You! Lingerie is making great progress in such a short period of time and it is exciting to see it all unfold!!! We started this journey at the end of last year. It all began with our conversations with mommies and mommies-to-be across the country to understand their personal experiences with nursing bras and maternity lingerie to see if they felt like I did…was it hard to find an attractive nursing and maternity bra that did not cost an arm, leg and my first born child?:) And more importantly can they be functional, sexy, beautiful and best of all, affordable. I mean who says we have to give up fashionable lingerie during pregnancy and breastfeeding? In a few short weeks, we will officially be launching the first collection of You! Lingerie and I want to briefly share with you my journey as a mompreneur.
With so many moving parts, creating a business plan was the first step. I was very thankful for my time in business school and my brand management experience because it was helpful in creating the business plan. However, I found myself spending way too much time tweaking, and tweaking and tweaking the plan. I guess I was determined to have a perfect plan…even though I knew there was no such thing as a perfect plan, LOL. I finally realized that all I needed to do was to take the first step to the thousands that were to be taken:)
And then I took it! This meant stretching out my days as much as I could and working at nights after my little one goes to sleep. This meant balancing being a great wife, mommy, sister, daughter, friend and businesswoman. Is this even possible? Nonetheless, I was ecstatic!
I wanted to build a brand that is made by a mommy with other mommies in mind, one that celebrates the wonderful period of changes in our bodies! After several brainstorming sessions with friends and family, I decided on a brand name and logo that we believed embodied what we are about…YOU! Lingerie, because it is about YOU…all you mommies out there who like me, wanted to feel like ourselves – confident, sexy and remain fashionably stylish even with the new “mommy” title. After all, we are still the wife, girlfriend, sister, businesswoman, etc that we are.
So far we have designed seven styles for the first collection –beautifully chic, playful colors without sacrificing quality, functionality, support and comfort. I have to say, this phase was very exciting because it all started on a blank sketch pad and the sky was the limit as to what we could dream up… luxurious fabrics & laces, colors, styles….It was about creating a collection of beautifully crafted nursing and maternity lingerie for mommies at an affordable price. Basically giving them an affordable luxury!
After interviewing a handful of suppliers, we found a manufacturer that has helped to bring the designs to life just like we imagined them. And of course, like everybody else, we had our share of ups and downs working with them. A few rounds of back and forth with perfecting the design samples and tweaking them to make sure mommies absolutely LOVE them; we are now in pre-production for our Signature YOU collection!
We had a successful first photo shoot with a very talented team of people that helped make it so….a brilliant photographer, a gorgeous model from Expecting Models (http://www.expectingmodels.com), a talented team of stylists, an amazing Hair and Makeup team, my wonderful sister who ensured everything went smoothly and the best-hubby-in-the-world who stayed home to help babysit our 1 ½ year old daughter:) See previous post for some behind the scenes pictures from the shoot. Now we are working with a web designer to get the official You! Lingerie website and online store live in the next few weeks! It has definitely been an amazing ride so far and I can’t wait to see where this journey takes us…it has all been a blessing!
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