Felix: Today, I'm joined by Amanda and Katie McCourt from Pantee. That's P-A-N-T-E-E. Pantee is the world's first underwear brand made from upcycle dead stock T-shirts designed to support you and the planet from top to bottom, and were started in 2019 and based out of London. Welcome Amanda and Katie.


Amanda: Hey, thank you so much for having us.


Felix: So pretty unique take on and upcycling. Where did the idea behind the business come from?


Amanda: That's a great question.


Katie: Yeah, no, that is a great question. So Amanda actually came up with the idea back in the summer of 2019, and really the idea came from a growing awareness in the amount of waste produced by the fashion industry and a desire to try and do our little bit to prevent some of that. And I think Amanda was one day walking around some charity shops and thrift shops in London, and just saw the sheer amount of T-shirts that were given away that still were new with the tags and was kind of thinking, what could we do with these? And Amanda, actually, I don't know if you want to tell the story about how you got the first samples made?


Amanda: Yeah, so I kind of saw all of this waste and I read Donna Thomas's Fashion Opus, which was a real eyeopener into kind of the further issues in the fashion industry. And one of the things I was amazed at is the amount of clothing that's made and never really is sold. A lot of that does go to kind of incineration or landfill. So looking at these T-shirts, I was like, well, these are the ones I can see in store, but what about all the ones that have never made it there? So I ended up watching one night, a YouTube video of what you can do with an old T-shirt, and I found women upcycling them into underwear, and I thought, wow, this could be like a really cool idea, could you do this at scale? So, like Katie says, it's a bit of a funny story around how we got our first samples, because neither of us have a background in the fashion industry. So we didn't have a clue of how you go about making a garment.


It's not something we could do ourselves. So I went to, I guess like a kind of dry cleaners that you get on the high street, and then sometimes they have a little sewing machine where you can take up trouser legs and things. So I went into one of those and I followed the instructions of the YouTube video, which is to take your comfiest pair of pants so that you can replicate that style. So although they were kind of clean, they were my underwear. So I kind of rocked up and handed over a T-shirt and my pair of pants and said, "Oh, could you turn this T-shirt into a pair of pants like this?" Which didn't end up happening because it's not really just something you can walk into a dry cleaners and have done. And I realize that now, but yeah, that's kind of how we first started going about getting our concept made into an actual product.


Felix: Yeah. So you mentioned that that first attempt didn't pan out the way that you wanted. So what was the solution, where did you move onto from there to either just create the first samples and then eventually into producing this at scale?


Amanda: Yeah. I actually ended up finding someone at [People Prower 00:03:15] who specialized in making underwear and she made some very brief samples for us, which worked really well and did prove the concept. Like they weren't perfect in terms of fit or style, but I mean, seeing that you can kind of turn a T-shirt and like how much material it takes out of the T-shirt to make into underwear, was really great to see. And then from there we worked with a sustainability minded designer to create some tech packs and get something ready to hand over to a factory or a sampling studio. So there was a lot of research involved, I think on both parts, we spent a lot of time trying to understand the fashion industry and how you go about doing these kinds of things.


Felix: So you had mentioned that neither of you had a background in it and lots of research that I was involved, I think a lot of the listeners out there might see this as an obstacle where they are interested in a particular industry or have an idea, but just don't have any background on it, don't even know where to begin. Do you have any kind of general advice on approaching a business like that where you just don't have the background on it and you're coming in kind of just completely fresh?


Amanda: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I would say, just speak to people, find out where it is good in your area or people who have experience, they might be within your network already and just ask as many questions as you can. Because people are always so helpful and the insights that we've got from people that we've just kind of gone on the phone with, or, well, we've not really met for a coffee because of the way the world's been the last year, but they've been so valuable to us to kind of jump starting and kind of just like accelerating where we need to be. So I definitely think just talking to people is so, so helpful. And then obviously there's all the things that you can do with kind of reading the right books and just reading things every day and trying to kind of get into that mindset as much as possible.


Katie: Yeah. And I'd just like to add to that, that I think that when we started out versus where we are now, we have completely changed. We've learned so much and we have built so much knowledge over that time. But I think from your start date where we are now, it is quite overwhelming to think like, oh my gosh, I need to know everything. But I think if you just take it day by day and every day just stick with it and keep, like Amanda says, having those conversations and just absorbing information and learning things as and when they come up, and then it's amazing the progress that you make. It might not seem like it day in day out that you are doing that learning or growing in that way. But when a significant amount of time has passed and you can look back, I think it is, it's crazy to see the journey.


Amanda: Definitely, and I think when you do look back as well, you kind of are almost grateful for not actually knowing everything because you do, I think approach things differently because you are not kind of set in the ways of going well, that's not the way that we do things and that's not the way that the industry works. You can look back and go, well, actually, if we had known and all of these things that we know now, maybe we wouldn't have tried to do it the way that we did. So it can be a bit of a blessing in disguise to kind of be fresh, fresh thinking in a particular industry.


Felix: Yeah. I've heard time and time again that either by voluntarily or involuntarily having these fresh eyes, having this perspective from outside industry allows you to lead a lot of that kind of innovation. And do you recall any particular things that you and your team approach differently because of your inexperience of just being from outside the industry?


Amanda: Well, I think Katie I'd be so interested to hear what you say about this, because I've definitely gotten an answer in my head.


Katie: Yeah. I would say just our product in general. When we set out our idea was scrapped, the world's first underwear brand made from upcycle deadstock T-shirts, and we had a number of reasons why, the main being just like I said before, like the environmental impacts of the fashion industry. So a lot of people don't really know the impact of their clothes and it's something that we were not aware of at all before we started doing all this research for Pantee. And it's crazy, but it's something like 2,700 liters of water goes into making just one cotton T-shirt and over two billion are made every year. So I mean that maths I can't even do, but we know it's a lot of water.


And the sad thing is, is that so many of these clothes go to waste before even being sold because of overproduction in the industry or maybe there are slight issues on the garments or for whatever the reason may be. So our idea was to take some of this dead stock and upcycle them into underwear. We thought the materials were really soft, their T-shirts have some stretch, it seemed like it was a good idea and it could be done. We knew it had been done from those initial samples, the initial sampling stage but when it actually came to finding manufacturing, it was quite difficult to put across that vision I suppose, and actually make that vision a reality. And I think that we were so fresh in the fashion industry and not really knowing how these things worked, a lot of the advice that we were given at the time was to maybe not do the T-shirts, but we were so determined to do the T-shirts because we were so convinced that such a good idea, that we just really held strong to that.


Katie: And yeah, I mean, fast forward to our Kickstarter, when we launched, we did manage to do that and we did manage to bring the product to life and we've had overwhelmingly amazing feedback on that product. So I think that's definitely an example of holding true to your idea, maybe with a lack of understanding, but what do you think, Amanda?


Amanda: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what I was going to say. I definitely think for us it's been, just the T-shirt concept has been probably one of the hardest to get over the line and it does, it still poses, it's not the solution to the fashion industry's problems at all, by any means, but it is a good way of reusing waste and keeping that in circulation, which is what we want to do. We want to make things that are made to last longer and that's our mission. But we've got, there's so much more that we want to do, but it's been such a great starting point for us. And like Katie says, sometimes I think you've just got to listen to what everyone's saying, understand those reasons and be flexible, but stick to what you want to do and try and find a way to make it work, even if you keep getting no's, there will always be ways round it that work better.


Felix: Yeah. I could imagine that there are probably a lot of doubters that came out too, said that you just can't do this or it's not possible. Were there any examples that stand out to you about people coming out and saying that this product or this approach just doesn't make sense or doesn't work?


Amanda: Yeah, I think it was definitely more about the length, the kind of length it takes or the added time it takes in cutting. So when the kind of garments are being made, you take the fabric, you cut it and then it goes to sew. And when you are using fabrics, I suppose you can kind of cut quite a lot at once, but with the T-shirts, especially with them being dead stock, sometimes there may, we need to check that they're fine and that there's no inconsistencies in the material. So it is a case of looking at those T-shirts individually one by one and cutting them.


So it does slow things down and on a factory floor you are wanting to do things kind of quicker because obviously time is money. So I think that was really our biggest kind of challenge with that. And really all it needed was just to find somebody that understood what we were trying to do and was happy to slow things down and work with us in that way. So we eventually did find that, but it definitely took a while, but then that's only been a good thing for us because we have a great partnership with our production partner and we love working with them. So I'm glad that we didn't kind of jump with the first person and that we took our time to find someone that really understands what we're trying to do.


Felix: Yeah, the thing I'm hearing too, is that there's this very intricate balance where you have to have this vision, this kind of core value, this core idea that doesn't change and then try to stick to that plan as much as possible. But that's also an element of flexibility that you're talking about too. So there's this aspect where you know what you want and you know this is the kind of business kind of supply chain that you want to build. And that even if you get no's or that is not the way you expect it, either the first couple partners, first couple approaches, you don't change your goal, you just keep on trying to find a partner or an approach that will work to reach that goal. So I think that my question is, how do you know when you should be flexible versus when you should just kind of be more stubborn and try to keep on making it work towards that same goal without having to almost dilute the goal or change the goal just to go with what you got?


Amanda: I think that's such a great question because we question this a lot ourselves when we're going through the process. And I think, I do think I personally do believe that you have to, to an extent, trust your gut instincts. But I think a lot of that comes from really listening to what people are saying. Like why are they saying no? Is it because it literally cannot be done? Obviously if that was the case, then we probably would've approached things differently. But if it's just kind of hurdles where it comes to more time or like slightly more expensive than typically you would make your underwear for and things like that, they're all challenges that you can kind of overcome then. And it still makes sense and I think it's something that you can push for.


I do think you can't be blind going into these things and push for something that might never work, definitely. But I think again, like just having conversations with people and really trying to understand, like when we started speaking to our production partner, I was so interested to really understand firsthand how they work on the factory floor, how they see streams of dead stock, do they feel like this is a good solution and for them to be really on board. And I think that we definitely got that from them, as we've got from a lot of people really. I think it was just a case of really, it was factories that didn't love the concept always, but I'm sure now if you were to go back to some of the people we spoke to initially, that they would be kind of more than happy to kind of revisit the conversations because with fashion and things like this, it does come down to order quantities as well.


And with our Kickstarter, the way that you kind of launch it is you don't buy a set amount from your manufacturer like the way we wanted to do it, we were placed in order based upon how many orders have been placed with us. So that was a tricky thing as well. So it wasn't all around, I guess the T-shirts, there was quite a lot of flexibility that was needed from our side.


Katie: Yeah, and I think just to add to that as well, from day one we were really, really passionate about the idea of growing a brand and not just a brand, but a purpose driven brand that would truly have an impact. And there's certain things that we hold really strong to us, but at the heart of that is really doing the best by both people and the planet. And I think that any flexibility that we have, we have, but keeping those two things in mind, that we really want to build out a business that does the best in terms of sustainability and ethics as well. And I think that if you have those purpose pillars at the core of your brand then it gives you almost a post by which you can't move away from. And those two things are things that we've really held true to do through the whole process of bringing Pantee to life.


Felix: Yeah. What I'm hearing too is about the value of understanding that the why, why are you doing it as entrepreneurs, but then also when you are getting these no's, these pushbacks, don't just take it at face value. And the flexibility comes in when there is a no, but then you also understand the why, like why are they saying no? Why is their pushback? And if you agree with it, then yeah, maybe it makes sense to be flexible. But if you don't agree with it, then at least you know the why, and kind of know how to navigate from there.


Katie: 100%.


Amanda: Yeah, absolutely.


Felix: Any stories, any examples where an experience has come at a cost where there have been, there's going to be inevitable mistakes that has come from the inexperience of starting new business or being a different industry, anything that comes to mind where you, lessons learned due to inexperience?


Amanda: Yeah, that's a good question. I think we have been, I mean, touch wood so far, I wouldn't say we've made any huge business threatening mistakes. I think that it's definitely certain times that have taken us longer to do things for sure, and we've probably sat on things for a bit longer than we would if we had the confidence and the experience to kind of know that we're going in the right direction, but we have been quite good at bringing in people who have expertise in those areas that we feel we don't have it in.


So we have Karen who works with us on product development, and very much helps us when we kind of are making any decisions on product design and liaising with the factory. And then we've got Laura who helps us with our merchandising to say how much stock we're buying, because that was a really big thing for us. We didn't want to make bad guesses and have our own dead stock, that's a real key issue that we don't want to have. And then there's been other areas as well that we kind of sought consultation and help with whenever we feel like we need to, which has been really helpful.


Felix: Yeah, and I think there's an important point about how, when you are just starting out, you don't, you're not familiar with the path yet, whether again, because it's its entrepreneurship is new or it's a new industry, you sit on things longer, you don't kind of, I guess, pull the trigger and make the leap sooner due to the kind of confidence basically that anybody lacks from doing something new. So do you, other than hiring thee expertise or find expertise to give you more information to build that confidence, do you find yourself just kind of being more comfortable taking the risk and just taking the leap more frequently now, even without the kind of complete information that you would like?


Amanda: Yeah, definitely. I think that we've, I mean, every month just fills us with like, I guess, thanks to Shopify as well, because there's so much insight into what kind of customers are liking, what's making them buy, what's maybe not. So we are forever looking at data, any data we can get our hands on to help us make more informed decisions. But yeah, Katie, I don't know if you've got any thoughts on that, I know you are very much on that side of it too.


Katie: Yeah. Yeah. I would say that our business journey has been broken into, in my head, some three really distinct time periods. And although we say we started a business in 2019, really over a year, we didn't have a product. We had registered the company, but we actually, at that time, were just working on research and product development. And I think as anyone would've experienced bringing a business to life during this time, we felt like we were at a place that we were nearly ready to launch. And then the world went into lockdown and that gave us in a way a good opportunity to slow down and spend even more time working on our product.


And so that did, I guess help, it gave us breathing room. So when we finally launched on Kickstarter in November, that had been over a year in the making and then really we only launched our Shopify e-comm site in February. So at each different stage we've had completely different learnings, and I think that actually getting to the point where we had our store and having stock in, having products in stock, sorry, was such a big moment for us and pushed us into a completely different way of working. It was a completely different stage for our business. And I think that in itself, seeing people buy the product, seeing people return to buy the product again and getting feedback from customers that's overwhelmingly positive. That does give you more confidence and does drive you to make decisions and to maybe have more ambition or think of even bigger ideas because back at the time when we were just researching and our product was just an idea, it can be very difficult to take those leaps initially and see how you're going to get from A to B when you're just starting out.


Felix: Yeah. So during this product development phase, where you mentioned you got more time to spend on the product, what were some of the things that just felt like the hardest to overcome? Were there certain non-negotiables that were just harder to figure out or certain things that just took longer to figure out than you had expected?


Amanda: Well, I think finding a production partner definitely took a long time and it was quite difficult because of it being locked down as well. And then beyond that, once we had our samples, we did utilize our time. We did a lot of fitting. So we did these on Zoom because we couldn't do them in person, and we sent products to lots of different women of different shapes and sizes. And got, we just kind of chased that feedback as much as we could. We just tried to get them to as many people that we knew to kind of trial them and give us honest feedback, which was so helpful. And we continue to do that, I think to today, we regularly ask our audience, like I said, anything that they would improve and do questionnaires and things. And that's just been so helpful for us, I think, to really understand what it is that women want from their underwear as well.


Felix: So when you were looking for production partners, what did you do to finally land on a partner that was a good fit?


Amanda: Yeah, so I would say that's kind of almost happenstance, but I think we definitely manifested that one. So Karen who helps us with our product development, it was actually a contact of hers who introduced us, which is just amazing really, again, I think it just comes down to like she was speaking to as many people and Karen and I met personally just before lockdown through kind of networking and going to as many meetings with different people in the industry. So yeah, that's how that came about, probably over like six months later from meeting Karen.


Felix: Got it. And so during this, I just want to make sure I got my timeline correct. So you mentioned that you also had kind of like beta testers on the product. Was this before or after the production partner, was it like samples? Where were these almost like beta testers coming from?


Amanda: So yeah, a few different things, a few different places, actually. So we did a kind of sample prior to sampling with our production partner that we're working with now. So some of the women that we've worked with from day one, really, which would've been probably around June, May, June last year, they've tried on samples from a few different places and we were kind of trying to decide where the product was made best and they helped us make that decision too.


Felix: Got it. And where did you find the people to test your products?


Amanda: Well, the first noticeable person, I think that we sent our very first samples to have now become good friends, and we met her through Instagram. Instagram has been incredible for us. It's probably our biggest driver of sales. Our community is very much there and I think she was one of the first people to start following us because we launched our Instagram nearly two years ago. So when we first came up with the concept of Pantee, and I don't actually remember my reasoning behind it at the time, because we did, we were so far off having a product and we didn't really know what it was that we were doing, but it was probably a really good way to manifest the business. So we kind of set up Instagram and just started posting about our journey, and Noel started following us at that point. And she has about 10,000 followers and talks a lot about sustainability and more conscious choices. So it felt like a really good fit for us.


Felix: Yeah, definitely want to talk about building the audience. I think you had mentioned to us that you built an audience ever before you, if my timeline's correct, ever before you had a product or even close to having a product, we'll get to that in a second. Now, when you were working with these different beta testers, what kind of feedback were you looking for? Like talk to us about the, you asked them if they wanted to test out the product, you sent it to them, what were you trying to get out of the testers?


Amanda: We definitely wanted to make sure that this was something that people felt really fit them well and supported them. And then the most important thing to us is always comfort. And although we want something that kind of has that style and a lot of people wear our underwear, like the bra tops as tops. So kind of like underwear is outerwear, we wanted it to be comfortable too, because we found personally whilst looking for underwear, you kind of have your really heavily branded stuff, or you have things that you wouldn't necessarily be comfortable in, or you have things that are super comfortable, but aren't stylistically that great. So that was kind of where we were going for, and I think it was kind of feedback on all of those fronts, really.


Katie: Yeah, we've always been really driven to create a product that we can say is sustainable without the compromise. I think that we would, we always wanted to create a product that people that weren't super into sustainable fashion would want to buy anyway and they want to buy it because it looked good, it felt good, it made them feel good, and it was super comfortable. So we really were trying to get as much feedback from people as early on as possible to ensure that we could bring a product to life that did just that.


Felix: Yeah. I think that's a really important point, and in the entrepreneurs that I have spoken to recently that are in the sustainability space, they say that sustainability is obviously very important, but it almost has to take maybe not a backseat, but like a passenger seat to the more, like the functional purpose of the product. It has to meet that criteria first before most consumers would give it a shot. Did you find that it'd be the same case that while sustainability is important to you and an important value to probably a lot of your customers, they still need it to be a product they would buy anyway?


Katie: Yeah. I definitely think that. And I think as well, if you want to create a brand where you're going to generate returning customers, people need to genuinely love the product and love wearing the product, and it needs to make them feel good. I think that sustainability is really important and it's definitely at the heart of our brand, but it's not the only thing that's at the heart of our brand, and we've always tried to keep that balance.


Amanda: I think Katie and I often talk about sustainability as our guiding light, our conscience, and in the same way that we want our audience and our customers to be comfortable in their panties, we personally want to feel comfortable with the decisions that we are making that impact people and the planet. So kind of in that way, the functionality and longevity of the panties, that the underwear that we make, needs to be a good product, and we can't compromise the quality of that and just focus purely on sustainability.


Like it's also intertwined and it is, it's challenging. There's a lot to learn and we have been, by no means perfect, we are learning every day and we are constantly trying to do things that improve our kind of credentials and how we work. And we constantly go back to the kind of questions that we ask ourselves regularly and make sure that we are doing the best that we can. But yeah, like you say, it is so important that people have a good product, especially underwear because it's something that you have on so close to your skin and really for bra and things, it is something that you want to be functional and supportive and not rub you and leave marks on your skin.


Felix: Yeah, speaking of quality, I can imagine a business debt that is built around upcycling, the supply chain and getting the kind of almost like raw ingredients into your supply chain sounds like it could be a logistical nightmare. Talk to us about your experience with that.


Amanda: Yeah. So one of the first things that we did when we were working out how we would work with T-shirts and that we learned quite quickly, like our probably biggest learning is that we figured out there is only certain T-shirts that we can work with. So for example, we can't work with 100% cotton because it doesn't have any stretch in, and for underwear you need it to have that elasticity. But that's also not a bad thing for us, because if a garment is 100% cotton, then there are better ways to kind of recycle it and keep it in circulation. So we do look with T-shirts with elastin, we also look for a certain weight because we don't want them to be too heavy. And at the same, on the other side of that, we don't want them to be too thin.


And then there is just like a quality of feel, and obviously you don't want anything with holes or anything that's really damaged. So there is definitely an application process for each T-shirt that comes to us, I guess, to make sure that it passes and we know that we can turn it into something great.


Katie: Since we launched, we've started working with not only deadstock T-shirts, but other deadstock fabrics as well and that same mentality applies to all of those. And we have ambitions to branch into other fabrics. I think there's a lot of different types of sustainable fabrics out there and there's a lot of innovation in that space. So although this is something that we are doing now, we really hope to diversify the materials that we use in the future as well, to create different types of sustainable ranges and experiment with different things to see sort of what works best in terms of functionality, but also with keeping that sustainability at the heart, too.


Felix: Yeah, and for anyone else out there that is interested in starting a business that's focused on upcycling, I think that there's almost a QA process to make sure that the material, the products that you are upcycling needs to go through some kind of process. Was this something that was already set up, that's already a practice within manufacturers, or do you have to set up this almost QA process for the fabrics and T-shirts yourself?


Amanda: Well, the way that we source, we kind of have our questions and [Parvon 00:30:12] who we work with, who does our sourcing, she really knows probably better than us in some ways, fabrics to really understand that we are getting what we need. So I guess it isn't like a formal process. I know there's definitely technology now that reads what composition fabrics are, which is super interesting because we have spoken a lot to recycling plants to try and figure out if there's other points in supply chain that we can take deadstock fabric and T-shirts because the fashion industry goes through so many different processes, and at the moment we are taking them at the very beginning. So the T-shirts have never gone to store, they've never been sold, they've come from a factory, but there would be, I guess there's all the T-shirts that perhaps never get sold in store, or have never been worn that are thrown out. There's lots of other waste streams that we could look at that would have to have different types of, like you say, kind of analysis and Q and A.


Felix: Got it. So, we talked earlier about how you were able to build an audience even before having a product, you're able to build and engage social media audiences, from day one you started to focus on that. Talk to us about that. How do you even build an audience or even talk about a brand, a product admission when there's just no product that exists yet?


Amanda: So good question. I mean, I think Katie and I, there were several points where we were discussing, what are we going to post from social media today? And we weren't kind of doing it in a way that we were kind of planning our week's content. It was every day we were thinking of things to say, and on the days where things were going well, then it was really easy for us. But on the days where maybe we'd had a no, or if we felt so far away from ever getting this business launched, it felt really difficult. And I think social media, especially Instagram's one of those places where it is really difficult to actually say what you're struggling with because you kind of have this feeling of always putting out your best self.


So I think we definitely struggled with that at the beginning and there were points where we did go a bit quiet, but we just told our story. We just said what we were trying to do. We gave customers, or I guess our audience, a lot of choices at the beginning and asked them, what brief styles do they like? What do they want, what is their perfect bra, like what would that be? We did a lot of community engagement. So we spent, just posting one thing, but actually engaging with your audience, speaking, listening to what they're talking about, what they like. So we did a lot of that and I think, I mean, it really has paid off. We have a really engaged community and some people that have kind of been with us from the beginning feel like friends, which is really nice.


Felix: Yeah.


Katie: Yeah. I definitely agree, and I think that, like Amanda said, at times it's really difficult to know what to say before you have a product, but we were able to bring people along on this journey and especially during a very weird time for a lot of people when people were at home in lockdown spending lot of time online and just really, really happy to share their thoughts and engage with us and kind of come with us for that experience. And we really, really noticed it when it came to finally launching our Kickstarter. Some of these people had been engaging with us and giving us their thoughts and sharing their opinions on what they wanted the product to be like for a year, and then we launched our Kickstarter and we had this amazing community of people ready to support the business. And I feel like they already felt very engaged and very invested in what we were doing and really, really excited to finally get that product that they had almost helped bring to life with their support and with their opinions.


And even before we did, I think before we did the initial sampling for the product, we did a big piece of customer research that was basically just people from our Instagram, and we managed to pull amazing insights from, I think maybe nearly 200 women. I don't know if you remember the amount Amanda, but it was amazing how many people were ready and waiting to kind of give their thoughts and feedback and see a product come to life that they really genuinely wanted.


Felix: This was feedback before the campaign?


Amanda: Yes, it was, it was really, it was before we'd even got off our sample actually. We started to gain, I think I actually found a screenshot the other day of when, around the time, and I think we had probably at least 350, 400 followers on Instagram. And we literally just sent a lot of direct messages to people, like a type form with lots of questions. Like what type of pants style they like the most and how much they would pay for underwear, and what's most important to them about different points of sustainability. Because I think sustainability means different things to different people. So we asked a lot of questions then. Yeah, like Katie says, I think we got just under 200 responses.


Felix: It's like half of your audience filled out a form, a survey.


Amanda: Our audience, I mean, it's difficult because the bigger the audience, I guess sometimes your engagement rate can kind of go down. But we do get such a great response whenever we ask questions, whether it's to do with colors or styles or things like that, we get an amazing response of people really kind of coming back and speaking to us. I think that we've always spoken to them, like we've sat, not across the table from our audience, but next to them. And we've always cared a lot about what they say, because I've never really understood this when it was said to me at the time, but I can remember at uni a lecturer saying, like a creative writing class, that when you write something or you paint something and you hand it over to whoever it is, it's no longer yours, it's theirs for interpretation.


And I don't, I think that it's never made more sense than with this, like with Pantee, because this product, it's not our brand really, it's the community's brand, it's their product, they're the ones kind of wearing it and using it, and we have to hand over so much of that to them. And we wouldn't really be where we are without them buying and supporting us in the way that they do. So it's always a huge thing. Like we have these three areas that we always kind of look at, its community, comfort and consciousness, and I think the community has always been such a driver for us.


Felix: And during this stage, you were also able to talk to journalists and bloggers as well. What were you spending time talking to them about? Because again, I think it can be different. Maybe I'm not sure if it's challenging or not, but it's different when you're talking to a journalist or a blogger that might be creating articles or content about you when there is no product yet.


Katie: Yeah. It definitely, I think this is another thing that really shows that as soon as we started out, as soon as we had the idea, we were really, really excited to tell people about it, and we were really keen to really get the word out there. And I think within a couple of months, probably not far off a year before we launched our Shopify site, we started doing outreach to journalists and both of us have a digital marketing background, but not in the PR space. So this was very new to us, but I remember spending hours and hours, reading articles about sustainable fashion and really that was in our research phase.


But also just noting down who had written the articles, trying to connect with them on LinkedIn, trying to find their email addresses and building up really long lists of contacts and sending them outreach emails, basically just introducing ourselves and saying, this is who we are, we're sisters, we're on this journey, we want to bring to life this product and why we wanted to do it and all those kind of things. But like we say, we didn't have a product. We didn't have any images to show them, but a lot of them were quite receptive. And I remember at the time some people even jumped on a call with us and wanted to learn more or ask our opinions on dead stock and the benefits of using it or things like that, or just the way that sustainable fashion's going. And I think that that was another thing that helped us grow in confidence and also having to prepare for those phone calls, I guess cramming in a lot of information beforehand.


But what it meant was that when we did launch our Kickstarter, we had some warm contacts already, or I guess a bit of experience of reaching out to people and what they were receptive to. And it was amazing to see when we'd launched our Kickstarter campaign, we had articles written about us in publications of the likes of Drapers, which is a really big fashion industry magazine. And we were just so excited to see that, but not only that when we launched on our Shopify site, I think within the month of launching, Amanda was interviewed on BBC radio London, which was amazing. We got included in Roundup, in Vogue. We've since been, I'm trying to think. Now we've been included in an independent article about the top sustainable underwear brands.


Considering we only launched six months ago, I think the press that we've managed to generate, we are really proud of it and we're really happy to see that people like our story and like to tell our story. And I think that really comes from the fact that we've always tried to put ourselves out there and have conversations with people and be quite vocal about what we're doing and why we're doing it. And I think when you have that story and you have that mission, then people really value that and they like to talk about it as well.


Felix: And speaking of the Kickstarter, we can dive into now. So you had a goal of raising 10,000 pounds, and ended up raising over 11,000. And one interesting thing that I saw about your campaign was that it was very, there's a lot of social kind of proof already built in talking about almost reviews from your, I'm assuming your testers or people that are testing out the product earlier on, which I think is different than what you usually see with the Kickstarter campaign where it usually seems more, I want to say more early in the process than you two, or how much of a difference did this make?


Katie: That's a really good question. And we actually toyed between doing a Kickstarter or launching a pre-order on our own website, quite a lot. And the reason that we chose to do a Kickstarter is it gave us a really ambitious, realistic goal at which we needed to pass to be able to place our first order to not end up with any dead stock ourselves. Because we knew exactly how many people would be ordering and how many sets essentially we would need, and from that we could kind of work out what our first order beyond that would be as well. But having that social proof and what we were trying to get across in our Kickstarter was that we did have this engaged community, like we talked about before of people that were ready to buy and already trusted in our product.


And I think because our product for underwear is quite different, it's quite out there, we wanted people to really get cross in their own words how comfortable they found the product and how excited they were for it. And I think that really helped people that didn't know us as well to get on board with the idea and get that impression that not only is this going to be sustainable, but it's also going to do the job and going to be really comfortable as well.


Amanda: Yeah. And I think as well, like just from us personally, we felt a lot better about launching our Kickstarter when we knew that we could deliver on the product for sure and that we would be very happy with the product. So I think that was also quite important for us, our own kind of mindset on we launched at the time that felt most comfortable to us, in terms of like just making sure that we could deliver and that we knew that everybody that kindly invested in us and helped us get off the ground would get something that they were happy with.


Felix: Now, when you raised the money, the campaign ended, did you already know what you wanted to do with the funds?


Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. We knew exactly what we wanted to do, which was obviously get our stock. We also were co-buying a machine with the production facility because there was one kind of missing part that they needed. And then a lot was to kind of also get our shop up and running and kind of the foresight to place on the next order too.


Felix: And you had mentioned that you two are deciding between launching on Kickstarter or just doing pre-order, pre-sales your own platform. You already had to build an audience, you already had connections with the journalists and the bloggers. Would you do that the same way again by launching a Kickstarter? Was there a certain benefit to that compared to just launching your own platform? Which approach would you have taken if you were to do it all over again?


Amanda: I definitely think, Katie, I don't know what you think. I definitely will do Kickstarter again tomorrow. If we had to kind of do the whole thing again, I feel like it was such a great way for us to launch and to tell our story with the video and it was, yeah, I would definitely do it again. What do you think Katie?


Katie: I would definitely do it again as well. I completely agree. I think that the structure of Kickstarter and the fact that it's almost, well, they call it a campaign, if you have all your information there on one page. You can offer people unique bundles that you wouldn't necessarily offer on your website, and it gives this opportunity to your audience to not just buy a product, but invest into an idea. And I think that we've then managed to capture new people through that and bring them along on the journey.


And there's something really special about it, I think, like knowing that you are one of the first people that bought that product, but not only did you buy the product, but you helped to launch a small business. They're really invested in watching Pantee succeed, and I think they feel really, like I say, emotionally tied to the company almost. And I think it's, we've seen people that have bought on our Kickstarter and they've come back and bought since on our website. And I think they are truly real advocates for Pantee, and it's really amazing to see that. And I think as well, just giving us a, I guess, I don't know how you'd describe it, Amanda, but it was such a hard like deadline that we were going to launch this on this date, and we had to really do so much to prepare, but a lot of that preparation then did tie into our website as well.


We had all the photography done for the Kickstarter and we used a lot of that for our website. It kind of did go side by side, but I think the Kickstarter really helped give us a boost at the start.
Amanda: Yeah. It was a lot of work. It was a whole thing. I think the Kickstarter video itself was a challenge, especially with us being, I live and I'm based in London and Katie lives and it's based in Vancouver. So we haven't actually seen each other since January 2020, which makes me so sad, but we've done this whole business basically on WhatsApp or Zoom or whatever we've been using. So we had to kind of film our video, like our script that we were saying separately and then kind of merge them together. So even that was quite difficult because our sound was slightly off.


Amanda: So yeah, it was a whole journey doing the Kickstarter, but it, like Katie said, it gave us, we said to everyone the date we were launching, we couldn't really budge on that. So we just had to get ourselves in gear and get everything ready for them.


Felix: Got it.


Katie: Yeah. I think anybody that embarks on doing a crowdfunding campaign, I think if it's your first one, it's definitely a unique experience and it's maybe something that if we did again and we would know much better how to prepare and sort of how your audience does convert and all those kind of things. And I think that we had a really, really good first 24 hours. We were really excited. We launched and within 24 hours we had passed the 50% mark, but the way that Kickstarter campaigns do tend to go is that you have a really strong first two days and then it can go a little bit flatter and then you'll have a peak at the end.


Like that's a very natural journey for everyone to go on when they're doing it. And it's really, it goes on for three weeks, so you've got to really keep the momentum and keep talking about what you're doing. Keep pushing people, keep trying to bring new people into your audience. And I think that you've got a hard start and a hard stop, and knowing that timeline, you know that during that time you have to be very active and you have to be talking about what you're doing. And I think that if we had launched our website for pre-orders, we might have done as much build up to the launch day and then we might have had a good first couple of days, but keeping that momentum, I think having that hard end date was really helpful for us.


Felix: Now I want to talk about some of the life post-Kickstarter and one of the issues that I think you, then brand of faces around, paid advertising and accounts being blocked or banned specifically for "violating nudity policies." Tell us more about this. I think this is always a big challenge for a lot of, especially brands that are just getting started, where there's not that many channels for them to access, to get new customers and getting your account blocked on the big platforms can be pretty devastating. So tell us more about your experience there and then what you've done since then?


Katie: Yeah. So paid advertising has been a challenge for us. We started running our paid ads when we launched our site at the beginning of this year and the first couple of weeks were rocky. Every time we pushed an ad campaign live, the ads would get blocked. All of our products from our Shopify catalog would get blocked. And really this is just because of the nature of our product. All our products are shot, obviously on women, it's women's underwear. We really want to show people how it looks on a female body and female bodies of all different shapes and sizes. That's something we're really passionate about, but I guess, the algorithm of the way that the ads platforms work will constantly reject them for violating nudity policies. And it's something we found really difficult because our photography is quite modest and we're really, really pro comfort and our products are very comfortable.


I don't think that any of our imagery is over sexualized, I mean, I personally don't think there's anything wrong with ads for underwear brands that are pushing more in that route. But yeah, it's just been an interesting thing to navigate and we've over time, I think we've kind of got into a better cadence with things and we've grown an understanding of what does get past and what doesn't, but sometimes we'll wake up in the morning and again, everything will have been rejected, even though it's been running for a few days, it's very hit or miss. So it has been a challenge for us. Like you say, it's really difficult to bring new people into the audience organically. I think that paid ads for the majority of people running e-commerce sites are a really big part of the puzzle. So when you are having that avenue blocked, it can be really challenging.


And we did get our momentum with it. We had our paid ads working quite well for us after navigating these issues. But then with the iOS updates earlier this year, that again really changed things for us. I think when you are experimenting with quite small ad budgets, it can be quite difficult. So it's definitely been a rocky road on the bad side of things.


Amanda: Yeah, definitely. And it's been, I think, quite hard because we do, like I said, we like to kind of hit up someone that knows how to help. And I think we have spoken to some people that have been really helpful, but we can never seem to properly speak to someone from Facebook and air these things out. And sometimes the responses we've had and the kind of suggestions is to maybe show our underwear not on women.


And we always hate this response because it makes us feel like it's a product for women, it's complete, it's underwear and we shouldn't be having to shoot it on a brick wall or as a flat lay to show people. So it has been a bit of a tricky one for us to kind of get our heads around sometimes as well, and it's definitely caused a lot of conversations for us internally. But yeah, I mean, we've not taken that advice, we still have underwear on women on the website and we'll continue to try to get those ads through, but we have been kind of, I guess, heavily reliant on kind of organic strategies.


Felix: Yeah. That makes sense. And one thing that you had mentioned too to us about how you have been able to still continue growing the brand, is around increasing the kind of returning customers or revenue generated from the customers that do come into your world. And one thing that you listed was that you have started adding these multi-packs, basically bundling for your products, which has increased your average order value by 60% of the month after adding this functionality. Tell us more about that experience of setting up this bundling for your products.


Amanda: Well, I think we can't believe we didn't do it sooner because really when people buy underwear, typically you, especially pants, you want to buy it in multi packs, especially the type of underwear we are. We're not necessarily kind of special occasion underwear. We are kind of everyday comfortable with the basics. So you do kind of want to buy multi packs. But I think Katie and I have, we focus that, I know we said there was different stages to our journey, but even since launching six months ago, kind of what we've been focused on month to month has changed and it's been kind of like one month we kind setting up all our email marketing, and then we are looking at PR and influences.


Amanda: And I think we had a month, a couple of months back, where we really focused on our website and all the e-commerce growth strategies, and it was something that was suggested to us and we tried and it worked, it was so effective straight away. And now we're definitely seeing people will come to our site instead of just buying one bra they will buy two because I guess there's an incentive to do so. So yeah, I mean, that's definitely been a great app to plug in and we're still looking for ways that we can kind of better our packs and make them packages that people definitely want.


Felix: Yeah. And any other kind of apps or software that you use on your website or on the backend of your business to help you run the business?


Amanda: So one of my favorites is definitely, I think it's called a return center. So I set that up probably about six weeks ago as well. So now people can just use that order number to request a return or an exchange or anything like that. I have to admit, we don't have a lot of those, but when we do, it's great to have a way to kind of really track each stage that we're at because I think otherwise you're kind of relying on an Excel spreadsheet and it can be difficult to make sure between us that we've done each stage of that quickly and timely. So that's been a good one. I'm trying to think because there's been quite a few new, I guess, app plugins that we've put in lately. We've just put in, I think it's with Stamped.io, which is kind of like a referral where people can sign up, which to what we call the comfort zone and then they can refer a friend and then they both get a discount. So that's another one that we've just signed up.


Katie: We've also integrated Klarna and Clearpay so people can buy now and pay later or pay in installments, which has been really, really helpful. And I think really more than anything, we just want to give people spending options to do things easily, pay in the way they want, to get help that they need when they need it. We've just added an app that's sort of like a chatbot that we're still trying to set up with automated responses to frequently ask questions around sizing and things like that. But yeah, really just trying to make our site as accessible and as helpful as possible.


Felix: Awesome. And websites at pantee.co.uk. And I'll leave you this last question. What do you think would be the biggest struggle or biggest obstacle that you are both focused on overcoming over the next, the near future?


Amanda: Yeah. I think keeping the momentum, I think that's definitely always something, is something that we've learned even in the last six months and also through our Kickstarter. I think as a small business you've got to be kind of doing new, exciting things all the time. Obviously as a sustainable business, we don't want to be kind to new styles and new products all the time. So it's constantly like trying to evolve and trying to give people new conversations or new products, innovating and just keeping that momentum going and never really taking your finger off the pulse.


So yeah, I think although we are very much like a comfort business, I think we always are very aware that we can't get too comfortable with where we're at and we've got to be looking, I mean, months in advance with fashion really because of the time it takes for production. So yeah, that's what I would say. What about you Katie, do you think the same?


Katie: I completely agree. I think we between us have huge ambitions with Pantee and we sometimes, obviously running a business, you get caught up in the day to day, but it's always like keeping one eye on where you're at now, but also another eye on where you want to be and really bridging that gap between the now and that point that we want to get to. So yeah. Momentum, it's all about the momentum.


Felix: Yeah. Well nicely said. So thank you so much, Amanda and Katie, for coming on and sharing your story, your experience and your advice.


Katie: Oh no, thank you so much for having us. We really enjoyed it.