 I was giving myself one year to try this out, and I would know in a year if it was working or not. And if it wasn't working, I could always go grab another sales job. And it got to be the point where it's like, if I don't do this now, am I going to look back when I'm 45 and have a bunch of kids and, you know, and say like, God, I had this kind of fun thing going on, and I never did it, you know, and would I really, really regret that? And that's what I was so afraid of the regret. This is Startup to Storefront. Today's guest is Christina Party of Shit That I Knit, a company that creates high-quality knitwear, accessories, and puns. Seriously, you don't name your company Shit That I Knit if you don't have a great sense of humor. You should go check them out at ShitThatIKnit.com, and while you're there, you'll be glad to know that they've given our listeners a discount. And you have a special thank you promo code for all the listeners. Yes, if you guys want to use Startup 15 at checkout, that'll get you 15% off on a roadside. Once again, you can use the code Startup15 at checkout for 15% off your order. So listen in as we cover everything from how she outsourced her production to a team of highly skilled women in Peru, why building a great team around her has alleviated any fears of taking maternity leave, and how sliding into Katie Kirk's DMs led to a friendship and more exposure for the brand. Now, back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast. We're here with Christina. Hi, Christina. Hi, Diego. Thank you for having me. It's ShitThatIKnit. I love it. How did you start ShitThatIKnit? It's kind of a long story, but I started knitting when I was 10. My mom taught me how to knit, and so it's always been something that I love. And in college, I was knitting a lot, not doing a lot of my work. And my sister said, why don't you stop texting us photos of shit you had knit and make a website called ShitThatIKnit. And they were definitely making fun of me. And you did? And I did it. I got a WordPress blog. I was knitting really weird things. I mean, I was knitting mittens and hats and normal, your normal accessories, but really what I got addicted to was knitting these little toy bats. They looked like bats that had arms. And at the same time, I was binge watching Breaking Bad and not writing my final art history paper. I almost actually failed out. So this is more than a hobby, you were legitimately. I was a little bit having an addiction problem, but so I was having fun also uploading photos to the WordPress blog that no one read. And what year was this when you started the company? That was 2012. That was just starting the blog. It was just silliness. Graduated from college, got a real nine to five, and it was always my fun fact. Like I'm Christina. I'm 22 and I have a knitting blog, ShitThatIKnit.com, and people would always laugh. But it wasn't until the fall of 2014 that I went to a market in Boston to see if I could sell the shit that I knit. Yeah, so have you been? Yeah, I have. I have a bow tie company. No way. About 10 years ago, and we would, so it was actually how we launched originally. Really? And so we'd go there every Sunday and we would sometimes make like $1,000 selling these bow ties. That's really cool. Our gimmick was we gave free bow tying lessons. That's a good lesson. That was the gimmick. I can tie a bow tie. My dad only wears bow ties if you have any extras. Self tie, self tie bow ties. Oh, what do you mean? Yeah, yeah. So you're saying your dad only wears like once he can tie himself. Oh yeah, yeah. He's a bow tie guy. That's great. It says a lot about him. So Sowa was great. So people don't know who are listening. Sowa's kind of like the Melrose Trading Post of LA. Basically just you set up, you spend maybe like a hundred bucks for the day, ten by ten ten, and then you're just out there hopefully making some money. Yeah. So you started, you brought products to Sowa? Yeah, we did that for two weekends a lot because you know, selling hats, you can't be there in the summer months when it's like 95 degrees up. It's a seasonal product. Yeah. Actually starting to sweat wearing this hat. Yeah, you can actually wear it. Yeah. It's a very hot Moreno hat. That's the one downside to them is that I want to wear them in October, but it's just too hot. But we did the last two weekends in October and it went really well. I mean, I had never done anything like it. Like we had a pop tent from Walmart and a tablecloth from my mom. My parents house, like it was, you know, like some flowers and a sign from Vista print and I was like, oh, I don't know. And it went really well. People love the name. Yeah. I mean, it was pulled out within those two weeks. So that's how we got our first, but it still had a job at the time. Okay. Yeah. It was not paying the bills. Right. And then at that point, were you like, how do I make more of this product? Yeah. I mean, it's hard to keep up not only from like a carpal tunnel perspective, but also a social life and keeping up with demand is hard. So after those October weekends, we got picked up by a store, like very local stuff, but couldn't keep up with holiday demand, just filling orders on, on again, my very dinky website and decided in February to see if I could get women to knit for me. So I posted on Instagram, you know, would you rather stay at home on a Friday night and, you know, knit and drink a glass of wine, then go out. If so, you're, you're my kind of girl, you know, knit for me. And I figured that no one would sign up that it would just be embarrassing. But in the morning, have like 30 applications from girls my age who love to do exactly what I like to do, which is Netflix and knit and, you know, Netflix and knit. What kind of a following did you have at this point? Not a huge one, but like it was very knitting heavy following. So it made sense that we had this like concentrated group, but probably had like 2000 followers on Instagram or something. So to get 30 people willing to sign up for that is not a bad ratio. Yeah, it was, it was surprising. So did you hire them all? Just slowly, but surely yeah, I had a team of about 30 women here in Boston. And it was really a huge learning curve for me. I had never done anything like it. And the business model was a complete mess. I mean, we were, I was buying yarn retail, meeting these women wherever it was convenient for them. So whether it was like a coffee shop before work or a bar after work or swinging by my parents' house, just to grab yarn, go home, knit it from home and bring it, bring back the finished product. And then actually trying on that hat once they brought in the finished product and realizing like this wasn't knit properly. I was going to say the QAQC must have been a nightmare, right? It's all tough, yeah. Everyone knits a little bit differently. Yeah, yeah. And like, I didn't want to not pay someone for their work. And I'm not like super detail oriented. So I'd be like, this doesn't totally fit, but here's your money. And you know, I don't want to deal with this. So it was, it was great and a great experience to learn anything about quality control or just production on a very small scale. But it was, it was how we got our like first inventory built up. And are you still doing SOA primarily or is it everything online now? No, we just did those two weekends back in 2014. Our price point was definitely a little too high for SOA. I mean, even now our hats are 125. A lot of the stuff being sold there now is like a little more gift of like candles and soap and like lower price point items. So our price point was definitely a little tough. It looks, you know, for that. Especially at SOA. Yeah, so thinking like everything needs to be 30, 40 bucks. Right, yeah. And there are hats being sold there for 30 or 40 bucks. And it's just a little more of a premium product. So no, we haven't done any more SOA. Got it. And so then what happened after? So now you have your 30 knitters. 30 knitters. I still had a full time job. I was not doing a very good job. I was doing sales for a digital retargeting company. OK, for real. This is really thrilling stuff. It's really exciting. Exciting. I can see why you left it. Yeah. Don't tell them that. They're very nice people. But it was really good money. I mean, sales is great money. I had been at another tech company prior to that. So I was used to having a pretty cushy paycheck. How hard was it leaving? It wasn't that hard. I mean, I had had a lot of conversations. I had been doing this for about eight months. And I had talked to a lot of different mentors and said, what do you think of this idea? And finally, I got to the point where one of my mentors said, what are you doing? You can't be doing both things. You have to give this a shot. So I went in the next day and told my boss. And they totally got up. They were like, yeah, you're knitting in the conference room. Please sleep. Please sleep. You're fired. You have not had your quota in months. But they were very nice and excited for me and said, you can come back when it doesn't work out. But they didn't say that. They didn't say that. But they said, you can always come back. Most companies do. They're like, yeah, we'll leave the door open for you. Yeah, that's a good way to leave. And I was like, OK, sounds good. And so I told my parents. I was giving myself one year to try this out. And I would know in a year if it was working or not. And if it wasn't working, I could always go grab another sales job. Yeah. And what was the advice your mentor gave you? Just like you have to do it 100%? Yeah. I mean, he and I were meeting at that point every twice a month or something or more and just having all these conversations. And it got to be the point where it was like, if I don't do this now, am I going to look back when I'm 45 and have a bunch of kids? And say, god, I had this kind of fun thing going on. And I never did it. And would I really, really regret that? And that's what I was so afraid of, the regret. The regret. I think that's valid. I think that's so true. When I meet old people or older people. Old 45-year-olds. A bunch of kids. I was invited to a party recently. And my friend was turning 50. And her father was there. And he was actually on the Syracuse football team that won the championship in 1959. And just to hear all of his stories, he had been on the trading floor in New York. And then I was like, you know that? It's cool to hear the stories. And that's really all you have at the end of the day. But when you're older, so in hearing it from him, there's no ego. You're removed of all the ego and all the competition of it. And so I was like, oh, it's just so nice to hear it. Whereas you're meeting, if you need someone of your own age, there's usually some ego or there's some like, oh, I gotta be the best or I need it now. Yeah, afraid of failure. I was like, it was just so refreshing to hear that perspective. Did you save a little bit of money before you left your job? Or what, okay. Yeah, I had saved a good amount of money. I also moved home with my parents. Smart. Super smart. So they're great roommates. The amenities that they're having are very nice. Dinners are delicious. But it was a hard thing to do as a 25-year-old, obviously. It's like, oh, God. You're dating life. Yeah, put on pause. It was really a luxury to be able to do that, I think if I weren't able to move home. I am always willing to admit that I'm very, very lucky to have supportive parents who allow me to do this and who when I said I was quitting, they were like, okay. But they didn't say, no way. Right. I'm not gonna support you. It's such a big piece. I think I lived at home for two years just to save money before moving to Boston. And it was so, it's a game changer. It completely gave me a runway that I would have never had. And it wasn't like I saved 100 grand. I maybe I saved like 30 grand or something, but it was enough for sure to make it easy. Really helps. And the dinner also. Yeah, it's huge. Laundry. Yeah. There are some perks to come along. There are some serious perks. My mom's really fun. We got our nails done. So I had about 25,000 saved. And so I was able to put that towards buying yarn and paying for the knitting team. But so when I quit in May of 2015, knowing that I would spend that whole summer working with the team in Boston to work up an inventory and launch Kickstarter in September. So. Oh nice. We ran through my savings pretty quickly. Yeah. And. But then you did the Kickstarter campaign. How did that go? It went really well. I had only planned to raise $15,000. We did it in like 14 hours or something, like under 24 hours. Kickstarter is so much work. Have you guys ever done a Kickstarter? No, personally. No. I just think it's more work than people assume you just throw up a video and people will come. But I really, while the video was being made, I was working so hard on getting influencers to agree to post about on the day of the launch media, anyone who would talk about it so that when we launched it wouldn't just fall in deaf ears. And that took a lot of work. Luckily it was back in 2015 when Kickstarter was still. It was kind of hot. It was kind of hot. There still are very successful campaigns, but I think much harder today to get an influencer to say yes to posting about Kickstarter launch. For sure. So was lucky for that timing. And yeah, so when we launched we had like a Forbes article come out and a couple of local publications. That's amazing. Yeah, so we were able to hit that goal. In the end, raised $25,000, which all went towards hats at a discount. So people just bought hats at a discount price. And it was great. I mean, it wasn't a ton of money. And there's definitely easier ways to get $25,000. But what was great about it was it was a great marketing tool. We had this amazing video made. No equity. No equity. And we had 200 people wearing our hats the first season. By Christmas, we had all these customers who were already brand advocates. Yeah. And at this point, was your company mostly local? Like, are the people buying your hats mostly from New England? They were at the time, yeah. It was definitely friends of friends of friends. But we still have some customers today who still have their Kickstarter hat. They're like, I support you in the very beginning. And it shows the quality of the hat. Although when I see them, I'm like, please, let me give you a new hat that looks very beat up. I was going to ask what the differences were between that product and the one that you're putting out now. It's just like a slightly different yarn. Yeah, they're just nicer now. Very nicer. So whenever companies launch, let's say locally, right, it becomes really tough to get into other markets. So in this case, getting into the West Coast, are there any things that you did in particular to get out to the West Coast in terms of sales? We've done a lot. I mean, our hat naturally fits really well into the ski scene. And my sister lives in Jackson Hole. So we've done a lot out there. So we have actually our best markets go Boston, New York, Chicago, Jackson Hole. And it's a small community, but I cannot walk down the street there now without seeing five or 10 hats quickly. And Instagram has been huge in allowing us to have more of a national reach. Yeah, Instagram is pretty unbelievable. I mean, it's amazing how you can connect with literally anyone as you scaled your company. So were you still working with the 30 knitters after the Kickstarter campaign or what started to shift so that we could really create high volume? After the Kickstarter campaign, we had that season. We got everyone their hats by the promised time and didn't have a lot of money left in the bank. So looking at the business plan and talking to people, it just wasn't very scalable. And I definitely wasn't going to be able to raise a ton of money having this sort of mixed group here in Boston and the prices we were at. So I started doing a lot of research on South America and it's where we were getting our yarn. A lot of yarn comes from Peru. So started doing some research and I literally was Googling something and found this nonprofit in Colorado who connects artisan groups to brands. And I called this woman out of the blue and she put me in touch with our group that we still work with in Peru. But it's not that much cheaper to produce it down there. What it really is is they have the infrastructure, they have this network of women who are so incredibly talented, all these networks of women around Lima who can knit for us so we can scale versus having 30 people who go on vacation or... Yeah, and did you go visit? Actually, we started the relationship just on Skype. We just chatted. So from February of 2016 to October, I just was on Skype and then we went down in October to visit, but it was all just like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. Right, right. Did you raise money between those two years? I raised like a very small friends and family around just to finance this inventory. Still was living at home, wasn't that glamorous. Got it. What was it like going to Peru and meeting some of the people who knit for you? It was pretty incredible. I think I just couldn't even imagine what that looked like. And so going down, all the women that we employ can knit from home. So they live, Lima is a huge sprawling city. You're not from... From there, yeah. You're from Lima, yeah. I was born there, yeah. It's a huge city as you know and the traffic's terrible. So for these women to go to work doesn't really make sense for them to drive two and a half hours back and forth. They may have two or three kids. And so this enables them to stay in their community, create a new community, which is these women that they knit with and take care of their kids and not leave kids with unreliable childcare. So to see that impact, like I definitely need to brush up on my Spanish so I can understand a little bit better. But the hugs and the crying and the impact that we're making that other brands are making by employing these women is pretty incredible. So it's definitely, every time I go down, I have to like sort of like guard myself emotionally because I think I would just cry too much. It's just too nice. Peru's that kind of place. It'll get you on all the emotions. Yeah. You're such nice people. I'm gonna cry now. Yeah. I don't want to. I'm gonna cry. Yeah. In terms of like, is the wool made in Peru too? Okay. It's been out of quipa. Oh, out of quipa, yeah. That's like the ski city of Peru. Yes. Yeah, that's where you go to ski if you're interested. Yeah, it's big mountains. Huge. Much bigger than I. And it's so funny when we, last summer down there, we said we're going to our quipa to visit the yarn facility. And everyone in Lima was like, oh, ooh. Like, and they're like, why not Cusco? Like they're, and they suggest other places and like, cause it's for business. Like, I'm not, it's not for fun, but it's a beautiful city. It is. It's totally gorgeous. I don't know, it's got this bad rap. There's two versions of our quipa that a lot of people love. And so I've had friends that have gone and experienced both different ones. The people that experienced the not so good version never want to go back to Peru again. Interesting. And the people who experienced the other version are like, oh, this is great. It's almost like they get an Aspen type feel. Yeah. You look up and there's this map. What's that mountain? I don't know. I forget the name of it. It's insane. It's beautiful. And the monasteries, and it's just like gorgeous. And we drove all around and saw where they actually hand-died some of our yarn and like watched the women how they like hand-paint it. And it was just a really cool experience and they make, I mean, Peru has an amazing textiles industry. So they make other types of yarn for a lot of different things. But my aunt runs a company there and they used to produce all of La Costa's merchandise there. Yeah, you would never know. Which people don't know yet, which is pretty cool. Huge designers and making like very industrial type of thread and yarn. They took us on a tour and I was like, I could have used just the tourist version of this tour. It was like five hours long through like football length facilities and like all the different ways they pick up Paca. And it was really very educational but I was like very tired. But I was like, oh my God, this is. When you first got into knitting, right? What, did you ever think the company would be this big or what kind of products did you always intend to focus on? Well, it was 10 at the time, so. So you knew. So you had it snapped up. I knew, I had the whole plan. But even when I started it, I don't know, I think I've always had like dreams of something big for myself. So I think like embarrassingly, like yeah, I kind of thought maybe we could get to this point but I never envisioned the kind of work it would entail or. And how has your product line changed from when you, let's say, 2015 to today? Today, I mean, honestly, not, not like in a crazy way. We've always stuck to a very simple product line. One from a capital perspective. I've never, we never had enough money to like test out new products and be like, now we're gonna do belts and now we're gonna do. Sure. And I always wanted to stick to one size fits most. So from an inventory perspective, we weren't dealing with small, medium, large. It makes it a lot easier. A lot easier. Inventory still really hard. So I can't imagine mixing sizes into the group. But so we've really stuck with hats, mittens, like winter accessories. And then we have tested out some summer products. Our summer wraps made of baby alpaca have been really popular. So that's helped even out the sale cycle a bit. But nothing compares to the November, December buying of hats and mittens. Totally. And then in terms of how you think about scaling your business, is it getting into more shops or is it growing the, obviously it's a mix of both. But what do you prefer? I prefer the direct consumer. I think it allows us to really control our brand story. Obviously like the margin better. So I think our goal right now is just to continue to grab up different geographies. We still are, we've grown a lot but we're still very much a New England brand. And so grabbing New York and the Midwest and the out west even more is definitely a goal of ours. That's awesome. And then we work with lots of stores and hopefully a big retailer at some point. And recently you met Katie Couric. Yeah. What was that like? Well, I met her last year. I slid into her DMs. And I, cause she was doing a gift guide for gifts that give back and I figured she'd obviously love our story. Of course. So this is perfect. So emailed her and then once I sent her the information and she got back to me, I was like, why don't I grab your email? So I can send you more information. So once she highlighted us in her little Instagram gift guide, I asked her out on a date. I asked her if she wanted to grab coffee and she said yes. That's so cool. So she's so nice. She's the loveliest person in the entire world. I just adore her. And she's been such a great brand advocate. This year they put us in her, she has a newsletter that started this fall. So she added us to her gift guide and her newsletter. She Instagrams about us all the time. She connects me with great people. That's great. And she's just. She's a fan. She's a fan. And I'm a total diehard fan of hers. So she's just been wonderful. And on the business side, have you seen that help tremendously? Yeah, it really has. I mean, she's just so well connected and people just adore her. So a lot of customers have come to us saying like, oh, I found you in Katie's gift guide or I saw she Instagramed about you. This is so cool. And people send it to me as if I don't know. They're like, look, you're in Katie's gift guide. I'm like, I know. As if she wasn't going to tell you how to tie you. I know. Or like as if I don't stop her. I'm like. Oh, Katie. I'm aware. Katie does again. I've got a lot of messages like, look. I'm like, yeah, cool. But so we've gotten definitely a lot of customers out of her. Who was your first hire outside of people that were knitting? Sarah, she's actually not here right now. Sarah started as an intern for me a couple of years ago. She went to BC. So did a summer internship and then stayed on part time, helping me fulfill orders. So it's just me and Sarah. And then she started full time after she graduated. So she's our operations manager. She actually runs this business. Yeah, all the inventory management. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, she's on the phone with Peru every week, at least. And then just like. Does she speak Spanish? No, I don't need to get her to. Where were you guys working out of? We were downstairs in this building, had a much smaller space. So we love this little building. They've allowed us to hop around to bigger as we grow. So we're moving in two weeks. Same building. Same building, just literally next to the studio next door. Yeah, so people are listening. We're in Austin, Massachusetts, and probably a 3,000 square foot space, something like that. And there's about six, seven people working here, right? Yeah, we're very collaborative. There's a ton of inventory, which is great. A lot of shit. Yeah, we like to keep all the inventory in house. I think because I started making it all, I still need to touch it. I need to feel it. I need to see it. It really drives me, like in August, to see all the inventory come in. It's like, OK, we got our work cut out. We got to sell, sell, sell. It's at your time frame, so for all the winter stuff, you wanted it in August? Yeah, latest August. And that's when you do product shots. Yeah, well, we get product shots done ahead of time, but our first big shipments come in in July and August. So in terms of scaling a company like yours, you mentioned CERA, operation side of it. What other things become super important? Because it sounds like you have a pretty good control. The scalability of the relationship with Peru seems there. And so at least from a volume, you can tune it up or down. But in terms of bringing people in house, is it marketing? Is it? Yeah, so our second hire was marketing, Torres Rd. Director of Marketing, so helping with all things digital marketing from ads. And we had never done Facebook or Instagram ads before. So learning that landscape, email marketing, we redid our website. Obviously, the website's very important when you have a direct consumer brand. Want to make sure it's shoppable. And then we have events and communications and customer service and fulfillment. Do you guys spend a tremendous amount on ads? No. No, and we really just started to dip our toes into it. It's a whole new world. And really the way that people find us is definitely more organic. We do a lot of earned media, which is where Meg, our director of communications, comes in. So shout out to Meg. Shout out to Meg. So making sure that people are seeing either stories about our team in Peru or the brand story or just product placements for gift guides or on influencers. We have a lot of influential people wearing our things. So it takes a couple different touch points for people to buy. So the ads are sort of the follow-up, like what I used to sell, digital retargeting. Right. Yeah, I always think about that with the yield, right? And so as an entrepreneur, you want to put your time on to where you're going to have the most yield. And it's even on our podcast. We think about this like, oh, if we got Katie Kerrigan as an easy example, then you don't have to spend $1 million on, let's say, Facebook ads because you can get someone with an audience. And then it's much easier to do that. Yeah, much cheaper. Much cheaper, right? And it's like a 2020, 2019 totally different landscape than when you first started. Right. Which is crazy to think about. Yeah, and influencers have always been a big way, but we haven't paid anyone to wear our stuff. So it's very cheap, which also makes it kind of interesting when we go to raise money. People are like, what are you going to spend? Like marketing, where are you going to spend this? Because we don't have any marketing spend. We're like, you know, it's going to go to much scrappier different ways of getting our name out there than just putting money behind a Facebook ad. Yeah, no, I love it. So are you raising money? Do you plan on raising money? We raise money this summer, and then we'll probably raise more in like a year. Is it like a seed series A? A seed round. Yeah. We did convertible notes, so I will be doing more. Yeah. How much do you want to raise? I'm not really sure yet. I have to figure that out with our CFO. That's another hire that's been really helpful. Yes. On-demand CFO, for any entrepreneurs out there, I highly recommend Googling an on-demand CFO. That's a new term. I've never heard of an on-demand. Yeah, on-demand or fractional CFO. How did you find your CFO? Actually, my sister-in-law, he worked at a company where my sister-in-law was. So he comes in once a week, and he's not an accountant or a bookkeeper. We're talking about like bigger projections or how to raise money or stuff. I didn't go to business school, so what is a convertible note? You don't learn that in business school. OK. Tell me. And then obviously learning about it, but having someone to sort of guide that and make sure that we're making good financial decisions. And you pay him hourly, or is he like a monthly retainer? Hourly. That's amazing. Yeah, that's great. Peter, I'll go with him after this, actually. This is the new thing, I think. There's the gig economy, right? But then there's a tremendous amount of executive CFOs, chief revenue officers, people like that, that for sure you should just be able to hire. Yeah, because you don't even all day. And if you're a CFO, you really don't need to be in a chair all day for one company either. No, he works for five or six other companies and it's like a curious guy. So prior to this was not in the knit hat industry. My sister-in-law worked at a robotics company, so I was like, oh, wouldn't you love to come interview what shit did I knit? But he's got a wealth of knowledge on it. I was just thinking, let's pretend we quit our jobs and then we joined shit that I knit and I'm explaining it to my mom. So she's like, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, I joined a knitting company. Yeah, it's dreams. They came true. Finally, yeah. So now that you've got all the ladies in Peru working for you, what is the amount of time that it takes to go from getting the yarn to a finished hat? Like how much lead time do you need to have one product roll off the line? Our yarn takes a long time to make. This yarn that we make is not typical of peros. It's not stock yarn. It's our own creation. So that takes anywhere from a couple months, especially if we're picking our new color. So like two or three months ish. And then it takes about a month to knit all the things. Depending on the order size though, I mean, we start, we order for our that July shipment. We order that in like April. From a cash flow perspective, kind of tough. Right, and then that's a really. Really hurts in April. Really hurts in July as well. That's when your babies do. Yeah, exactly. It'll be fun, stressful time. Yeah. All happening at once. I'll be on maternity leave. I won't deal with that. Smart. And then from a shipping perspective, shipping from Peru up here and then you're just kind of holding on to them until they start selling out. Yeah, and then we ship them all out from here. So I never thought I'd be so into freight forwarding. Really tight with our freight forwarders from Peru. And then, yeah, it comes up here. We keep it all in house. And then we ship it out to our customers. Because I mean, it's an expensive product. It's special. I want to make sure that when it reaches the customer, which might be their first ever interaction with us, it's a really great experience. They love it. They have all the, we have dust bags and great packaging and stories about our knitting team and reusable materials and everything like that. So we want to make sure it's not just picked by some warehouse and sent down a plastic bag. On the podcast, I think we've had over half of the founders that we've interviewed have been female. Really? From your perspective, there's a lot of female listeners. So you're pregnant currently? Yes. There's so many women that we speak to that are always worried about that, like, what happens when I get pregnant? What happens to my company? Do I have to quit everything? Is it the end of the world? How are you going into that? What advice can you give? I would have felt that way if I didn't have to get team now. I think I feel so confident in our team that I feel really good about taking a break. I feel like I can be gone for weeks and the bus is still moving. And people are so much more talented than me on what they're working on. And so I feel great about trusting them with my baby. I also don't think I'll be taking a full four-month maternally. It might be like two weeks. And I'll be back on my emails. But it is different because even from a raising money perspective, I wonder, am I going to go into meetings super pregnant? And people are like, wait a second. Is she really serious about this? That's unfortunate to even have that thought in the back of your head. But we also have a company that's so female focused with selling to women and made by women and this incredibly female team that I feel pretty supported. It's part of the story. Yeah, it's part of the story. And I think that's important. That's great. So you set up the system for yourself to be able to at least take the time off. Yeah. If needed, you're good. I think we'll be good. I hope so. Knock on wood. I don't know. I also have been so busy that I keep forgetting I'm pregnant. So I keep being like, OK. After Christmas, I'll deal with that. So I was just meeting with a friend. And she was like, so what's the nanny? What are you going to do? I was like, I don't know. Haven't gotten to that. I need to sign up for all these moms groups and stuff. Yeah. And you got to sign them up for school immediately. Yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. I've got a lot to do. But we'll get through Christmas first. You have some time. Deal with that. Yeah. And so you're raising. What else is on deck for 2020? For you, the company? Just like a lot. I mean, we've been doubling year every year. So the more you double, the harder it is to double next year. So we just need to. It's funny that you look at it that way. Yeah. But it's so true. It's like easy to double when you only do 100 grand. Right. It'll be good. But now we're hitting numbers that are a little loftier. And right now, I think our focus still is to stick with what we do really well, which is our hats and our winter accessories. So how are we going to go into new markets and create what we have in Boston, which is like this great cult following where people own 10 of our products and are obsessed with it and tell all their friends and buy it as gifts. Like, how do we create those customers in different markets? Yeah. We're definitely really focusing on the Midwest. And we're opening up these pop-ups that have been great. So that will be busy. Pop-ups in different markets? Yeah. So we've had them in Boston and New York. So we're probably in a couple new ones for 2020. You can see these in Aspen, no problem. Yeah. We do really well in Aspen, yeah. These hats are amazing. Thanks. And I like how it says knit with Amor inside, which is really cool. The one Spanish word. And there is an alpaca here. Shout out to your designer. This is beautiful. Thank you. This looks really, really good. Yeah. And it's not itchy. When you do the pop-ups, are you going yourself or is it like a team that you send out? We have Claudia, who's our events manager. So she headed up our New York pop-up. And then we hire people to work in the stores, especially here in Boston, where we sort of understand the area, and we're able to fill that in with part-time people. That's definitely a struggle, and I think for any entrepreneurs opening up pop-up shops, they know that getting this part-time retail help is really difficult. So we're going to need to improve that system for next year to make sure that it's people who really are great for the brand and are excited to be there. That's the hardest part. Yeah. It really is. Especially if it's a new market, we want to make sure that when people walk in, they're getting the whole brand story. Yeah. They're your ambassadors and the first point of contact. Yeah. And when it's a month-long gig, it's a little harder to. How did you decide on the price point? Was that something that you came early on? I knew I wanted to be a higher price point. I had bought a hat. I'm a big skier, and I had bought a hat, I think, like Bognor or something, like for $300, a little ridiculous, I recognize. But I knew that there was a market for a higher-end price point. But there's really no other hat in the market at this price point. And it's either your J Crew or Gap for $40, and it's made of 100% acrylic yarn and polyester, or you've got literally a $600 hat in even markets that's just like a black cashmere toque thing. Like, you know, it's like a little, I don't know. And it's $600, and people buy it. So it's sort of both end-to-spectrum. Yeah, so you view it as like an affordable luxury. Yes. And they're really high-quality. I stand behind that they're hand-knit. They are pieces, works of art. They're pieces. They're legitimately pieces. Yeah, pieces. And they're meant to last for a very long time, and they're incredibly warm and soft. When you meet with investors, what's the one thing they always ask you, or the couple things? Are they like, what's your product line? Where's it moving? Yeah, product line is definitely a question how to make it less seasonal to round out the year. Right, because we have a lot of seasonality right now. Yeah. And the cash flow is tough where we're buying things in April and not really selling them until November. And then from a scalability perspective, it is hand-knit, say, some insane celebrity warrior hat. Tomorrow, how would you keep up with that demand? You can't just turn the machine on higher and pump it out. Yeah, what's a happy problem? Yeah. Although people always say, what a good problem to have. I'm like, yeah, you try having this problem. It's still a problem. It's still a really big problem. I mean, we've run out of stuff already this season. And it's just not. It's like, yeah, good problem to have. Do you guys ever do sales with excess inventory? We just do Black Friday, Black Friday, Super Monday. And then we do a one-summer sale for our summer products. But trying not to train people into just waiting around for a sale. Yeah, that's super smart. When we started our company a long time ago, we actually ended up running Groupons. Really? We were a New England-based company. And so we had sales coming from DC, all the hubs. And then we had no sales coming from LA or San Francisco. And Groupon was a thing at the time. And so we ended up running Groupons just to get to the West Coast. Yeah. And so we were OK devaluing the brand, let's say, on the West Coast for access, but not on the East Coast. And then it ended up working. And it got us into these new markets. But we were always so cognizant of that. Once you start any sort of sales, any sort of giveaways, it's like, people all just wait around for it. Yeah. It's really bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so we're trying to make sure we don't do that. And I think what our customer now knows is that we sell out of the most popular things. So a lot of people won't wait around for the sale. What's an example of some of the most popular things? This hat, this white, our white gun beanie, our white motley. I think neutrals usually sell out. But all of our new colors sold out really quickly this year. Our kid stuff. We did some really cute animal ball clavvas. OK. Yeah. Was that new? Yeah. It's our little shit's line. Your little shit's line? So we have mommy and me matching hats. So those sell pretty quickly. People spend a lot of money on kids. Oh my god. We had Eva Chen, where our unicorn ball clavva. She's the head of fashion at Instagram. So once she posted about that, we sold out of our unicorns. I didn't know Instagram had a fashion. Yeah. She's pretty cool. She's very fashionable. I guess that makes sense. So when you sell out of products, are you increasing that order for next year by X amount of percent? Is that how you kind of like look at it? For sure. And it's, but it's still at the end of the day. It's like a mix of art and science. So it's just not perfect. One year, we hardly sold any pink hats. No one was buying them. And then next year, it's all people wanted. And I'd gone super conservative on our order because I don't want to have excess inventory. And then we had no pink yarn. So it's just, you don't really know. And this year, we did order a lot more of our white motley and we haven't completely sold through because we ordered so much more. But you just don't know. Do you ever think about making a product with a celebrity? So it's like they kind of like a line or like wearing Schitt's Creek, wearing shit. That would be great. Oh my god, I would die. Oh, that's good. Dan Levy, that would be great. Yeah, I actually sent him a hat. I don't think he wore it, but just because I'm a super, I've been a super fan since the beginning. It's a good show. It's really funny. It's so funny. But yeah, we actually did our kids ball clavas with Lauria Baldwin. She's Alec Baldwin's wife. She's got a great mom following. So that was our first foray and two collaborating with a celebrity. And I think we'll do more of that. When you ship it, does it come within a certain, like if someone unboxes it, what does it come with? The hat comes in a dust bag that says, this is my shit. I came with that because my sister's all I steal my things, so it's fine. So, and also as a way to store your hat during the summer months, or if you want to like shove it in your bag, you have something to put it in. And then it has a card like about us and a return card. And then also a card about our team in Peru. So one of their stories. And then actually people can go onto our website and write a thank you note to our team down in Lima. So we can share how much people love their hats. That's such a good idea. Yeah, it's really nice. And then you guys print them and send them over? Yeah, and they read them out loud to each other. And it's just kind of nice because they don't see the finished product. They don't see how crazy people are about them. And so it's nice to share that success with them. I love that. Make sure they know how much we appreciate it. Where can people find your company? www.shitthedineit.com. And what are you guys on Instagram? Shit the Dine It. Shit the Dine It. Is it with an X or is it with an I? It's with an I. S-H-I-T. Shit the Dine It. Shit the Dine It, yeah. I love how explicit this is. Yeah, it's so fun. On our branding though, it has the aspects, you know. Yeah, well thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for sharing your story. Yeah, this is great. We here at Startup The Storefront would love to hear feedback from you. Reach out and let us know what you think, either through rating us on the podcast app or by sliding into our DMs. You can find us both on Facebook and Instagram at Startup The Storefront. Our theme song is composed by DoubleTouch. If you want to learn more about the products and businesses featured on today's episode, check out the links in the show notes. And if you enjoyed the episode, consider subscribing because we've got a lot more great guests coming up that you won't want to miss. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.