Felix: Today, I'm joined by Kelly and Laura Moffat from Kirrin Finch. Kirrin Finch is a conscientious men's wear-inspired apparel for women and non-binary folks and was started in 2015 and based out of Brooklyn, New York. Welcome Kelly and Laura.


Laura: Hey there, thanks so much for having us.


Kelly: Yeah, we're really excited to be here.


Felix: Excited to have you both on. Tell us more about the idea behind this business, because the copy, the idea behind it all started when you were looking for clothes for your wedding, right?


Laura: Yeah, it was 2014 and we were getting organized and planning our wedding and obviously clothing is a key component of that. Both of us we're not really into addresses and that wasn't really part of our wardrobe, and so as a woman that's getting married, if you don't wear a dress, there were not a lot of options back then. And so we were looking online, we were looking in stores and it was a really demotivating and frustrating experience.


We ended up getting custom suits made from a local Brooklyn tailor, which was an amazing experience, but it made us realize that there was an opportunity for people like us, for clothing that's not traditional... outside the traditional binary of women's wear and men's wear, there was a big unmet need. And that was the impetus for us starting the brand.


Felix: Got it. You mentioned to us that you also talked to others as well and got their feedback too. So tells more about that, when you discovered that there's a problem for you, you solved it by getting a custom made. And then what led you to find out if other people had a similar challenge?


Laura: I was a marketer by trade before I started the brand, and so for me, I was always very focused on like, "Okay, that's great. That's a great idea, but what's your research to support it?" And I had done a lot of market research in my previous life, and so for me, the first step was like, "Okay, let's validate the business." And so we did surveys, we did one-on-one interviews with people to really find out if there was... was there a true unmet need?


And if so, what was the underlying frustration? What could we do to solve it? What are the products that people were looking for? And I think that we were able to validate the initial idea by talking to those people. Like friends and friends of friends and getting beyond your own network, that was what we did.


Kelly: We even spent some time just going to some local bars and combing folks out in the wild, if you will, so from everything, from the folks that we knew to complete strangers. And I think that that's something that's really important. A lot of folks, I feel like when they first get this idea of a business, they're like, "Oh, I'm not going to tell anyone someone's going to steal my idea." But quite frankly, it is really hard to start a business and no one has the same passion that you're going to have for this.


And maybe there's a few other folks, but taking that activation energy is a really big leap into the actual creation of your business. So I think that the validation from folks is far more important.


Felix: Yeah, and I think what you're getting at too is that the very minimal risk that someone can "take your idea" is totally worth taking in order for you to even get started and get this kind of initial research going. And the way you explained it too was, is not as a formalized or professional as may sound like is required. When you're doing market research, people think, "Oh, you got to have some scientific lab coat on and run these experiments."


But you're saying that you just went out and talked to people that you knew, and then the friends of friends and like going to venues or places that you could find other people that might be potential customers and just asking them and talking to them. Now, when you were first starting, were you also looking at understanding people's, I guess, thoughts around wedding attire or was it broader than that?


Laura: It was definitely much broader than that. And we also didn't really get into the wedding market until much later in our business, so it was basically the impetus came from us searching for wedding clothing, but at the end of the day, what it came down to was we discovered from our own thinking and speaking to other people that the overall shopping experience was incredibly demotivating for our customer.


They would go shopping, everyone's like, "Oh, let's go shopping, let's get excited, go buy new outfit," and then you would go, and then you'd see stuff in the women's section that really didn't feel right for you and didn't match your personal aesthetic. Then go to the men's section, see stuff that you really, really liked and want to wear, but then ultimately it's not designed to fit your body. And we heard that like over and over and over again, and we still hear that to this day.


We did focus group yesterday, talk to our customers and we still hear that same insight, which is like, "I go shopping and it's so demotivating because there's not a place for me."
Kelly: Except for Kirrin Finch.


Except for us, but people still go out into the world and they're still looking and we're still acquiring new customers all the time. So that still rings true that fashion is still incredibly binary.


Felix: Now, I want to definitely get into this topic of this motivating side of it. Now, when you were going in talking to potential customers, potential demographic, were there any surprising insights for either of you that were wide and didn't even think about that? Were some things just validating which you already thought or were there other things that surprised you?


Laura: Yeah. I think the thing that has surprised us and still surprises us like clothing, when you think about clothing, you think, "Okay, it's fabric, I put on to cover up. I use it as a way to keep warm, I sometimes use it to wear to special occasions." But what we've begun to discover that clothing is so important to your psychological wellbeing and how you present yourself to the world. It's the first thing that people see when they see you, so it generates all these different emotions.


And I think the thing that we discovered is that there was this incredible insight about when you're not able to wear the clothing that makes you feel good, you don't feel like you can be your true self. And so therefore when you do find clothing that makes you feel good and matches your internal personality, you become that much more confident and you feel authentic. Other people notice that you feel confident, they notice that your outlook is more positive.


We just thought it was annoying that you couldn't find clothing to wear, but I think that we've discovered that it's just so much more important than that and that it actually does impact people incredibly emotionally to have clothing that makes them feel good.


Kelly: And I think it's not just for our customer base. Certainly, I think it's exacerbated by the fact that time and time again, they've had this de-motivated experience and they can't represent themselves authentically. But we have a very distinct memory of speaking to a friend of mine who was telling me they were going on an interview and she was putting up her red power lipstick. The way that you can show the world how you feel is just so, so important and clothes are a big part of that.


I think that there's also been a shift in society of more acceptance of folks to present themselves outside of the binary and there's been an interesting growing customer base of like parents who have kids who are presenting themselves, perhaps says non-binary or trans. And they've had this experience where the parent has gone shopping with their child for a long time and it's never really this experience that is good for either party.


And we'll get these emails of parents saying, "I'm so grateful for your existence because I can finally give my kid an outfit that feels right to them to go to a bar mitzvah or their graduation or whatever that special event is, and that's something that's really powerful as well.


Felix: Yeah. I think like you had mentioned, is not just the clothing, it's that there's representation or that there's an industry that cares to create clothing for them too. And you mentioned this word frequently, which is demotivating, and I think it's important one because when you were setting out to solve or to solve this problem of a demotivating experience, was it as simple as just having clothes or products that fit their aesthetic and their body, or were there other things that you focus on either at the beginning or now that can make that shopping experience more delightful?


Laura: Yeah. I think for us, because we are a small brand and because we really do understand our customer, it's really important to have a really close connection with our customer so that they feel... Their experience has been... I'll tell you my experience. I went shopping for a pair of jeans in my 20s, and this has happened many times. I went to the women's section, I felt these weren't right for me, I went to the men's section and the sales woman said, "Excuse me, ma'am, the women's department is downstairs." And that feeling is awful, you feel terrible."


So I think for us, it's really important that we provided approachable, safe, judgment free zone for our customer, whether that be the way that we interact with them via email, whether be the way that we attract them through our website, our chat, our copy on our website. It all needs to feel very welcoming and approachable so that our customer says, "Oh, wow, there is a place for me, there's a place that gets me." That is this judgment free zone where they can just know that they can be themselves and not worry about feeling judged.


Kelly: Especially as we've gotten into the more formal clothes as well, a lot of people have never worn a suit before they come to us. And so there are emotions attached to that, so we need to sometimes present as part of that journey for them is education, part of it is fit, part of it is just being like, "You know what? You're going to look great because this is how you feel right."


Felix: Can you say more about the education piece? Because I think there's important factor about how the product which has just never existed before there for a lot of your customers, this is like their first time buying this kind of clothing that requires a lot of education from you. So tells more about how you're able to bridge that gap to help them make informed decisions when they are shopping for your product.


Kelly: Absolutely. I think we approach it in a variety of different ways. One is we do a lot of education through our blog, through our Dapper Scouts program, which is we're taking folks that are... Some of them are bigger Instagram people and some are just people that have really cool style and are doing interesting things in the community. So talking a little bit about style inspiration, talking a little bit about like what pairs well. We'll get like an email from someone they're like, "Ah, all I really wear is like gym shorts and a shirt and I'm getting married. Help me please."


And so it's from that perspective, it's talking a little bit about what's the difference between a dress shirt and a casual shirt? It's creating an opportunity for in-person fittings when that feels like is a safe space from a COVID perspective, but we're exploring a lot of virtual options for folks right now. And it's also just when someone sends us email, it isn't a barrier of like, "Oh, well, you're supposed to know this stuff." No, it's like the people that work in our customer service are, "Okay, let me help you get there. You have a question, great. Thanks. Here's my suggestion."


Laura: And I think Kelly's getting at the fact that like when we look at traditional fashion, it's like generally skinny, tall, models, and there's not a lot of representation around outside that typical framework body type, although that's changing. We're seeing a lot more representation of plus size models. But I think it's really important for us to provide representation to show people like, yeah, there are people that look like you, there are people that wear clothes like you. It's okay to be able to dress outside of the traditional mold.


And I think part of our goal is to be able to provide that visual representation for people so that they can see that there are people like them out there dressing the way that they want to.


Felix: I think one area of your brand that I think that really stands out is when it comes to the modeling for your clothing and looking at the website already seems more inclusive and diverse than a typical clothing or fashion website. Can you say more about the decisions behind that?


Kelly: Yeah, thank you. That means a lot because it's something that we've put a lot of time and effort into. Most of our models are just real folks. Everything from someone that we've found on a subway platform and said, "Hey, you have really cool style. Do you want to come model for us?" To people that apply via our web platform and they're genuinely great people and also have really cool style. And so I think that that kind of approachability comes across when you see the photos of them and that allows for people to see them as well.


We try really hard to add in lots of new faces as well. We'll have bigger numbers in our photo shoots because we want people to see the way it sits on different people's bodies.
Laura: You need to see on lots of different body types to know if it's right for you.


Felix: Definitely makes sense. Now once you set out to do this market research and realize that other people like you are facing the same kind of problems, what were the next steps to actually... I guess rather before we get there, was it immediate that, oh, there is an opportunity to start a business here or what were some follow on steps after your market research validated that this was a real problem?


Laura: I remember there being an urgency because we definitely, there was a few businesses in the space that were beginning to... We're not without competitors, there are competitors, but it was that time where things were beginning to shift and I felt like, okay, this is a great opportunity, we really do need to jump on it. However, neither of us had any fashion background, so for us to jump on this opportunity that we definitely saw definitely came with challenges.


I worked in pharmaceutical marketing, Kelly was a teacher, and so we didn't know anything about fashion at all. So that was definitely a big learning curve. I think that we had the marketing background where we felt solid in the foundation of the business, but making the product, we had no idea what we were doing, and I'm happy to tell you a little bit about that journey.


Felix: Yeah tell us more about, I think this is a state that a lot of entrepreneurs are at where they're aspiring to start a business and they have a passion for solving a specific problem probably because they're facing it themselves, but they don't have the expertise. So tell us more about how you navigated this space when you just have never done it before.


Laura: One of the things in the market research that we did ask is I think that we knew because we didn't have a fashion background that we wouldn't be able to just launch an entire collection of like all different types of garments. So we thought to ourselves like, "Let's choose a flagship product. Let's find out what the flagship product should be, and then let's make that product really amazing." So in our market research, we ask people like, "What's the one product that you're basically like your wish product you're dying for?"


At that time, what people said was they really wanted an amazing button up shirt. We were like, "Great, let's make an amazing button up shirt." And so that was our initial product launch. Basically, we joined a fashion accelerator, fortunate enough that at the time in Brooklyn, there was a place called The Brooklyn Fashion Design Accelerator that was this great incubator space. They had a bunch of other small fashion businesses. It had a sample room, it had mentors, people that knew how to make garments.


And they basically held our hand all the way through the initial process of making the product. And so we're very fortunate to have that space. But yeah, we went with a flagship product, we focused on that and that was the entry point into getting into the space.


Felix: I like this idea of just when you are again, brand new, don't try to do too many different things, try and make one product very successful and try to do that one as best as possible. Tells more about that. The button up shirt was what you went with, what were the steps involved in designing that? Because that's obviously way harder than just a good t-shirt right? You wouldn't think about it maybe at face value, but there's more technology that's involved in designing a button up shirt. So tell us more about that experience.


Kelly: There's actually a lot of different pieces that go into making a button up shirt that we, as we said, had no idea. The good news is we now do. But it's everything from like, there's a thing called grading and marking. Okay, you now have a shirt, but then you need to make a size range. You take that one shirt and then you figure out how you're going to incrementally get to the different sizes. Who are you going to partner with from a factory perspective? Who is going to be your pattern maker, developing that initial pattern?


Then fabric, sourcing, all these things, we had no idea. And I think that it comes down to being very humble in the fact that we didn't know, but we were thirsty for knowledge. So we did a few things like taking classes at some of the local persons, FIT. Those are in our back door, which we're very fortunate to have, but so many things are online now. There's also lots of courses that exist like lynda.com. There is knowledge out there, much of which you don't have to pay for and that initial beginner stuff, even YouTube.


The other thing that we did was surround ourselves with a lot of really great mentors. And I think there's a lot of really great free resources out there for... Especially when you're starting, SCORE, SBA, all these places where you can go and you say, "Hey, I have this business idea. What do you think?" Or if it's more specialized, we had a fashion mentor, we had a business mentor and a lot of this stuff. People are excited about new ideas and new businesses and want to help, and so we just...


Some of those people are still with us today. One of our mentors from The Brooklyn Fashion Design Accelerator five years later is just a personal mentor for the two of us. And some of them have come and gone. But it's I think really, really important to find those people to float your ideas around and surround yourself with people that know more about stuff than you.


Felix: When you're developing, there's one thing that I've heard from other fashion and clothing brands, companies is that sizing is one of those biggest challenges. How were you able to test or validate or sample the kind of products that you were making before going forward with a much larger production run?


Kelly: We did something that we actually thought was pretty normal, but apparently is actually very unusual. We created a fit party. Basically we created our base size and then we said, all right, we're going to grade it out and figure out, okay, how does that size then go across our size range? And then we took our pattern maker and we invited a whole bunch of people over, gave them some drinks and food and said, "Hey, come try on this stuff, we're going to have a party."


And one by one, people would go meet with our pattern maker and try on the shirts and we'd take photos and take measurements and they would give their feedback. And then the rest of the time, people were socializing and looking at the new designs that we're coming out with. And these were all people that were very, very interested in the business idea that we were growing, so they wanted to experience that, but also they were excited about the other people that were in the room, because they were at a similar interest.


That is something that I think at the very core of that start. We then started to snowball into creating this group of folks that knew about our business that were excited about our business and we were able to tap into their interests, their knowledge and their feedback. And that's something that we have really tried to thread throughout our business, is coming back to the people that care about the business, that are loyal customers, that have lots to say and continually ask them, what is it that they want? What is their feedback?


Laura talked about the fact that we just did a focus group last night. Just continually touching base because it's very easy to say, "Oh, this is definitely what people want." But if you don't ask them, you don't know.


Felix: Yeah, that's interesting, this idea of a fit party that looking back on it, it makes a ton of sense. Well, I guess it's not common in that industry. I guess it's similar to almost like a tasting party for like a food and beverage brand.


Kelly: Exactly, yeah.


Felix: And I think one of the coolest things that you experienced was that there's an ancillary benefit to all of this, which was the start of a community, which I think a lot of times when you're starting off a brand or a company for the first time, you're getting this feedback, but often just from the founders to a given customer, but the customers don't know each other. But it sounds like you built this organically and it's been helpful since then.


Now, when you were going through this fit party, were there multiple fit parties, multiple iterations? How did you work towards a model or a sample that was ready for production?


Laura: I think that fit party was a component of it. I think the initial development of the prototype, I think we probably spent a year working on the initial prototype before we even got to the fit party to be honest with you, we... Because it was so important for us to get the fit right, because the customer, the ultimate pain point was around fit. They saw stuff that they liked, they knew... And also our customer is... Fit is an incredibly important component.


They have strong feelings around how things sit on their body, where they sit on their body, the positions of where things touch. We basically bought a bunch of different types of shirts and we iterated over, "We want this thing to be like this, we want to remove this button here. We want to keep the collar tater here." For example, like on men shirts, the collar is often very structured, sits very nicely because it's often worn with neck wear. On women's shirts, the collar's offs and floppy and super shapeless because people don't wear neck wear.


So for our customer, some of them like to wear neck wear like a tie or a bow tie, it was really important that we made the collar in a way that it could hold its weight. The other thing is the circumference, so like a collar on a men's shirt is made for a man's neck. So a woman puts on a men's shirt, the circumference is massive. So for us, we were iterating on all these tiny little details that you wouldn't even think about to make sure that we made the perfect shirt for our customer.


Like our customer, for example, doesn't really want the shirt to have a really silhouetted look and be super feminine. And so a lot of women's shirts have darts because they basically help give that accentuated curve loop. And so for us, we had to create a shirt that didn't have darts, but so it was really flattering. So there was a lot of things that we had to do even before we got to that prototype for the fit party to get it to be a place where we felt good about it.


After the fit party, we really worked hand-in-hand with our pattern maker to make those final adjustments, get the feedback and get it into production. But I think there was a lot of work that went into like almost months before we even got it on different types of body types before we even got to that point.


Kelly: I think we feel quite confident about the current fit of our shirts and I think we did a good job. However, that said, we're currently doing evaluation of basically our size 14 upward to say, "This is something." We really pride ourselves on being more in size inclusive, and so it's something that we need to continue to reevaluate and what can we do to make that area better? And so that's something that we're spending a lot of time and energy on right now.


Felix: So when you get this kind of feedback, I think the example that you gave was that you realized that you don't want darts, but I'm assuming your customer's not saying that, they must just say, "I don't want a feminine silhouette." So when you're getting this kind of feedback, that it needs to be translated to actual technical specifications on your clothing, how do you do this? How do you get the feedback that's probably highly qualitative and then turn it into something that a manufacturer would understand?


Kelly: That's part of the job of a pattern maker, so for us to say, "Hey, this is what we want." And the first few folks that we were thinking about working with weren't the right ones, because in their mind, we had to have darts. They were very much thinking of fashion in the binary of men's and women's wear and we were very much saying, "What we are trying to create does not exist and you need to be on board with understanding that in order to create what it is that we want." And so we've been really fortunate to find the right partners over time.


And some of that is... There's been certainly some bumps in the road, where all of a sudden, one day the person at the factory where we were making some shirts was out sick or whatever, and so someone else was in charge of the buttons and then they saw that it was a "woman's shirt," so they changed the size of the buttons to be in line with what is on a "women's dress shirt." And I got the sample back and I said, "What in the world has just happened? On the sheet, it says very clearly here, it's supposed to be an eight to nine by nine."


They're like, "Oh, well, it was a woman's shirt." I was like, "But I have specifically said this." And so every now and then there's these little bumps, but over the course of the years, we've found the right partners.


Felix: I think this is an important point, which is that I've been hearing more when it comes to brands and companies that are creating basically new product categories. And when you are going to manufacturing, you cannot settle, you cannot necessarily just depend on them saying yes or no. And you have to push the boundaries a bit, because again, it's something that they have not done before. Now, how do you go about finding a manufacturer that not just understands your vision, but then also make sure they execute or carry through on it?


Kelly: We're really lucky, we've got... We manufacture primarily in three different countries right now; in the U.S., in Italy, and in India. And so we've got a point person on the ground in Italy and in India who are... They're the first point of contact where they're already... When we're starting to work with a new factory, they're saying, "This is what the brand is, this is what they're trying to achieve. Do you understand what it is that they're trying to achieve? Are you on board with this?"


Because ultimately they have to be invested in what we're trying to do from not just like, "Oh yes, I want to make this product." But they need to get it and they need to care about it because it is different.


Felix: Now, when you were launching, how many patterns or fabrics did you launch with?


Kelly: We had different patterns of shirts.


Laura: I think we did two shirts. We basically did a short sleeve shirt and a long sleeve shirt. And I think we probably did five or six different fabrics in either, but we basically did as a pre-order Kickstarter, so there wasn't like a ton of... There was no issue of buying too much inventory and not selling it because we'd done it as a pre-order Kickstarter campaign.


Kelly: But remember, we made basically and then we doubled up so that we had some inventory, so that we then were able to... Okay, so we sold basically, say it was... I can't remember right. Say, we sold 200 shirts and then we made 400 so that we had the ability to then launch our website with product.
Felix: Makes sense. We'll talk about Kickstarter in a second. Now, when you were deciding what kind of fabrics to launch with, how did you decide that? What was the thought process behind what would be a popular pattern or fabric?


Laura: I think it's a lot of things. I think that to this day, it's still... I think a lot of people pay a lot of money for fashion forecasting and looking at runway, and figuring all of that stuff out. But I think for us, it's always about what do we like, what do our customers like? What is the patterns that I think that we see that we think are going to do well? In the beginning, we were buying stock fabrics. So we would go to fabric vendors, look at the fabric, see if we liked it. Now we're a little bit bigger and we're able to buy prints that we like and then get those printed onto fabrics.


But at the end of the day, it's still a guessing game. It's like, how do you know that the product that you're making is going to be bought by your customer? I think you just have to really understand your customer and know what your customer likes and make that decision. And we still do market research around... through social media, we'll do like Instagram polls like, "Which fabric should we choose? Which colors should we choose?" So that we're still staying on pulse with what our customer's looking for.


Kelly: The other thing is we are creating a product in some capacity that has existed previously. Our product is men's wear-inspired. Some people create a brand and it's this completely new thing. Our customers have been going into the men's section for years and years and years and saying, "Ah, I want that shirt with the elbow patch, but they don't make it in a way that fits my body because it's flaring out at the hips and it's gaping at my chest." But we're saying, "Ah, we agree. We like that and we can make it."


We don't always have to recreate the wheel with what we're creating, the Tweed blazers that we run, that's something that's been around for hundreds of years. And so we're just saying, "Hey, yeah, you can have that too. We'll make it for you to fit."


Felix: I think there's a good lesson in there about how you don't always have to be... Can invent something from complete scratch. And you should look for what your customers already want, but might already be on the marketplace to some degree with obviously your particular tweaks to it. So I think that's important point to remember that you don't always have to invent something from scratch.


Now, I want to talk about the Kickstarter campaign. The results of it were over 300 backers raising over $36,000. Tell us more about this campaign. What kind of preparation went into it before you launched the campaign?


Laura: It's interesting because it's been, I think what, five years since we did the Kickstarter campaign, so it's hard to remember exactly what it was like. But I remember it was a lot of preparation. I think a lot of people are like, "Oh, I'm going to do a crowdfunding campaign and ask them questions like, 'Well, do you have this? Do you have a video?' 'Oh, no.'" So I think that we really wanted to make sure that we were strategically buttoned up with everything before we ran the campaign.


So making sure we knew which products we were going to offer and making sure that our prototypes were ready. Making sure that we had a really amazing video that told our brand story. I think that was a key to everything, is making sure that we had the brand strategy locked in before we ran the Kickstarter so that we weren't just selling a product, we were selling a brand. And I think we spend a lot of legwork ahead of that time, thinking about who's the customer? What's their pain points? What's the customer profile? How do they feel? What is our brand going to do to solve that? So that when we did launch, it was a very obvious brand narrative and story that people could get behind.


And I think that we saw that with the launch of the Kickstarter that people really did get it, they did feel like, "Wow, oh, wow. I see myself in that brand and I want to support it." So I think like from a strategy perspective, that was really, really important. And then logistically, it's all the stuff of setting up the page and making sure that a good video, and then... But the thing that I think that people don't think about when the Kickstarter, when the Kickstarter was over, we're like, "Oh, great, we have all these backers." And then it was like, "Okay, go make the product."


But then it was like when we had made the product, we had to ship the product and we had no idea how to ship the product.
Kelly: That's not true. You are remembering incorrectly-


Laura: Yeah?


Kelly: ... because I was the one that did all the research and how in the world to get these people the product. What I was going to say is, actually what we did is where I think a lot of businesses sometimes lose out on the success of these crowdfunding campaigns is thinking about actually how you make the products and how do you get the product to people, because they're so focused on the front end. We had already set up the factory that we were planning on using. We had already sourced all the fabric, we had spoken with the places that we were going to get it from, created the purchase orders, setting that all up so that as soon as we figured out exactly how much we had sold, we are able to press go.


And then also doing a bunch of research on what was the type of packaging that we are going to use? What was the type of distribution we were going to use? Was it UPS, USPS, FedEx, whatever the platform is that you utilize, because I think there's a missed opportunity and making sure that you're pricing things correctly. And that doesn't mean we did it all correctly, but I think that what happens often is if you say, "Ah, I'm going to sell this shirt on Kickstarter for X amount of dollars."


And then you realize, oh, I completely forgot about how much does it cost to get to the customer and what am I going to put it in? Because if you're putting in a poly mailer versus a box, all of a sudden the cost is completely different. All those kinds of questions are really important to ask yourself prior to doing the crowdfunding campaign.


Felix: Let's talk about that, I think this is important one about pricing because, like you're saying, a lot of people will come off the high of like a successful campaign and realize, "Wow, there's a lot of hidden costs that we didn't anticipate." So tells more about those. You mentioned some around shipping and packaging. What are some other hidden costs that came your way after the Kickstarter campaign?


Laura: I think costing in general is challenging, especially for a physical product. You've got the fabric, and the buttons, and the hang tags, and the packaging and they... One of the hidden costs in fashion is often what's called grading and marking. You basically make a pattern, but then you have to make sure that you know what it's going to look like in multiple sizes. If you forget about that, in a brand, we have 13 sizes, so the grading and marking costs can be expensive. I don't know, I don't know.


Kelly: I think forgetting like from a crowdfunding perspective, but I think one of the hidden costs that customers aren't generally aware of that's happening right now is an increase in shipping costs. And that comes from literally like when you're bringing goods into the country or it's traveling around the country if you're producing domestically and the cost from a... Either you have a warehouse, distribution center or whatever. Whoever is doing it, doesn't matter, the cost is increasing and there's also a lot of things that are arriving on in a longer lead time or are not arriving.


So when it comes down to it as a consumer, when I placed an order from that brand and I paid 40 bucks to get it expedited and it doesn't show up, who do you think is eating that cost? It's not USPS, I'll tell you that much. That's something that we really had to contend with over the course of the pandemic. There's definitely a price difference between that local carrier, that USPS versus someone like a UPS and FedEx and there's certainly is any increased reliability.


But there is also a significant price difference, especially when you are shipping a smaller number of goods. So as we've gotten quantities of scale, we've been able to move more of those packages over to a UPS, which definitely helps with some of that stuff, because when you lose a $575-suit, it's not just the shipping costs that you've lost.


Felix: You're speaking of the pandemic, I want to talk about the launching of your suiting collection, which based on what you told me was one of the best things, and also not so great things in the past and past year, year and a half, so tells more about that. So you launch your suits February 2020, right before the world shut down. Tell us more about your experiences over 2020 with that product launch.


Laura: We were really excited about the product launch. It'd been something that we'd been working towards for a long time. We always knew we wanted to make a suit because the impetus of the brand was all around us finding suits for our wedding. But we wanted to feel ready, find the right partner and make sure that we could make it in a way that we felt confident in about. So we were really excited about our suiting. We spent a lot of time working on the fit, finding the right partner, finding the rights materials.


So yeah, we launched it in February of 2020. It was like gangbusters. The month was crazy, it was like our best sales month ever. We were feeling like, "Wow, we've totally validated this product. We're ready to walk this in, it's going to be like the flagship product." And then of course, COVID starts.


Kelly: Of course, who could have predicted that COVID?


Laura: Yeah, COVID. Then end of February, we're like, "COVID, is this going to be a problem? I don't know." I was like, "I think we'll be okay." And then I remember early March, we were like, "This doesn't feel so good." Then by mid-March, we were no longer going to the office. Everybody was working from home or gone to their retreat somewhere in some country house somewhere, and sales were basically like radio silence. So we had this crazy high and low moment where we were feeling so good about the suiting.


I remember it was like mid February and I was already talking about the sell through and reordering, like making a reorder. We were like, "Wow, we're going to have to reorder this so soon, this is amazing." And then, like I said, "It was like screech silence to nothing." And so I think that was really challenging. But also there were so many other things going on at that moment that it was like we just had to... What were we going to do? We had to just knuckle down.


2021 was... Oh sorry, 2020 was a great year for us to take a step back from the business and really make sure that we had all of our systems, that we're efficient and evaluated. We had all of our, the people that we had employed, that we had a good strategy around that. So I think that we always knew that the suiting was a great product and it would come back, but we just knew that we were going to have to take a little pause for 2020 and just get through the year.


Kelly: And we did and it did exactly that. As soon as our... We have a very strong New York customer base, and as things went from being pretty apocalyptic here to this past summer, especially in the beginning of the summer prior to Delta, there was a lot of renewed sense of normalcy, even within the really obviously continued terrible times. And by no means are we out of a pandemic, but you were starting to see folks that maybe they had originally planned a wedding for 200 people or 100 people.


And they were saying, "All right, well, it's now been a year and I really love this person and I want to commit to them, so we're going to have a ceremony of 30 people." But they still needed that suit and they still wanted to get dressed up and that kind of stuff for that experience. So we then started to see people as they were starting to do more things coming back and then have had a very strong sales over the summer.


And so what the fall holds for us, I can tell you as the person that runs our production, making projections is a little bit of a rolling of the dice, but I think we're optimistic and hopeful for not just our business, but also for the state of the world.


Laura: And I think we were kind of lucky. We're a D2C company and we don't have a brick and mortar store. So a lot of these companies that had say, like multiple retail stores and they're stuck paying rent on these multiple retail stores, we don't have a lot of overhead. And so for us, yes, it was unfortunate and there was less sales than we would have wanted, but we still didn't have to do the crazy pivot that tons of these businesses had to do where they were like, "Oh my God, I suddenly need to really focus on my e-commerce."


And they're doing this crazy dance of suddenly trying to get their online store up and running, figure out how to do paid ads, figuring out how to do paid search. We were only doing all of that stuff and our customers were already doing online shopping. So there wasn't this massive shift that I think a lot of businesses had to make away from physical retail. Then the other thing is, what I was going to say, a lot of businesses did this crazy pivot. Maybe they were making super formal wear and they suddenly were like, "Oh, we're not going to survive. We're going to just start making like sweatpants."


And a lot of people asked us, "Are you going to pivot? You're going to start making like athleisure?" I don't know. First of all, as a small brand it's hard enough to make one product or to make any products. To suddenly pivot your entire business towards a completely different direction is really challenging. And so I think strategically, we just said, "You know what? We know this is going to come back, we know we're going to continue to do well. People are going to go back to the office, people are going to start going back to events again, people are going to start going to weddings, again.


Let's just hunker down and make sure that we have all of our systems, and all of our strategy, and all of the things that we need as a good solid foundation of the business. And when things do return to normal or somewhat normal, we will be ready and we'll be there to capture the opportunity."


Felix: And I think despite this, you still mentioned to us that you were able to grow 30% year-over-year from 2019. What contributed to this?


Laura: I think people were still optimistic about where they were going to go and people still had to wear clothes. Just because they were at home doing a meeting didn't mean that they were sitting naked doing their Zoom meetings. They still had to wear-


Kelly: Although some people were [crosstalk 00:43:56] fans. We recommend it.


Laura: Everyone was doing the whole like, don't worry about your bottom half, just make sure you look good on your top half. But people were still going to business meetings, they were still wearing clothes. People were still buying clothes. It's not like everybody stopped wearing clothes. I think it's just that they've stopped buying stuff that they may have been more focused on wearing outside, but we're still selling lots of products, and we still sold suits, and we still sold formal wear.


Laura: And so it was just that I think people were purchasing less than they would have or less frequently, but we still were able to... We added new products to our line, we increased our volume, we increased our web traffic. We still just kept doing all the things that we were doing before. I just think that we didn't grow as much as we would have otherwise.


Kelly: Yeah, and we're very fortunate.


Felix: I think one of the strategies there that you took was to, rather than trying to pivot and trying to capture more top line, more sales, you mentioned focusing on making sure everything's buttoned up. And you talked about making improvements to your operations and systems. Can you say more about that? What systems or what procedures or operations were you making changes to?


Laura: Firstly, one of the things that... It's still an ongoing project, but we're an e-commerce site and so it's really important that our website is the best website that it can be possible. And so I made the decision, we've had our website for about four or five years, I think it's time for us to refresh, to take advantage of new technology and different types of websites and update the website. So we're going to have a new website launching in about two weeks.


That's something that we took a step back on and worked on. It's taken a little bit longer than I would have liked, but as all good things do, they take a little while. The other thing that we were doing before, which now seems kind of crazy when I think about it, we were doing all of our returns manually. We're a clothing company, we get returns. It's-


Kelly: We also offer free shipping and returns, so we [crosstalk 00:45:57]


Laura: Yeah, we offer free shipping and returns, so we get returns. And somebody has to process the return, they have to steam it, they have to pack it back up, they have to do all those things. But we were doing all of that... So if a customer wanted their return, they had to email us, we would send them a label and they would send it back to us, which was a ridiculous amount of customer service time.


And so we ditched that and we moved over to an automated return process that the customer can basically do themselves. We just still have to do the processing on the backend, but that saved an enormous amount of time from an internal operations perspective. So it was things like that, where we said, "What are some systems and things that we're doing that are really inefficient and how can we do them in a way, either using software or outsourcing them, things like that?"


Kelly: We also implemented online ticketing system for our customer service and that's something that I think was a really good way for us to continue to grow. Because instead of having one person holding all of the knowledge, it allows anyone to open it up and look at the chain of events that has happened. You can see the customer's history and not something that... It was very much, there was three people in the office and in order for us to grow that had to change. And I think that's been a really good implementation.


Laura: Yeah, we're using Gorgias for the customer service now and we use Loop Returns for the automated returns.


Felix: That's awesome. I was going to ask you what applications you use for that. You mentioned the refresh is ongoing, the redesign of the website, it's going to be launching soon. What are some of the changes or introductions that you guys are making to the website that you think is going to have a big impact on sales?


Laura: Well, firstly, it was designed mobile-first, so I think that... Google, I think two years ago started mobile indexing. Mobile site was indexed versus the desktop site, so it was really important to me that we had a really amazing mobile site. And so the design was actually designed mobile-first and then extrapolated to desktop. So I'm really excited about the mobile site looking amazing. Also 70% of our traffic comes from mobile, which to me is an amazing statistic, but it makes sense, everyone's on their iPhone all the time.


So mobile-first design, the other thing was page speeds. I think one of the challenges with Shopify stores is you have all these amazing apps that you can add on for every single possible thing. But adding apps really slows down your site and page speed is really, really important for search engine optimization. So it was really important to me that we got our page speed back up with a new site. We offloaded a lot of apps and made sure that they were developed in hosts on the theme so that we could improve our page speed.


Those were the two things and just giving the brand an overall refresh. Our price point is relatively high and so I think when you go to purchase from our website, there has to be an elevated look. It has to feel like you're getting your money's worth out of it. And so having it be like an elevated brand look and feel was really also important.


Felix: Awesome. So kirrinfinch.com's website, K-I-R-R-I N-F-I-N-C-H.com. And I'll leave you this last question. You mentioned that you were taking a step back over the last year and a half to do an inventory of everything, to some degree, clean out the chaos of running a business non-staff for the last five, five-ish years. Now, looking forward now that you've spent time buttoning everything up, what do you think the next opportunities have opened up for you because you've invested in these foundational things and now are ready to maybe tackle some bigger project?


Felix: What is the big project or the big pursuit that's coming next after this foundational round that you have gone through?


Kelly: I think one of the things that all these changes we've implemented have allowed us to scale much faster. We've also hired a bunch of new people to the team. And because we have those systems in place, it's going to allow us to really grow at a much faster pace. I feel like we're in a good place with our formal wear, and that's a really nice offering that we are now able to turn key in a really great way and say, "Okay, this is the suit, but now we can add on to that." We've established the supply chains, we've got great relationships with those folks.


Now, it's taking that product that we've figured out and adding more options for people, adding potentially a curvy bottom for our suit pants. And one of the other places that we're really exploring is developing out more of our casual offering so that our ultimate goal is to be a one-stop shop for folks that like to dress with a more masculine of center. And so when they come to us, they're saying, "Ah, okay, it's spring now, weather is changing. Great, I want to put on a bomber jacket," or whatever it is. We want to be able to provide those product offerings to our customers.


Felix: Awesome. Exciting times ahead. Thank you so much, Laura and Kelly.


Kelly: Thank you.


Laura: Thanks so much, Felix. Thanks so much for chatting. We really enjoyed it and we look forward to hearing the podcast.