Emma Lou The Label: A Masterclass in Solo-Entrepreneurship
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One of the biggest challenges new businesses face is how to get their awesome product into the hands of their customers. If that's you, then you're going to want to read this full article. This week on Mimir, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Emma Vollrath, the founder of Emma Lou The Label. She shared her experiences of owning a small business and how she was able to get featured in Vogue (among other publications) and have high profile influencers posting about her company and products.
Emma started her company because she's always been obsessed with wellness. “As a personal trainer, you're also kind of like a therapist and I started to noice that all my clients were saying the same thing,” she recalls. “They were all saying that they weren't happy with the way that they looked in clothes.” Emma told me that some women were adding onto their training, going so far as to arrive at the gym wearing saran wrap or trainer corsets, to try and increase their sweat during their workouts in an effort to de-bloat and expedite their feeling of confidence. For Emma, this presented a unique opportunity in the market; creating a workout clothing that helped women feel and look their best. Thus, Emma Lou The Label was born.
What is now referred to as “The Glow Band,” the trademarked heat trapping fabric featured in all the waistbands of Emma Lou workout bottoms, started with humble beginnings. “My grandma helped me cut a piece of neoprene and sew it into an old pair of biker shorts I had. I tested it for a couple of months and it was working.” Emma recalls knowing that the product wasn't perfect in its first iteration, though what product is? “Everyone romanticizes their first launch, I think I sold one thing on my website. I had 28 to 30 instagram followers. My branding was awful, the website was terrible, but if I waited until everything was perfect I never would've launched.” I say this all the time on the blog, and Emma said it best, the hardest thing is just getting started.
Emma immediately began work on the next iteration of “The Glow Band” soon after launch. “My manufacturer, god bless him, he's my ride or die at this point,” helped refine “The Glow Band” idea. He suggested she try recycled thermo plastic to replace the neoprene. This material was commonly used in windbreakers and old school sauna suits. It was the sleek and functional material Emma was looking for, so then the challenge became how to get the word out.
I personally discovered Emma Lou through Lauryn Bosstick (aka The Skinny Confidential). Lauryn is a well known wellness blogger and podcaster with over one million followers on Instagram. So, I wanted to know the story behind how Emma got Lauryn to organically post about her small business on her major platform. “I reached out to her about two years ago, super basic, no connection,” Emma recalls. She simply went to Lauryn's blog, filled out the contact form and hit send (stick around to learn exactly how Emma pitches brands). Even though she didn't see a response for a couple of months, Emma's patience paid off and she eventually heard back. Emma immediately sent her some product to try and start building that relationship. “I've met her a couple times now and I always make sure to keep gifting her product because I want her to keep wearing it. It was super organic, I never paid her, she just genuinely loves the product.”
It's great when you get exposure like that, but you you need to capitalize on the momentum, so for Emma it's just one of the many avenues she takes to continuously grow her brand's awareness. For Emma that looks like a mix of pitching retailers, pop-ups, hosting events, and creating a community on social media. Her advice for new entrepreneurs is, “start with pop-ups. Don't rely on website traffic as much as I did because I didn't see sales through my website for months.” I'm sure you're thinking, “okay cool, but how do I do that?” Emma encourages new entrepreneurs to start with local boutiques. “Bring them samples, actually build a relationship and let them wear the samples for a couple weeks. Once you have enough inventory, because most retail stores want you to have a lot of inventory before they'll buy from you, you'll have already developed that relationship and can sell there.”
What really impressed me about Emma was her ability to think outside of the box when it came to getting her clothes in local stores.
“Some of my best sales came from nail salons,” she recalls, “my town had a ton of nail salons but not a lot of boutiques, so I thought about where do women go to relax and buy stuff.”
By thinking about the entirety of her customer, she was able to find other untapped avenues to grow her business. To apply this to your own business, think about all the places your customers hang out, maybe that's coffee shops, or gyms, but don't be confined to just the next logical step, Emma is demonstrating the value of thinking holistically.
Despite the growing traction that Emma Lou The Label has received, it's still just the beginning. “Still to this day it's just me,” she says, “people only see what comes out of me pitching, but not what goes into it. I send fifty pitch emails a day and maybe one of them responds.” Pitching to press and retailers is a huge part of her marketing and sales strategy. I wanted to dive into this because it's great takeaways for new entrepreneurs, and clearly it works. For Emma, she was able to be featured in Vogue and saw direct correlation the next day to sales on Shopify.
So this is how Emma pitches to press. “Instagram is so under utilized in this way,” she says. First she will check on the press' Instagram to find their editors and ensure that they resonate with her brand. “98% of editors have their emails on their contact button, so I usually use that.” Within the emails themselves she usually says something like, “Hi I'm Emma, this is my brand, we've been featured in X, Y, and Z publication and would love to send you some pieces.” She recommends including some photos of influencers in your clothes or other photos like that. Also, she emphasizes to keep the email short and sweet, no more than 4 lines, and then follow up in about a week if you haven't heard anything. This approach has worked well for Emma.
The additional age old advice that Emma echoes for new entrepreneurs is to talk to other business owners.
“Even if it was someone who was not in the same industry it's always helpful to talk to them about what you're building, because somebody will be interested and want to connect and invite you to this or that. It's a spiderweb of connections that takes a long time to weave, but once you do, you have this network of people that you can text or call whenever you need help.”
Personally, I'm starting to learn this more for myself through this blogging process. Every time I have a new guest to feature here, I like to think I'm making a friend. Already I've been able to tap the experience of all of these amazing founders for questions I have, and I couldn't be more grateful.
If you don't know where to start with building your network, Emma recommends the Female Founder Collective. That was an integral platform for her getting started. After applying on their website (they accept most everyone), and through monthly payments, you get access to essentially this big group chat with founder tips, meet ups and more. “If you don't want to pay, which I totally understand, what I did in the beginning was I reached out to some of my career crushes via DMs or cold emails,” Emma says. Just simply saying something like, “Hey I'm a new founder! I would love to send you samples or if you have time for a virtual chat I would love to connect,” encourages people to help because they remember being at that early stage.
Looking ahead, I wanted to get Emma's take on what's coming next for the brand, and she has a couple main focuses. Firstly, honing in on what she's good at. Interestingly, this was also mentioned during my last article with Denise Lee. She also mentioned focusing in on their hero product to better target their ideal customer. The other thing that Emma is focused on is elevating her customer event experiences. She's seen great benefits from these in person events for a couple reasons. One, as the business owner it's a lot easier to connect face to face with your customers. Secondly, even after her first event, which had about forty people, she saw girls wearing her product all around her local town. So, she's planning to continue to capitalize on that.
If you're thinking about hosting an event for your brand, here are Emma's recommendations. First, think about the end goal for your event. Do you want people to buy your product? Do you want to increase awareness? This should serve as the foundation for your event and inform all the subsequent decisions. The next step would be to reach out to local brands that are in your niche, whether that's health and wellness, beauty, cars, whatever, but pitch them to donate goodies. This is a win-win for everyone in terms of exposure, so usually brands are on board to collaborate. For new entrepreneurs, the hack is to host these events at a local park. “It's hard to pay for studio space when you're a new company. You as the business owner would be renting the space and then if you wanted to get some ROI, would probably charge like $20 for tickets. But I don't want to charge tickets because I want them to get them to buy product.” The main point of these events, and why they're so memorable for the customer, is for people to come together and leave feeling good about themselves. You're there as the person to facilitate your community coming together and making friends.
I look forward to seeing the continuous growth of Emma Lou The Label. I feel so honored to be offered a glimpse into companies' beginnings as watch them grow over time. To check out Emma's athletic wear, head to her website and follow them on social media.
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