Female Startup Club Fave Hits: Growing sales 100% year on year (on year) to build a $20M brand, with Andie Swim founder Melanie Travis (part 1)
Joining me on the show today is Melanie Travis, Founder of swimwear label Andie.
Andie is a swimwear company that makes the swimsuit shopping experience for women incredible through a tailored fit finder, a desirable returns policy, and relatable content.
Since their launch back in 2016 Andie has curated a well-rounded swimwear collection for every moment of your life, racking up over 100 styles with multiple texture and coverage options. The whole idea is that these pieces last longer than just one season, and you can bring them back out of your wardrobe time and time again. I love how inclusivity has been part of Andie's DNA since the get-go, with sizes ranging from XS to (recently) 5XL.
In this episode, we’re talking about how Mel launched a swimwear label in a competitive market, the process of validating her idea through a crowdfunding campaign, how an equity deal with her manufacturer enabled her to scale up in a really big way, and the steps the company took to grow their Instagram from 12k to almost 100k in just 2 years.
Melanie dives into her different areas of focus at different stages of the business, something super interesting to get an insight into. Before launch, three workstreams were taking the majority of her time. Manufacturing, web design, and crowdfunding. She ended up with about 100K to do all of this. All that went to creating swimsuits and to a PR agency, part of the next step of the process. After having the swimsuits in hand, she decided very early on that one of the first places to invest would be PR. This is how you legitimize your business and get people to start talking about it in a serious way. After riding this PR way, Andie started investing in Facebook and Instagram advertising, leading to one of her biggest learnings since starting the business. This key bit of advice: learn how to work these social ads yourself. Don't just rely on outsourcing that, you are definitely going to need it at some point and the skills will come in very handy.
There are lots more pointers where that came from, so let's get straight into it.
LINKS WE MENTION:
Andie’s Website
Andie’s Instagram
Melanie’s Instagram
Female Startup Club's Instagram
Doone's Instagram
Doone's TikTok
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