New Yorker Covers Up With Comfy Underwear Line

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

[Music]

What's up and welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Got a great story for you today. It's about a New Yorker who covers up with a comfy underwear line. For years, she wanted her own side hustle.

She tried lots of different explorations, did some interviews and conversations with people to try to figure out what was best for her. And she finally uncovered it in a drawer of intimate apparel. At the end of the story, I've also got some Socratic questions or suggestions about the product line and how it's being sold. I don't always do that, but sometimes when I go through the notes and I look at somebody's website, I go away thinking, wow, this is really good. I wonder if it could be even better, or at least I wonder what would happen if they tried something different.

I will share those thoughts with you at the end of the episode. Got a quick thank you to our sponsor and then let's get comfy. [Music]

Rachel Jones knew a lot of people working on creative side projects. She wanted to learn more about how they made them happen, so she started a blog called Industry of One. The goal was to profile people in the creative space using an interview format.

Over the course of a couple of years and dozens of interviews, she started feeling like one day she too could make a side hustle dream a reality. Rachel was working full-time as a project manager at a mobile development agency. The job was fine, but the idea of starting something of her own never left. She began to brainstorm and after tossing out a few ideas, landed on a surprising concept. You might say it was like being caught with your pants down.

See, Rachel had noticed the market of intimate apparel for women explode in recent years. She also knew there were plenty of options available for basic undies. However, she firmly believed there was a gap in the market between your everyday basic undies and bras and the more special items one might buy and wear every now and then. In her mind, it was the third wave of intimate apparel, better than basic, but not $100 for a bra, which she thought was outrageous. She would fill this gap by designing her own underwear line, something that would be both stylish and comfy.

The only problem was she had no design experience, but like many a side hustler before her, she wasn't about to let inexperience get in the way of ambition. So she began to sketch out her idea of truly comfy undies using pencil and paper. It was at this point that Rachel believes she made her first mistake, not in taking on an ambitious project, but in failing to do much research with her target market of young women. Despite the lack of research, she already knew what name she'd give to her brand. She named it after herself, calling it Rachel's Secret.

Just kidding. Rachel Jones was now the designer of Jonesy Underwear, a direct-to-consumer undies brand. After sketching away for a while, Rachel came up with some concepts she was happy with, but it was here that she hit a roadblock. While confident in her concept, she knew there was no way she'd be able to sew and produce the product herself. She began asking around for recommendations for a good garment producer, and she wanted them to be made close to home.

Before long, she was referred to a mom-and-pop establishment in the New York City Garment District. After a few meetings, Rachel believed they were the perfect fit to bring Jonesy Underwear to life. She commissioned them to start producing her first batch of samples. Feeling more confident, she made an investment of $5,000 in that first line of production, made a website, and felt she was ready to go to market. Unfortunately, the launch was met with silence.

The underwear was going under. The whole project was caught around the ankles. The emperor truly had no clothes. Rachel says that launching without an audience was her second mistake. In hindsight, she says she would have started building an audience while creating the product.

That way, the debut would have had built-in anticipation, with customers waiting in the wings to buy. It didn't matter that Jonesy Underwear was beautiful and well-designed. If no one knew about the launch, how would anyone find it? Or, as the old Zen proverb asked, if the website crashes in the forest, how will the bears use Tinder? Rachel learned from her mistake and set about correcting it as soon as possible.

She knew she'd have to spend more time building her brand, not just building her product. They weren't the same thing. She reached out to industry and lifestyle bloggers offering to send them samples. With luck, one of them picked up on her story, and the first few sales began coming through. Believing that young women would like her line of intimates if they could just hear about them, Rachel doubled down on her efforts.

Over the next year, she began to obtain more traditional press and build a social media following. She also tested online advertising channels like Google AdWords and Facebook. As the brand slowly grew, Rachel's skills from her day job came in handy. Most notably, the idea of iterating on the product as time goes on based on customer feedback. Although she didn't launch Jonesy in that manner, she's used the methodology to refine the product as it matures.

Jonesy Underwear is still finding its way, but in doing so, it's generating around $1,500 each and every month. Not bad for what started as a creative side project while working full-time. Rachel's next goal is to move the project from Side Hustle into something more like a full-time business over the next six months. That includes increasing the range of products and connecting directly with more customers. She's excited to continue developing her lifestyle brand of not-so-basic groups.

All right, let's talk a bit more about this project. I mentioned I had some Socratic questions slash suggestions slash ideas for Rachel. By Socratic questions, I just mean some things to think about to consider. The good news is she's already done a lot of work on this and it's profitable. So there's nowhere to go but up.

With that in mind, had a couple of thoughts. First, it can be helpful to look at what the bigger names in this space are doing. And I'm sure she's done this, but I just think like these bigger brands, they tend to invest a lot in testing, especially when it comes to e-commerce, especially when it comes to basically trying to get people to buy more and buy more often. So very often there's a reason why something is priced or sold in a certain way. If you look at some of these bigger brands' websites, they have this super clear and simplified checkout process.

The whole process is designed to get you to buy because it's an e-commerce website. So I think there's something to be learned by looking at that. Maybe the first example is subscriptions. I wonder why there's not a subscription where you can get a different pair of underwear every month. Some other companies have that and of course it's smart because then you know you have these customers that are placing orders on a regular basis in addition to whatever you sell as a one-off.

And then example number two is some sort of bundling, which she's already doing a little bit on her website but I just think it can be taken much further. So bundling is where you're like, "Oh, you don't wanna just buy one pair of underwear or one bralette, here you should buy three." Or actually if you wanna buy five then you'll save even more or something. And doing this right is one of the simplest things you can do to increase your average order size. That way you can have the same number of customers on any given day or week, but you'll actually make more money from those customers. So I feel like investing some time and attention and testing things there and mixing it up a little bit could be very rewarding.

And then last but not least, Rachel has done a really good job at beginning to craft a story or a broad narrative around this. And I feel like actually looking at the website, I feel like it has the makings of it, all these different pieces of a story. She talks a lot about the product itself. She talks a lot about why she made it, like what inspired her, why it was important to her. She talks a bit about the production, about how it's made right in the USA in New York City's garment district.

They've been working with that team for over three years. She also has a blog on that site with an interview series with interesting women. So as I said, she's got lots of the pieces here. I don't quite know what's missing, but it feels like there's not a complete narrative somehow. Or if there is a complete narrative, there's some theme that could really run through it and just make the whole brand shine a bit more.

And as always, when I offer these comments, again, I think it's a fantastic project. If the shoe fits, wear it. If not, just keep doing what you're doing, Rachel, because obviously it's working. So good for you. And thank you so much for allowing us to share your story with our community.

And hey, community, listeners, thank you so much for being out there. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. If you wanna check out Jonesy Underwear for yourself, or maybe for someone you know, just come check out the show notes. We're gonna link everything up at sidehustleschool.com/640. That is 640.

You can also sign up for a subscription to my Invisible Underwear of the Month Club, where you sign up and every month you don't get anything in the mail. I haven't yet decided on the best price for that yet, so if you have any feedback, let me know. I'm gonna go think on that for a bit. I'll be back again tomorrow, and I hope you'll join me. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is Side Hustle School.