Two Women Create Swimwear Brand for D-Cups and Up

Best friends Liz and Lu both hated shopping for swimsuits. It wasn't unheard of for them to walk into a dressing room with twenty suit options, only to leave half an hour later empty-handed. But it wasn't because they were picky. They just couldn't find anything that fit well.

Liz and Lu—both in Minneapolis, Minnesota—didn't understand why it was so hard to look and feel great in traditional swimsuits. They weren't the only women with this challenge, so why weren't swimwear brands making it easier for people with their body shape to shop?

As a UX Designer by day, Lu was used to finding problems that customers face when using a product and thinking up creative solutions to solve them. She kept coming back to this idea that shopping for swimsuits was a user experience problem—a disconnect between brands and shoppers—and if she applied her problem-solving skills, maybe she could fix it.

That's when she started researching swimwear in her free time. She created a huge spreadsheet of over 200 swimwear brands and realized that fewer than 20% even sold a single top designed for D cups or up—a clear sign there was a market gap.

A few nights of Googling turned into two weeks, then a month, and by the end of three months, she had all the research she needed to truly understand the problem.

What she discovered was that there were two sides to the issue. The first was on the side of the swimwear brand. For most clothing retailers, swimwear makes up less than 5% of their sales, so they don't actually focus on it—they outsource it. A few giant manufacturers dominate the mass market swimwear world because most clothing brands order from the same few manufacturer catalogs and only make minor customizations. These companies tend to design for "medium" bodies—whatever that means—which leaves everyone else without great options.

On the side of consumers, this makes the pieces inexpensive, but also poorly made, and unless you want to pay $400 or more for a designer swim piece, those low-quality items that don't fit very well are your only options.

Now that the problem was so clearly framed, it wasn't hard for Lu and Liz to see where they could carve out a much-needed niche: mid-range adjustable swimwear designed specifically for women with D cups and up.

Between Lu's UX experience and Liz's marketing experience at a local clothing design studio, they knew they were right for the challenge. They were going to launch their own swimwear brand: Wild Isles.

They then started looking for a sewing freelancer who could help them prototype a few designs. The process didn't go swimmingly … at least at first. They tried fashion industry meetings, searching on Google, and even putting up ads on Craigslist, but everyone told them the same thing: it was too technical, and they'd rather not work with swimwear. Finally after six months of searching, they came across a woman who teaches apparel design at a local college—and they've been contracting with her ever since.

Liz, Lu, and their freelancer worked on prototypes for the next few months, doing try-on testing with friends they knew would give honest feedback. They ended up with a top piece they were really proud of: they dropped the underwire and foam cups, using a tie in the back to create adjustability. They also found an exceptional fabric from Italy that behaves more like a yoga pant than traditional swim polyester, which makes their suit far more comfortable.

They called up their Italian fabric manufacturer in March of 2019, thought they had everything in place, and then they heard the final price tag. It was outrageously expensive, largely because of customs. They asked the manufacturer if they knew any importing companies they could partner with to lower costs, and sure enough, they were able to "port forward" their fabric through Chicago for nearly a quarter of the cost.

While waiting for the inventory, they built a Shopify website and got their social media accounts in order. The marketing plan was simple: offer a monthly giveaway on social media to build a loyal and engaged following. It all began with friends and family, but since they had to tag three other people to enter into the giveaway—usually other women in the target group—their following grew by a few hundred people each giveaway.

Liz and Lu missed that Spring Break season, but when they finally launched their signature suit in May, they couldn't keep up with inventory and sold out three different times, even after launching two more styles.

Their first summer season generated over $50,000 in revenue. They didn't have a complicated strategy, paid ads, viral social media posts, or lots of press. The magic was in finding an innovative way to solve a problem that nobody else was trying (or willing) to solve.