Beth Ann Herrin, the propietor of on the Realityplus Clothing Company took a few moments recently to speak with our special correspondent Lisa Di Clemente about starting her niche clothing website.
Beth Ann, tell us about Realityplus Clothing. What prompted you to start this business?
Realityplus Clothing Company is a company that was created to focus entirely on the customer that wears sizes larger than a 14. As a plus size consumer, I have always been frustrated that I cannot find the same updated styling that my smaller friends wear. For years, I have been forced to shop in a few stores that carry plus sizes, but find myself wondering where they get their style information? Why is it that the styling was not as current? And what about fit? And naturally I wondered how many plus size designers were working on the lines that the stores were offering? (I knew the answer to that question!) The inspiration was self motivated, but also motivated by conversations with plus size women everywhere! They were all asking the same questions: Style, fit, quality? Where is it?
How did you get into design and the fashion industry?
I have had a passion for design for as long as I can remember! In my early years, my Dad recognized my creative talents, and replaced lined coloring books with blank sketch pads. I was sewing for Barbie by the age of 7! Fortunately through both elementary and High School, I had several teachers that encouraged developing my creative talents, and led me to The University of Cincinnati’s D.A.A.P. (school of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning). The school had a renowned 5 year design program that kicked off my career. After graduating college, I moved to Los Angeles and began a 25 year career in Fashion Design.
But there is something unique about your designs, can you tell us what sets you apart?
Realityplus Clothing Company focuses on what we call “Work to Weekend”. We find that jeans and casual T-shirts are available at any number of stores, at any price point. But clothes to wear in a professional setting are hard to come by. Black pants? Sure, you can find them. Black traditional blazer, it’s out there. But what about interesting silhouettes and fashion colors? It seams that the stores carry wardrobe basics, but little else. Frankly, once you have a great black suit, do you really need another one?
Also, Realityplus Clothing Company STARTS with the curvier woman in mind. Our dress forms are a size 20. We don’t work from Missy sizes and grade up. We start with a true plus size and work from there. This way, we can focus on getting the right proportions and styles for our customer. Also being a plus customer, we understand some of the trouble area, like armholes, and upper arm fullness. We shape clothes and add style lines to flatter curves.
Tell us about some of the hurdles you’ve encountered and how you got past them.
LOL! This could take a VERY long time! But as a woman entrepreneur, I would like for my story to be an encouragement for other women out there that are considering a step off the cliff into business ownership!
No matter how much you save and how much you plan, things will happen. You have to have a strong sense of faith, strong stomach, and good advisers. The ability to shift strategy and take constructive critiques doesn’t hurt either! (Owning a loyal dog is also a big help / blessing, they make you forget the tough stuff at the end of the day!)
My first season out was nothing less than tough. The Collection was over 6 weeks late (due to a typhoon). When it did arrive, the cartons were incorrectly packed on the pallets, and came in crushed, torn open, mixed sizes, styles you name it! I had to spend 3 weeks in the warehouse with a group of High School students recruited to assist in the tedious task of counting and re-packing the merchandise!
On top of that, the first Realityplus Clothing Company collection launched in time for what has gone on record as the worst Christmas season since 1969!! Who knew! By the time my clothes were for sale, all of my competition was marked down. The big companies took early markdowns and were at 70% off before December 25th! Yikes!
But….you get up every morning, pray, strategize and go at it one more day.
Do you have both a physical store and a webshop?
I do, for now. The company was originally set up to be Internet only. My focus was to reach the plus size customer in more remote geographic locations that did not have easy access to large malls and specialty stores. It seems like the farther you get from a large city, the fewer choices you have (especially in professional apparel). In the process, I was encouraged to open a local store, and found an ideal situation a few miles from home with fair lease term.
After about 4 months with both, I find that the Internet “trumps” the store. We are reaching customers from all over the county on the Internet. Literally from California to Vermont and all points in between! While the store (which doubles as a design studio) is nice to have, I am not sure we will maintain it. It’s what I mentioned above, in start up you strategize,execute, and review. In review, the store just doesn’t generate the potential of the web.
I notice you offer home parties, how does this work?
The home parties were designed for 2 reasons:
The first to get in front of the customer so they could experience the quality of the product and try it on first hand. Since some shoppers are still skeptical of the Internet, this offered a way for customers to get to know the brand, and get over their fear of shopping on the Internet.
Second, the home parties offer an earning opportunity for women that may have opted out of corporate worlds to focus on family priorities. It gives this woman an opportunity to earn extra income with out sacrificing her family. When a woman signs on to become a consultant, she uses her community contacts and invites potential plus size customers to come see the seasonal collections, try them on, get style advice, wardrobe planning and building ideas. The consultant can either do this in a “party setting, or one on one basis. Since there are 5 seasons a year, technically speaking, the consultant only works 5 weeks a year.
The consultant is paid a 15% commission on all sales created from their contacts. The only investment they have is a deposit on the samples they use in presentation, which is credited back to them when the samples are returned.
The consultant can be as successful as they want. They can earn enough for a family vacation, to assist with school tuition, or build a full blown business!
Internet Retail can be a very tricky business to break into. Can you tell readers how you promoted Realityplus Clothing when it launched and some of the promotional tools you use today?
Good question.
Breaking into the world of e-commerce is complicated and can be very very costly. For a small business that does not have big corporate bucks behind you, the pay per click advertising is out. You simply can not compete with large companies that are funding major pay per click campaigns and that have full time staffers on board to manipulate key word search strategies.
I will also admit…..I am not a techno guru. Simply not my background. So I a learning as I go.
I had to rely on old fashioned “organic” methods at very, very low cost. Simply finding customers that liked the product, purchased the product, told their friends about the product. There were also a lot of opportunities for editorial coverage at the beginning which snowballed into some wonderful free press! These “mentions” really helped my site crawl up a little higher in search engine recognition.
In a way, we are building a “community”. I am accessible to my customers. They can e-mail or call and expect to get directly to me.
We have also done several “focus group” functions where we invite customers to come in and talk about what they feel is missing in the plus size apparel market. These customers feel that they are taking part in our product development and are contributing to success for both the company and getting the right product to other plus size women with similar product desires.
Then we did some great business “exchanges” As a woman in businesses, I can completely relate to the struggles women entrepreneurs face, and believe that we owe it to each other to help and encourage each other whenever we can! I was fortunate enough to find several very gracious and generous women business owners locally in the fashion arena that came on board and did some “exchanges” for product give aways at our launch. This allowed us to do some drawings for really outrageous prizes ranging from $100 Spa certificates, jewelry, shoes, and Fabulous Fake Fur coats! These give aways were a big hit with the customers that came out early. One woman business owner (Donna Salyers of Fabulous Fake Furs) has become quite a source of encouragement and inspiration for me. I am actually planning on carrying some her products on my site next fall!
As our data base grows, we are doing some hard mailings, and emails, but I want to keep this within reasonable limits. I personally feel “assaulted” when I get too much stuff in the mail, or get daily e-mails from a store. I would rather have the mailing or e-mails really bring something significant to the customer. This is a thin line to cross. Traditional marketing techniques tell you to “repeat” messages to grow brand awareness”: on the other hand, as a busy woman…….I just flat out get annoyed when I get too much junk in my in box. We are walking the narrow balance here as we go……
It is also hard since our philosophy is bringing “fair prices” to the consumer from the beginning. After years in the apparel industry, I am very familiar with the “game” of marking goods up high so that you can intrigue consumers with discounts and coupons. Personally, this is a game that insults my intelligence. I know what my competitors mark up is, and am not entertained by the “fake” discounts! For this reason, we chose to come out of the gate with “fair prices’. This means we take a fair mark-up and then do not run all sorts of promotions. At Realityplus, we bring our product in closer to the true wearing season, take a fair mark-up, then run two major end of season sales (one at the end of Spring, another at the end of Fall / Holiday). Since we are not constantly running sales, we have to really spend the time and think about what message we want to take out to our customer. We want to send her information that is useful.
OK….that was the long answer to your question! The short answer is take every unconventional, low cost, ethical opportunity you have to market your idea. And then be prepared to wait. Quite simply, It takes time for the search engines to recognize you and for your name to roll up to the top of the list without the help of pay per click advertising or “sponsored ads”.
By Lisa Di Clemente for the Business Opportunities Weblog.
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