17:38
  And that's the track you're on. And for us, that was the right approach for a few reasons. One, we had to manufacture overseas because the way that underwire foam cup bras are made, those are made overseas. We had the luxury of working with one of the largest manufacturers in the world for bras and underwear, which was unbelievably powerful. In the early days, it did mean we had high minimum order quantities. So
• 18:03
  The smallest amount we had to buy was pretty high. On top of that, we were in business school, so we personally didn't have any money. What was it? Are you allowed to share? Are you allowed to share the minimum order quantities for that kind of industry at that time? Honestly, I don't remember, and it's also pretty complex because it's not just like, oh, you have to buy 10,000 bras. There's minimums by size, there's minimums by style, and there's minimums by color. And so you have to map that all against each other to see how
• 18:32
  And so for decisions... Oh my gosh, so complicated. Yeah. So for a decision like ours of, okay, we want to launch the company with two nude colors and a black at least because representation of different shades of skin tone is important to us. What's the very, very minimum we can launch with two at least, okay. And then a black we needed to have. So right there, we had three colors across all three styles that we were launching, so it's...
• 19:01
  even in a minimum, okay, let's launch as few styles as possible, as few colors as possible, you still, you know, it kind of has this compounding effect with minimums. So that was part one. We didn't have much personal money because we were in business school. So it's not like we were working while doing this. And then on top of it, for Jenna and me, our goal for the company and Northstar always is to be the next market leader of Intimates. That's not...
• 19:31
  a small vision. That is to take on Victoria's Secret that's worth billions of dollars. And that means moving fast, growing quickly and growing to be really, really big. And so with that in mind, and personally, we were really excited about the idea of a fast paced career lifestyle that we would have that would be growing something very, very quickly. It'd be high stress, high reward. So for those reasons, we said, okay, let's raise VC money from the start.
• 20:01
  We just did a really small round, a few hundred thousand, but we're able to get enough to really get us off the ground. And that's we use that money to launch the company in 2017.
• 20:13
  I really love and admire when people are so clear on their personal goals for life and building a business in the beginning and you audit yourself and being like, yeah, I want it to be fast paced. I want it to be high stress. I want that route for that high reward versus not being sure and going with the flow and figuring out as you go or potentially going down the VC route and then realizing like, oh, heck, I really am not into this life. It's something that we talk about on
• 20:41
  you really do need to audit yourself and you need to audit things as well. Like, you know, is your goal to make money immediately? Like if it is, maybe you shouldn't quit your job just straight away or like, you know, depending on what your goals are, you really need to like reverse engineer the pathway, which is very cool. Um,
• 20:58
  On the topic of fundraising, I did read that you had some funny stories about how you turned these no's that you were getting and you were getting quite a few no's into yeses. Could we kind of like touch on that while we're on the money base? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, the obvious or maybe not obvious. The thing we were up against was the VC world is heavily male. Yeah.
• 21:24
  weighted and we are selling a product that's typically for women. So simply put, a lot of the people we were pitching were not users of the product. And that's not just they didn't wear bras. They weren't millennial women who felt the shame of going into a Victoria's Secret, who felt the need for a brand that represented them in this way. So that was always something we were up against. And so the initial way we tried to break through that was,
• 21:52
  was through humor and breaking the ice and bringing them along the journey and said, imagine if you had to shop for boxers the way we shop for bras. You walked into a store, there was naked men all over the walls in very over-sexualized positions and underwear, made you question if your body was good enough. You got
• 22:14
  to the wall, saw hundreds of different options for your boxers. You finally picked some, took them to the dressing room, tried them on. Someone came in the dressing room with you, made sure everything was fitting in there just right. Then you check out it's $70 for a pair of boxers. You get them home, you put it on with the suit you're wearing to a big meeting the next day and it shows through your pants. Like,
• 22:34
  Imagine going through that. And it certainly broke the ice. But what I would say it did was it really took them to this narrow, narrow story that, you know, we kind of got them on board with it, but it was making them think small.
• 22:49
  And where we changed our pitch for the better is we pulled them out and we said big picture. And we almost said, forget that it's a bra. You know, look at retail more broadly, kind of where you and I started this conversation, right? Like look at every single commodity product in our lives, socks, razor blades, mattresses, and look at the old school brands that are there to me, Luxottica, and look at the new digitally native brands that have taken their place.
• 23:17
  And there isn't one of these fur bras. Victoria's Secret is here, and there's not something replacing it today. And by just changing their view there, all of a sudden you can imagine it was so much bigger picture. It was comparing us to Casper at a Dollar Shave Club and saying, there's going to be another one of these. Get on board. Versus taking them into the dressing room, which, you know, in retrospect was a little more small-minded way to think about it. But, yeah, it was, you know, I think that...
• 23:47
  positioned us better too. You know, we had to, I think, be a little more upfront than probably we were used to or comfortable with, with our pedigree and why, you know, we were capable of running this company, of starting this brand and, you know, bringing bras to a meeting. A lot of men would like refuse to touch them. I don't know what they thought was wrong with them, but, you know, it was, I think it was just like pulling out from the specifics of bras. What? Yeah, it was probably crazy. Yeah.
• 24:16
  Okay, so you raise the money. You've got a few hundred thousand to get started. How does the launch go? How do you launch with a bang? And what is that first year in business like?
• 24:27
  Yeah, I think that especially in talking with you, you know, about 30 minutes ago and hearing more about what's helpful to hear, I think the reality is that there isn't really a bang. And someone told us that ahead of launching. They said, you know, you've been working so, so, so hard and you're viewing launch day as the end and the floodgates open and water starts pouring in and it's all great.
• 24:52
  And that doesn't really happen for anybody. It takes a ton of work to build a brand, to build a consumer base, and build the trust with the customer, right? So I think that's like the very healthy reality to hear because when you have these expectations that it just takes off like crazy and then you're not met with that, you find it to be really weird when actually it's very, very normal.
• 25:18
  So we launched, I mean, we had a very exciting launch. You know, we did a lot of PR around the launch. We got into the New York Times and some like very like, I could have only ever dreamed of kind of launch moments. But then it took work. It was a lot of work from there to figure out how to grow the company because you move beyond that initial ring of friends and family and the friends and family friends.
• 25:42
  And then you're into stranger territory. And that's where it becomes really hard because you're educating them on the brand and why they should buy from you. And I think one of the biggest learnings we had from a marketing perspective in those days was.
• 25:54
  was to not try to do it all, to just focus on one thing and do it well. And it doesn't really matter which one thing you're picking, one channel that you're focusing on. I mean, be thoughtful about it. You know, don't advertise on TikTok if your average customer age is 85, but pick a channel that makes sense for your customer base and,
• 26:16
  and just do it well, because we tried to do everything. Any opportunity that came our way, gift baskets for a conference here,
• 26:25
  partnership over there. You know, we were trying to do it all. And if, for instance, we had just focused on Facebook and making Facebook ads more efficient, that could have probably been a better use of our time. And that's where we ultimately landed. But to your point earlier on, you know, really small teams in the early days, not a ton of resources. When you take those small amount of resources and spread them really thin, that fragmented approach leads to nothing actually being done well.
• 26:53
  Yeah, that's such a great piece of advice. Pick a channel, keep really focused and keep chipping away day after day. If you had to kind of distill, you know, in a dot point form, the pivotal moments and the milestones from, you know, starting or figuring out the Facebook ad piece of the puzzle to today, what are those moments in your story? What's the blueprint? Yeah, it's a good question. I don't, you know, I think,
• 27:21
  Again, like being very real with you, I think it's a lot of small moments that come together in aggregate that make something happen. It's not one silver bullet that allows the company to take off. It's a lot of things happening at the right time altogether.
• 27:37
  team members coming together. We did decide to turn off our free home try on part of the business. It was probably about two years into the company. And that was a very pivotal moment because we pivoted the focus of the company. We'd always sold bras normally as well, but a lot of our customers came through free home try on. And it was great in the early days because for free,
• 27:59
  we got bras into people's hands. And when people touch and feel our bras, they are insanely soft, and they are immediately sold. But it's hard online. You can't get that across in a way that you can in person. So for two years, in the early days, we were able to get product into people's homes. It was great. But there was a lot of complexity that came with that. The data was super complex. The accounting was very complex. There was a lot of fraud.
• 28:23
  And so at that point, we decided to test turning it off and seeing how much it impacted things like CAC and conversion rates. And it didn't really impact it. It basically got rid of the fraudulent customers and the customers who shouldn't have been our customers, the really cheap ones. And it kept the people that, you know, they were more than happy to buy online and just return anything they didn't want. So I think.
• 28:46
  That was a really pivotal moment for us. And there have been a few really exciting marketing moments when Kristen Bell posted about us a year or so ago. And you could watch on the back end of our Shopify site. They show a map of the world, and it lights up where anyone is on your site. And it just started lighting up everywhere. And orders were coming in like crazy. So that was a very...
• 29:14
  cool moment that stands out. But otherwise, you know, it's really about these small moments, these hires that you make as the team grows, as you learn little things, as you test little things along the way that really make it what it is today.
• 29:30
  Yeah, absolutely. It's like the, just taking that tiny action every single day over a long period of time, you look back and you realize it's all compounded. And that's why everything's working versus like shooting for that one silver bullet where you just think like, that's going to make something work. And, you know, I've been...
• 29:49
  countless times thinking that something's going to work by doing this one major thing and then it doesn't work out and you're like, damn it. Like, I wish that agency was going to fix my problems, but it doesn't. It's the small, tiny steps. I totally get it. What's working for you now when it comes to marketing? What's a really exciting kind of space for you? I just watched like every single TikTok video that you guys have and lulled for like a good 20 minutes straight.
• 30:19
  what's working for you? Yeah. So there's one thing in particular that we're leaning into that's working quite well, which is our capsule programs. I think the, and I'll explain them, but I think the bigger theme there is the brand positioning is really working well. You know, in 2015, we really believed there was an opportunity to create the brand that we have today and,
• 30:44
  But it was pre-Women's Marches, Me Too, Time's Up movement. It was pre a lot of this wave that now we're riding. And there really is this motivation behind consumers to buy from a company whose values they believe in. And so it's from the female empowerment side of the business to the sustainability aspect of the business. We have a whole recycling program that people are very excited about.
• 31:10
  in a crowded market and not just crowded with other intimate brands, but just we're all very busy. You scroll through your Instagram. There's a ton of ads there. How do you actually stand out? And what we found is when you stand for something, you stand out. And that means taking a stance and sometimes upsetting some people.
• 31:33
  But the people who are bought into your vision, into your values, are then obsessed with you and very, very loyal. And so the capsule programs is a tactical manifestation of that because what we do is we take our bras and we embroider a phrase on them.
• 31:50
  And we normally work with some partner who helps to collaborate to decide what that phrase is. So, for example, the first one that we did was a Ruth Bader Ginsburg bravd.
• 32:03
  It said when there are nine, her famous quote of when there would be enough women on the Supreme Court, you know, why not all women? There have been all men for the longest time. And a portion of those proceeds from those bras went to a group called She Should Run that helps get women into office. And so in buying this bra, you were buying into your values, our values, you were standing for something. So it really took, you know, buying from Harper Wilde.
• 32:30
  as a brand that you believe in, that stands for something to the next level, it was like, I actually can wear this bra. And when I go to put it on when I'm looking in my bra drawer, it's kind of like the modern day lace, you know, you wear it to feel great about yourself. When I see that empowering quote, we've had people write in for different bras that they have and say, I was so nervous about that meeting that I had. And then I saw this bra and I put it on, I felt like so empowered. And that's,
• 32:58
  So cool. And we've done so many of these. So we saw such a huge success with those. That's how Kristen Bell ended up posting. Someone in her network was one of the partners who we worked with on one of these. She so strongly believed in the quote that was on the bra, the woman who had made that quote happen on our bras, that she got one and she organically said, this is awesome. You know, I want to shout about it from the rooftops. And that's when you know you have a brand people are excited to talk about when it really stands for what they believe in, when it's.
• 33:28
  More than just the bra is really comfortable, but that is the part of it, right? We get them because they bought, because they're bought into whatever the capsule initiative is about, but then they get the bra and they're like, oh my God, this bra is so comfortable. I need to buy five more of them.
• 33:43
  That is so cool. It definitely makes me want that bra and specifically that is obviously not around anymore, like that Ruth Bader Ginsburg bra. And it also makes me think, oh my gosh, people are never going to be throwing out their bras. They're going to be keeping them for the next 15 years. Do you have any cool partnerships that you can shout about that are coming up? Some cool ones? Yeah.
• 34:06
  So we have one live right now that's with Deep D from the show Love is Blind. And so if you didn't watch it, she, at the end of her relationship there, decided to choose herself, which was a very powerful moment and has really...
• 34:22
  taken off. And so we partnered with her to create a bra that says I'm choosing myself. And that was a really cool partnership and very successful. It's so in line. It's so her and it's so us. And that's when those really take off when you're not forcing round peg square hole, but it's naturally, Hey, our brand has always prioritized you. We make bras that are comfortable for you. They're not made for anyone else to see you in. They're made so that you can be comfortable in
• 34:52
  and physically comfortable in the bras that you're wearing. And, you know, her really powerful moment was about choosing herself and prioritizing herself. So how cool to have, you know, the two of us come together and it's been very successful. Oh my gosh, that's so cool. I'm going to check it out immediately after this. What do you think is important advice for entrepreneurs in 2022? I always found that it was
• 35:20
  important to not be totally discouraged by all the no's. A lot of people tell you why your idea is bad. And that's not saying don't listen to them.
• 35:33
  But don't just take it and shut down and say, okay, I guess I shouldn't start my company. Listen to what they're saying. Listen to who they are. See if putting it through your filter of what you believe and why you're pushing this idea, if you want to listen to parts of it or all of it to help inform how you should shape things go forward. A lot of people have really helpful things to say. But a lot of times people are saying no for a reason that it hasn't been done before. Maybe it's too hard. Maybe there are options.
• 36:03
  that's probably an indication that it could be something good to go into because other people have found it too hard to do it before. So if you have the resilience and grit to push through, this could be a great opportunity. I think one moment that really has always stood out to me was during business school. We had this idea. We were so energized. Nothing had physically come from it. We barely had a pitch deck, right? But we were just so excited about the idea of it. And then a competitor in the space
• 36:30
  raised some money and they were called the Warby Park of bras and some PR was written about them. And I was like, it's over. We're done. Someone else is doing it. And I was in a class that was all about actually taking action on the business you were working on. And I came in, it was a small class and the professor and I were close. And he said,
• 36:49
  you look really upset. What's going on, Jane? And I said, you know, this just happened. And he was like, Oh my God, this is incredible. And he takes, he Googles it, finds the article and projects it on the screen in front of everyone. And I'm dying. I'm like purple. I'm like, how could you humiliate me like this? Like we're done. The company's over. And he was like, guys, guys, guys gather around. Like the best thing just happened to Jane. Look at this. Look at this. What is wrong with this guy?
• 37:13
  And his point was, look, like this just gave you all the validation you could have ever wanted about your idea. Real money, real VC money is going behind a similar idea in the space. The execution for you is going to be totally different. Like we knew about this brand, of course. So it's not like we had said, oh my God, we hadn't heard of them. We saw them. We said there's still space for us in the market because we're going to do it differently in X, Y, and Z ways. And we believe there's space for that.
• 37:42
  And his point was, you know, you're going to execute on it. Your brand is going to be entirely different. Your value proposition is going to be different. And you know how to do that better than these guys do. But this just proved to you that there's opportunity in that space, which is really exciting. And that was, it was specific about the funding of this other competitor, but it can be applied across a number of different times when you're feeling down about the way things are happening.
• 38:07
  panning out and just try to understand why something is happening and if it is actually constraining to your growth or your path to continue to build the business or not. That is such a great piece of advice. Thank you so much for sharing it.
• 38:28
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 38:52
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 39:15
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 39:31
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 39:56
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 40:18
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that. Thank you.