Two Women Create Swimwear Brand for D-Cups and Up

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

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In this story, two friends in Minnesota create mid-range adjustable swimwear designed specifically for women with D cups and up. Hey, this is real life here. Not everybody wears the same sizes that big brands manufacture for. And if nobody out there is catering to an overlooked group, well, you might be able to do very well for yourself in addition to helping out those people with more options. Just yesterday, we were talking about marimbas, like this guy in Texas who rents out marimbas.

And he discovered that there was a market for this service, but the market was underserved. So it turned out to be his sweet spot here. In this story, after getting fed up with poorly fitting swimwear, these two friends realized that larger women are just an afterthought when swim brands design suits. And so they decided to change that. When we first featured them, their first season had just finished to rave reviews and strong revenue.

Looks like they are still going today. So I'll tell you a bit about that at the end. But first, the story. Two women create swimwear brand for D cups and up. Stay tuned.

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Best friends, Liz and Lou both hated shopping for swimsuits. It wasn't unheard of for them to walk into a dressing room with 20 suit options. Only you'll 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 Lou, 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, Lou was used to finding problems that customers face when using a product and then thinking up creative solutions to solve them. She kept coming back to this idea that shopping for swimsuits was a user experience problem.

Basically 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. And 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 manufacturing catalogs with only minor customizations. These companies tend to design for medium bodies, like whatever that means, which leaves everyone else without great options. Now on the side of consumers, this makes the pieces inexpensive, but also poorly made. And unless you wanna 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 Lou 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 Lou's UX experience and Liz's marketing experience, they knew they were right for the challenge. They were gonna launch their own swimwear brand called Wild Isles. They then started looking for a sewing freelancer who could help them prototype a few designs to help them save on the cost of using a more established design house.

Well, the process didn't go swimmingly, at least at first. They tried fashion industry meetings, searching on Google, 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. They've been contracting with her ever since.

Liz, Lou and their freelancer worked on prototypes for the next few months, doing try-on testing with friends that 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 this Italian fabric manufacturer.

They thought they had everything in place, and then they heard the final price tag. Now, of course, they already had some initial pricing, but the final price was outrageously expensive, largely because of customs. Now, thankfully, there's a trick because 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. So port forwarding, this is this thing that can be done sometimes with imports that basically makes your costs much, much lower. It has something to do with optimizing space and shipping containers, among other things, and so for them, they're just glad they thought to ask.

That helped them save a lot of money. While they're waiting for the inventory, they built a Shopify website and got their social media accounts in order. The marketing plan was basically do a monthly giveaway on social, build a loyal, engaged following, and it all began with friends and family. Now, since to enter the giveaway, you had to tag three other people, usually other women in the target group. The following grew by a few hundred people each giveaway.

Liz and Lou missed the first 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. That first summer season generated over $50,000 in revenue. That was without a complicated strategy, no paid ads, no viral social posts, and very little press. The magic was in finding an innovative way to solve a problem that nobody else was trying or willing to solve. [Music]

Wild Isles Swim is still going.

Check out wild isleswim.com. It also looks like wild is less swim.com if you're typing it in. And what I especially like about this story, in addition to finding the product market fit, I love the research process of making a spreadsheet of every vendor. If you're looking at entering a category, who else is doing that? And not just the casual web search, but documenting who is every vendor, every business that's selling in this area.

Like what are they doing well, but also what might they be missing, which is exactly what Liz and Lou were looking for. I think that is a replicable process. Like anybody can do it for any industry. It'll take an hour or two. And see if you spot any patterns or trends.

And from there, you go on to the next phase, right? There's a lot more to be done, but really gives you an idea if there is truly a market and then a market that is underserved, like we just talked about yesterday in the Texas Marimba story. All right, lots to take away there. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I hope you will take something away from this story, from all these stories, all these episodes, and get you thinking, get you taking action to do something that is important to you.

That's why we make the show, after all, to encourage you to make a better life for yourself. All those good things, right? Anyway, I'll stop now, but I'll be back tomorrow, seven days a week, always free, sidehustleschool.com for resources. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to, you know it, "Side Hustle School." [Music]

from The Onward Project.