We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful LeEllen Smith. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with LeEllen below.
Alright, LeEllen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One deeply underappreciated facet of entrepreneurship is the kind of crazy stuff we have to deal with as business owners. Sometimes it’s crazy positive sometimes it’s crazy negative, but crazy experiences unite entrepreneurs regardless of industry. Can you share a crazy story with our readers?
One time I accepted an offer to speak at a ladies gathering at a church in the next county. I didn’t know the lady who invited me and didn’t expect to know anyone in attendance. I usually like to follow a script when I speak because I ramble too much when I don’t However, on this occasion , I went off-script. I asked for questions at the end of my talk and someone wanted to know about the sewing machines we were using. I told that they were old, worn-out home use machines and that I thought it was time for us to purchase a commercial machine, but at $1800 it was not in the budget just yet. While I was still talking the priest in attendance at the gathering left the room only to reenter about 5 minutes later. As I was wrapping things up he just walked right up to me and handed me a check – for $1800. Before the month was over, we had a new commercial sewing machine that truly was a game-changer for us.
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?
After college, marriage and a short time in the workforce as an accountant, I decided to stay at home to care for our family of four children. However, as I should have expected, one by one, they began to leave home and suddenly, I felt I had been downsized. I was approaching my 50th birthday and recognized that I had a small window of opportunity to do something to make a difference in my community. Social enterprises were just starting to come on the scene and that felt like the very thing I should pursue. I began noticing the people God was putting in my path and the struggles they were facing. One of those big struggles in my county was unemployment. At that time, it was in excess of 11% and the people who felt this strain the worst were those who had already been marginalized from the mainstream because of problems like addiction, lack of education, those who had been incarcerated or came from a background of poverty. This population became my target workforce.
In our small workshop on our historic town square in rural West Tennessee, we handcraft fabric travel gear from new upholstery fabric. Our designs are simple but practical. They are strong and beautiful, just like the women who create them. We make our products in small batches in coordinating collections. They are perfect for so many travel needs, especially “road trips”. I personally don’t like to pack so the idea that I could walk in my closet and grab a few things still on the hanger and put them in a garment bag, let me forego the chore of packing. By tossing a few toiletries, shoes and PJ’s in our tote or weekender bag, the time it takes to prepare for a trip can be shortened considerably.
Our brand is unique because our products are made by hand, right here in the USA by women who are doing so in a healing centered workplace. They actively participate in all aspects of production and feel a great deal of pride in our finished products. Knowing you are doing something worthwhile that is valued by others is very empowering and is why OUTsideIN works. We have carved out the front third of our workshop as our retail space and our customers love to walk in and see their products actually being made by real women. But from the beginning, the vision has always been to be an e-commerce business too so we sell online at OUTsideINworks.com.
We are strong women on a journey making travel gear for yours.
Have you ever had to pivot?
After deciding I wanted to launch a social enterprise, of course, I had to come up with a product. I thought this product should be something that was sewn because I had been sewing since I was about 10 and it was something I felt I could teach and would be a marketable skill for our workers to learn and take back out into the mainstream when the time was right. However, fabric can be very expensive and no one is empowered by cutting a $32/yard fabric the wrong way. So, I came up with the idea of repurposing T-shirts into all new products. We made skirts, scarves, bow ties, key chains and several other products from T-shirts that folks donated to us. At that time, we were using a website domain called wearoneshareone.org and our model was for our customers to buy a product and receive a second product that was to be given to someone who needed something to brighten their day. Well, for so many reasons, this didn’t work well despite the fact that other companies like Toms were able to use this strategy. We rebranded, and moved away from that website to OUTsideINworks.com because it conveyed that our purpose involved “work” and empowering women in the workforce really does “work” in helping them achieve stability. Finally, in 2016 we rebranded a second time, completely moving away from products made from T-shirts. Our first product made from new upholstery fabric was a hanging garment bag we call a “HangUP” because it’s made by women with real hangups. From that, we’ve continued to add other travel gear products and now have a full line of price points. When we made this pivot, I don’t even think I realized how much of a transition it would be and honestly, re-educating customers is a tricky process. Often, to avoid confusion, I’m tempted not to share this part of our history but I have to acknowledge that it is part of our story and we did learn something important. That is, how to create a product that is viable in the marketplace using raw materials of little value. It has made us more aware of the costs that raw materials add to products and how that affects the price we must charge.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
For some reason, I foolishly thought I had all the skills I needed to start a social enterprise. I’d been sewing since I was young so I could design and make the products we would sell and I had a business degree that would prove useful in running the operations side of things. In addition to that, I’d raised four children. That’s were I got my superpower – ” patience.” It allows me to train vulnerable women, thread a sewing machine multiple times a day and manage a tedious thing like a website. But it didn’t take long to notice there were holes in my resume. One day, before we even got started good, I announced to my workout class that I was about to start a social enterprise. It felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. No one said a word and everyone just quietly left the room. Only a few days later, Jean came up to me as I was rolling my mat up. Jean and I had worked out together every day for about two years and had about that many conversations during that time. We were total opposites with nothing in common. She was from Massachusetts, about a decade older and didn’t have kids. But she told me that she had made a resolution at the beginning of the year to get involved with a non-profit that worked to empower women. It was November and her time was running out. She said she didn’t sew but could do other things. In a stroke of uncharacteristic genius, I told her that would be awesome and from that point forward we proceeded to make our little social enterprise a reality. It seemed everything outside of my “wheelhouse” was something she excelled at and she was just as passionate as I was about what we were trying to accomplish. I think the most important thing she did for me though, was encourage me. Social entrepreneurship is a very lonely space and is fraught with opportunities to believe that what you’re attempting to do isn’t worthwhile or achievable. Jean constantly reminded me that it was both. As 2020 neared an end, sadly, she decided it was time for her to truly embrace retirement and step away from her responsibilities at OUTsideIN. It was not easy to let her go but I had learned so much from her and had been empowered myself as a result.
Contact Info:
- Website: OUTsideINworks.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outsideinworks/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OUTsideINworks
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leellen-smith-761ba838/
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/outsideinworks