Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brianna Kilcullen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Brianna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I took the entrepreneurial jump over four years ago. I was (and still am) driven by the vision and executing against it so much so that I couldn’t fathom doing anything else. That being said, as time has worn on (and if your friend group isn’t doing the same thing) it can be hard to see others buy their first and then second homes, go on vacations, have a disposable income, and more while you pour every ounce of your being into your business.

The way that I have combatted that comparison is to remind myself that 1) comparison is the thief of joy and 2) many people would love to be in my shoes but are too scared to make the needed sacrifices.

I’m a firm believer that we all have individual gifts to give back on this planet while we are here whether it’s starting a business, improving someone else’s business or not being in business at all! You just need to tune into what gives you energy, put horseblinders on and follow the path!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I studied International Business at George Washington University with a focus on human rights. After graduation, I went and worked in Uganda for a small non-profit helping create jobs for farmers to local food markets. When I moved back to DC, I was recruited by Under Armour in their sourcing and supply chain department. My heart was (and still is) always in sustainability and advocating for those who didn’t have a voice. There just wasn’t a team that did that work at UA when I started, which inspired me to carve Under Armour’s first full-time sustainability role and build out a program to audit their factories globally.

After I did that, I made a jump to the west coast to run the sustainability initiatives at prAna, a subsidiary of Columbia Sportswear. Throughout the course of that time, there were several pivotal moments that led up to the big moment to start Anact. I would say the 2016 election was a pretty big one. I remember waking up the day after the election and not believing it was real. I was staying at my best friend’s house in LA and I had to drive back to San Diego. I cried the whole way on the drive and realized that if I wanted to see something get done in this world – I had to do it myself and not wait for someone else to do it. For me, that meant seeing the textile industry evolve and take responsibility for its social and environmental impact.

Fast forward a year later and I had made the decision that the best way to make that happen was to create my own brand and product. I was having issues with the performance features of my current towels picking up this mildewy smell and I was searching for sustainable towels that wouldn’t pick up that smell. I was starting to research towels when I had to travel to China and I happened to be there while they were harvesting hemp and I had the opportunity to learn about its natural performance features of resisting the growth of bacteria based on its molecular structure. It clicked for me that I should have a hemp towel. It’s been a wild ride ever since.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Anact was successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2019. We received our inventory in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic and the first lockdown. Our strategy was to go wholesale out of the gate, but then that disappeared as the hospitality and brick and mortar industry shut down.

The shift forced us to go DTC if we wanted to survive. Frankly, I was intimidated by DTC and all of the various algorithms of each social media platform. Managing creative + ad budgets + agencies was scary. But we did it. When people got scared and wanted to reduce ad spend, we increased ad spend and focused on ads that were inspiring, uplifting, and bold.

The boldest campaign we did that summer of 2020 came through a partnership with a local non-profit, SurfearNegra, and a local photographer, Malcolm Jackson. Our hearts were devastated by the murder of George Floyd and we wanted to do something about it. So we screenprinted an iconic image that Malcolm shot of of the founder of SurfearNegra, GiGi Lucas, holding a surf board on the first African American owned beach in Florida on the Anact tote bag and went to market with it. 10% of sales were given back to GiGi and Malcolm.

This collaboration ended up getting picked up by Oprah Magazine, Drew Barrymore, and made national news. Most importantly, it inspired young girls of color (and women too) that they can surf and get into the water too.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

One of the things that I believe that has benefitted us the most (as well as ourselves) is being true to our values. We’ve been taught to believe that the customer is always right but I think we need to change that mentality to…. that might just not be the right customer.

At Anact, I believe people connect with us because we stand by what we will do just as much as what we won’t do. For example, we have been asked to produce different colorways for towels for the past year but we know how harmful the chemicals and dyes are on our customers skins so we will only test out natural dyes.

Most people I suppose would find a way to make the towels to make sales but I think that is a short term hit.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.anact.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anactglobal/?hl=en