Happy Sunday!
Welcome back to Founders Feature, a weekly newsletter all about the journeys of young startup founders.
For this week's edition, I interviewed Sarah Greisdorf, Founder of Holdette, a functional workwear brand, and community for young professional women based in the US.
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Here’s what Holdette is all about:
🏠 The Basics
The Problem:
Most women's clothes don't have pockets. When they do, the pockets are on average 48% shorter than men's pockets, so women really can't hold anything in their pockets. Besides the obvious inconvenience, there are some strong ripple effects of having to hold your phone in your hand and not having your hands free.
The Solution:
Holdette was created to support young female graduates in their entry into the workforce. We create functional apparel for the young working woman, with pockets to hold just about everything and provide a community of like-minded women to support each other along their journey of entering the workforce.
The Team:
Sarah is a solo founder. She is a recent graduate herself, with a Computer Science degree from Boston University. The team currently consists of 4 people: Sarah (CEO), Abby (Content), Shea (Community), and Cameryn (Apparel Design).
🚀 The Journey
How did you come up with your startup/solution?
When I started college, I was really aware that women's clothing rarely had pockets, and I wanted to do something about it. All my female friends were really supportive of the idea because they experienced the same problem. Since I studied Computer Science, I had no background in fashion. So, what I started doing was aggregating clothes with pockets in a newsletter. Eventually, I turned this into a website, compiling all the clothes I could find that had pockets.
After a few months of the website, I was still super motivated to solve the problem of no pockets, but I wasn't really satisfied with my solutions so far. So, I spent the next 9 months, my sophomore year in college, thinking about other ways to solve it. One idea was a subscription box and another was a marketplace for clothes with pockets. I pitched this latter idea at 'Dolphin Tank' and learned that manufacturing the clothes myself would simplify the supply chain since everything would be done 'in-house'. So, after that event, I decided that if I was going to manufacture the clothes myself, I might as well design them myself, and that's how I ended up launching my own clothing line.
I decided to start with workwear, thinking that this is where young professional women were spending most of their time.
Why is this the right time for this problem to be solved?
Covid aside, when you look at workwear options for women just getting out of college you're straddling between brands for older professional women and brands which have cheap basics that might be a good starting point but won't last you very long. Besides that, most of them don't have pockets. I felt like there was a huge gap in the market for recent graduates who needed to look professional while wearing functional clothing.
What is a recent success you are proud of?
We launched our first suit in January, which was really great.
We're also running a beta program right now for recent grads trying out 'community groups', groups of 5-10 recent grad women meeting once a month talking about certain topics, like managing your finances, and how to find your footing after college. It's been really great so far. The reception has been so positive, and the groups are so supportive.
My goal with Holdette is that I want you to be able to graduate from college and move anywhere and have a community to plug in to. Holdette is definitely moving into a more community-based direction at the moment.
What is a recent challenge you have faced?
Because we are going through the transition from Apparel at the forefront to pushing further into community, we're trying to navigate how much to share about this transition before it's already happened.
Our community currently consists of both students and recent grads. We want to keep supporting as many people as possible while also being really clear about what our purpose is.
What do you wish you knew before you started and is there anything you would have done differently in hindsight?
I wish I had known to just use the skills I have rather than to try and learn everything I didn't know before starting. I've realised that you just can't learn everything in advance, so it's best to just get started with what you have and learn what you need along the way. Given that I had no background in fashion at all, I had to basically teach myself everything and I learned so much along the way.
🧠 The Lessons
What is the best advice you have been given recently?
A mentor recently really challenged me to think about what the public wants and needs from Holdette and balance this with my personal needs. I needed to figure out how to prioritise those things that really bring me joy, too. I have to be invested for other people to be invested in what I'm building. So, I've started to prioritise those things that also bring me joy, which at the moment is the increased focus on community building.
What advice would you give to other young founders?
I found that if you have enough confidence, most people will let you do pretty much anything. So you really need to be the biggest believer in your own idea first, before anyone else can.
Throughout my journey so far, I found very few limits due to my age, by just believing in myself. If you're young, just act like you should be doing whatever it is you're doing and people will probably believe you.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned so far?
You're going to make plans and you're going to have expectations for yourself and nothing will go according to plan, and you will not meet your own expectations. That's just what being an entrepreneur is, because there is only so much within your control. So, just have a lot of grace with yourself, and surround yourself with people who will have grace with you, because it's really a hard process getting something off the ground. This is something you just need to get comfortable with. That's what entrepreneurship is all about.
✨ The Inspiration
Who inspires you?
There are some brands that I admire by some really great women, like Bumble (Whitney Wolfe Herd) and Glossier (Emily Weiss).
I have a personal mentor whom I really look up to and admire, and I go to her all the time for advice.
I'm also friends with a lot of young women who are starting companies that really inspire me with the knowledge they have and that we get to share with each other. Whenever I talk to them, I come away feeling like a smarter person.
What book do you think everyone should read?
We started a Holdette Book Club last year, and these are two of my favourite books we've read:
Untamed - Glennon Doyle
Maybe you should talk to someone - Lori Gottlieb