Growing with Intention
To us, part of being a “transparent company” means taking you along for the ride in terms of what’s going on behind the scenes, what we’re working towards, and being honest when things don’t go according to plan (because when does anything ever go according to plan?!). While we’re not huge on formalizing annual goals, we have four objectives we’re working towards to help grow our brand and impact the rest of this year.
Establish Saturday Swimwear as a thought leader in the slow, sustainable fashion space. We chose to start this brand as one of the first sustainable swimwear companies in the US because of the lack of high-quality, affordable options that were actually doing good by the environment. Fast fashion and the effects of that mindset literally keep us up at night, so rather than sit back and just focus on our products, our goal is to be known as a resource for information, advocacy, and education. Starting this blog, sharing our posts and growing our social following are important parts of tackling this ambition.
Select our 1% for the Planet nonprofit partner. Did you see our update?! We’re officially a 1% for the Planet company and couldn’t be more stoked about it. As a part of 1% for the Planet, we have the opportunity to partner with one of their participating nonprofit organizations and donate at least 1% of our sales directly to that organization annually. At the end of this year, we get to decide which organization we want to join forces with and we can’t wait to support a community just as passionate as we are about protecting and revitalizing our environment.
Grow our retail network. The retailers we partner with to sell our suits are a huge part of our community and we see them as true partners with our brand. We’re super intentional about choosing who we partner with in the retail space because ensuring our retailers share our values is incredibly important to us. Retailer acquisition typically happens in the fall, so as the year starts to wrap up, we’ll be looking to expand this network of like-minded stockists to help our brand grow.
Expand production. At the time of writing this in the spring of 2022, all our suits are made by our founder, Emily, and her sister, Molly. This handmade nature of our suits is part of what makes them so unique and high quality, but we know we won’t be able to keep up with demand with just two sewists. Finding a production partner is not our area of expertise, so we’ve teamed up with a consultant to help us find a sew studio that aligns with our brand values and meets our quality, environmental, and workplace standards. This is a super exciting step in our journey as a growing brand, but definitely a daunting one as we start to expand outside our family (literally!). Ideally we’ll have a production partner ready to start by the end of the summer, but we’ll keep looking until we’re confident the quality of our suits, the studio’s working conditions, and the environmental impact of the studio are all up to our standards.
Knowing that Saturday Swimwear is only as strong as the team it’s made of, our founder, Emily, has a couple personal goals she’s also working on this year. While there are super practical skills like mastering Instagram Reels, or testing out different PR strategies, Emily’s number one priority is owning Saturday Swimwear’s unique story, and in doing so, becoming the brand’s strongest advocate. Self-promotion can feel uncomfortable, especially as women (an important topic for a different blog post), but Emily knows the importance of sharing Saturday Swimwear’s story, and all the intention that goes on behind the scenes. This year she’s stepping up to the challenge to develop her advocacy skills and create her own natural way of sharing the purpose and vision of Saturday Swimwear with anyone who will listen.
This article was written by Lauren Hokenson.