We recently connected with Catherine Huss and have shared our conversation below.

Catherine, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?

For American women, wearing a swimsuit in public can be a complex issue. I have struggled my entire life to find a swimsuit I feel comfortable and confident in, that reflects my style, and is made under working conditions that dignifies those making our clothes. A tall order to find in one piece, but I have high standards I don’t want to compromise on. Because I haven’t been able to find this myself, I knew I’d have to help create it. When I hear from customers the swimsuits I designed are helping them fill this gap they’re looking for as well, it makes all the long days and nights pursuing this endeavor worth it. My favorite response I’ve heard is “I love this bathing suit! I haven’t worn a two-piece since 5th grade when my mom told me I was too chubby. Feeling empowered.”

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’ve always been interested in clothes, fashion, sewing and style, and in high school when I couldn’t find a swimsuit or prom dress that had everything I wanted, I knew I needed to study fashion so I could go on to design these pieces I hadn’t been able to find. I studied apparel design and went on to work for a couple different clothing brands before pursuing Siena and Co.

Every decision with Siena and Co. puts the dignity of the human person first and foremost. We ask questions like “will this design dignify the woman wearing it? Will she look and feel beautiful and confident?” “Who is going to make these? Are they being treated with respect and being paid a fair wage?” “Which models are going to wear these? Are they going to feel comfortable and confident in this setting? Are we representing a wide variety of women so lots of women can see themselves reflected in marketing?”

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I decided to bootstrap the initial funding for the development of our swimsuits, to try to keep the company lean and minimal. After that, we launched pre-sales on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform and made $32,000 in pre-orders. This was a great option for us because as we are trying to be a sustainable fashion brand, this allowed us to know exactly which sizes and styles to produce, and not guess at the inventory and waste any extra products or resources. This Kickstarter funding paid to manufacture and produce our entire first collection.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process./

We work with a couple different contractors who make and sew our swimsuits. We first got connected with a factory outside NYC, and while their work was beautiful, they stopped responding to our communication, and we felt we couldn’t trust doing business with them. We then did some more research and found the factory we now work with in Los Angeles. This turned out to be an even better relationship because, as we’re based in San Diego, this is much more feasible to visit the factory whenever we need to. The owner is also much more communicative and extremely helpful. Finding a factory and suppliers for a new, small, sustainably-minded brand is very difficult because most contractors in the apparel industry have high minimum order quantities (MOQs) and/or are resistant to changes intended to be more sustainable, because it takes more time, effort and resources.
We are not perfect, but we strive to progress in these areas with our manufacturers and suppliers.

Contact Info:

• Website: siena-co.com
• Instagram: @siena_co

Image Credits
Here Today Studio