Children’s Librarian Builds Crossfit Bra Business

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

When you start something and it doesn't go the way you hoped, it is so important to have a post-mortem of sorts. You start a project, you're really excited about it, it doesn't work out, or you start to struggle somewhere along the way. It's so important to consider what worked and what didn't. Or if you're in the midst of it, what's working and what's not. Just kind of pause to evaluate.

Consider as well what you liked and what you disliked, or what you like and dislike. If it's in a more active phase. Very often by doing this, you can change a couple of those variables. You can find just a couple of things and come up with something much better for your second attempt. But if you give up entirely, if you're like, "That just didn't work.

My whole idea of having a cytosol or whatever the thing is that I really, really wanted to do in life didn't work at all, so I give up." When you do that, you never get to see how much better it could be. This is why I love stories that feature some kind of pivot or big tweak or adjustment or if at first they don't succeed, they try something different. In today's story, which I'm going to bring to you here in a moment, frustrated by a lack of quality sports bras for muscular women, a children's librarian and CrossFit athlete designs a solution. This is her second attempt at a clothing business. As you'll hear, her second attempt works much better than her first, but she might not have gotten to the second if it had not been for the first.

This is why it's so important, as I said, to evaluate, to have that post-mortem or even if you're in the midst of it. Whatever that's called, in the midst of it, Mortem, we could say. All right, this story is called "Children's Librarian Builds CrossFit Bra Business." That story's coming up in just 30 seconds. Alison Alexander saw a problem and took it upon herself to find a solution. In 2015, she started doing CrossFit and quickly became a passionate athlete.

She continued to work out, her body began to change. Then came the problem. She was more muscular than she was before and her sports bras didn't fit right. She tried shopping for new ones, but the options available on the market didn't fit well either. She was also bothered by the fact that muscular women weren't often showcased in ads.

She didn't feel seen. Alison wanted to change that for both her and women who look like her, muscular and strong. That's why she started KFT, a fitness apparel brand geared toward female strength athletes. To launch the business, Alison turned toward another brand she had tried to start in 2010. Back then, she was in the midst of battling post-partum depression and needed something to focus on.

So, she sold some of her daughter's old clothes that she was outgrowing. It took off quickly. She called it "Kids Fly 2." In 2013, Alison took her online success and opened a boutique. An endeavor she says now was a huge mistake. She quit her job to run the store and soon realized she hated it.

Kids Fly 2 faltered after that and she went back to work. Two years later, with the bones of a business already in place, she built KFT and noticed that the initials come from the kids' clothing line, Kids Fly 2. When pivoting from a business that no longer worked for her, Alison, who also works full-time as a children's librarian, decided to take the part she did enjoy and explore new ways of doing it. For example, one store that already offered sports bras was Lulu Limit. It's an incredibly popular brand, but Alison says she felt it catered to thinner women.

She bought a bra from them and began some online research, searching to find a manufacturer. She connected with a few of them and had samples made. Samples of bras designed to fit women with muscular backs. When she began wearing the samples to the gym, several other women asked about them. Seeing this interest, she decided to invest in several colors of one style of bra and launched KFT.

She enlisted a photographer who was hoping to start a portfolio and would take product photos for free. Then she created a Shopify site and chose ShipStation to manage everything associated with shipping. By the way, thank you, ShipStation. They are also our partner of the show, but they have nothing to do with editorial, so it's just always fun to hear when they're actually helping one of our case studies. Alison connected with local CrossFit women who competed at elite levels.

The local athletes then introduced her to CrossFit women who were nationally recognized. She even had whole teams of women order custom bras to wear at large CrossFit events that were well photographed, and that resulted in organic marketing for KFT. Now let's talk about startup costs, low startup costs. Alison first sold some old personal items for $200. She then used that money to buy, sell, and trade her way up to $2,000, which she then invested in her first set of inventory.

She was able to keep costs so low because she kept that first collection of inventory small and shopped around for the best, most cost-efficient manufacturer. Currently, KFT averages a profit of $5,000 to $7,000 a month. Alison markets her products primarily on Instagram and an active email list. She's used paid ads only a few times and prefers instead to identify influencers. She now has an ambassador team of more than 100 women to market her products.

She says micro-influencers, those with a good amount of followers but not a very large amount, she says they've been a big key to her success, and to never underestimate someone's value based on the number of followers. As KFT has grown, Alison has added to the types of gear she offers. She noticed that the business attracts different types of women now, some of whom don't do CrossFit. Currently, KFT offers tank tops, shorts, leggings, and more. She tends to stick to basic styles, offering them in different colors and prints, which she believes encourages repeat buyers.

These repeat buyers are where the magic happens because it takes a lot less effort to retain customers than to acquire them. Once she has a customer, she can email them to show off new products, subtly prompting them to order again, a big deal in a crowded online space. She notes that she has customers who bought during her first product launch who still shop with her today. Looking to the future, Alison plans to wrap up her graduate degree in leadership, which aids both KFT and the coaching business she recently started that's focused on working with other women who have side hustles, women like her who saw a problem and set out to solve it. Alright, so when you're in that situation and it's not working out, or if you have come to this podcast, this community after having tried something else and being a little bit discouraged, what you need to do is ask what part of it worked and what didn't, or as I said, what is working and what's not.

What did you like? What did you dislike? What do you like? And most likely, you're going to have to change some things because it wasn't working or it's not working, but in changing a couple of those variables, you might very well end up in a situation like Alison where it was her desire to start a clothing brand and the first approach she took just wasn't the right one, at least it wasn't right for her at that time and the growth strategy she pursued didn't work out. But then later, she's got that experience, she's been able to build on what she's learned and now she has that success.

So the first thing you try may not work, it very well may not work. Or it may not work as well as you would like. But this is why it's a process. It's not just to start it and forget it, it's to start it and then see what happens and then let's make some changes and then go from there. That's why I enjoy looking at the process of these stories rather than just saying like, "Oh, they started this business and it worked." Most likely, there were a couple of things that happened along the way.

So congratulations, Alison. Thank you, Alison, for letting us share your story with our listeners. Listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. To find the show notes for today's episode, including links to KFT, anything else I mentioned, just go to www.sidehustleschool.com/15431543. Thank you for joining me.

I hope you'll come back tomorrow. You can subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts, it's all completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.

the Onward Project.