We recently connected with Annika Chaloff and have shared our conversation below.

Annika, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

I wasn’t always a lingerie designer. In fact, I started my journey in entrepreneurship straight out of college with a totally different fashion-based business. I began a maternity clothing line based on my thesis collection (an idea I came up with to stand out from the crowd of other womenswear fashion design students). Upon graduation, I moved across the country from Boston to Los Angeles, and started sewing maternity clothing in the back bedroom of my apartment. My pregnant clients went on to have babies, and asked me to make baby clothing. So, the enterprise snowballed into childrenswear. At 21, I had never been pregnant and I had no children, and I didn’t feel like I could relate to my clients or customer, and frankly, I wasn’t interested in the product at all. I put a lot of weight on being a business owner and clothing designer and forged forward anyway. Things generally weren’t going great, but I decided to put all my efforts into a last-ditch attempt to generate cash at a vendor market around the holidays of 2014. Looking around at the other stalls, I saw other shop owners making tons of sales… I didn’t make any. I felt like a huge failure. On my drive home from that event, I had to pull to the side of the road because I couldn’t see through my tears well enough to steer my vehicle. That night, I cried so hard that I gave myself two black eyes. I decided I never wanted to feel like such a colossal loser again, so the next morning, I took everything — merchandise, fabrics, patterns, threads, notions, yes, even sewing machines — and threw it in the dumpster behind my apartment building. I was sure that I was terrible at business and that I needed to get a real job.

But a few short weeks later, I decided to do a little fun sewing. I made my very first bralette with the materials I had leftover: some baby headband elastic, and lace from the bridesmaid dresses I made for my wedding. I lay the bra on my bed, took a photo, and posted it to instagram. The requests for bralettes from my friends and family members came trickling in. And then flooding in. I opened an etsy shop to sell just this one bralette, just until I was out of materials. But the whole thing began to snowball. I bought more supplies. I fished my machine out of the dumpster. And I started a business in earnest.
Almost 10 years later, I now have a team of sewists and shop workers. For years, I cut and sewed, and packed and shipped every order myself. But in 2020, I made my first hires in order to expand. I started with getting help to make my products, just with a handful of people working in their own homes and studios, and first. Then I brought on a studio assistant to help pack and ship, manage customer service, keep the website updated. in 2021, I opened my brick and mortar location and things took off like wildfire! It felt like luck, but what it was was an amalgamation of years of hard work, trusting my team, and connecting with my local community.

Annika, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My lingerie line, Hey Mavens!, is best known for our inclusive sizing and ethical, location production. We produce bralettes and underwear in sizes XXS-10XL and beyond right here in Nashville. We create comfortable, fun, playful, and cute undergarments that are designed to fit a wide range of body sizes and types. Our belief is that everyone should have access to good fashion, regardless of their size. I am also highly invested in producing clothing with locally-sourced materials and creating local jobs by manufacturing in my community. Many of our customers enjoy being able to try on all of our sizes in person — our whole range is available both in store and online — as well as, the thoughtful fit and function of our garments which are throughly fit-tested on many shapes, and produced with consideration to textures, fabrics, comfort, and accessibility.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

I can think of a lot of times, especially in the last two years, where I thought the business was close to shuttering. One of the biggest instances was when I was suddenly hospitalized at 32 weeks pregnant for severe preeclampsia. I had gone to a routine OB appointment in the morning, and instead of heading into the office as I had planned, I was admitted to the hospital, where I would give birth to my daughter five days later, seven weeks early. During my 10-day hospital stay, I felt very physically safe, very well cared for, and I knew my baby was also in good hands. I completely focused all of my attention and energy on getting myself healthy and bonding with and supporting my child. But, I thought, “how can I run a business like this? Surely, something has to give.” I wasn’t prepared to take maternity leave that early. I hadn’t made plans for the business to operate yet in my absence. I wasn’t ready to step away, but I was forced to. Mercifully, my team was extremely well equipped, very self-sufficient, and already empowered to make executive decisions, and they took over the helm and manned the ship for well over a year before I was able to come back to work in any meaningful capacity.

More recently, I had a real come-to-jesus moment regarding the existence of my brick and mortar shop. That location was my pride and joy, and a lot of my self-worth and ego was wrapped up in having this gorgeous little shop. But when I looked at the numbers, the hours it took me to keep the place running, and the strain that having it was putting on the business overall, I realized that keeping it open another year would either mean making personal sacrifices — like seeing my child A LOT less — that I wasn’t willing to make, or it could mean not having a business at all. Payroll, rent, insurance, utilities, all the expenses were really starting to add up. So, with my lease coming up for renewal, I decided to close the brick and mortar shop, and carry on as an online-only business. After my shop-closing announcement, I shared that during this transition, I was open to input from others about what the next steps for my business could look like. My friend, Rachel, from This Is The Finale, reached out to share about a new in-person location that she was opening at a vendor mall called Old Hickory Social. It was like all my prayers had been answered! This location was the perfect solution to the problems I had been having with owning my own store: I wasn’t able to be there as much as I wanted to be, and it was costing me too much money to staff it. Old Hickory Social doesn’t require a representative from each business to be there in order to make sales like traditional retail does. So I can enjoy having a physical presence, a place for my customers to try on and shop in-person, without having to be there myself on a set schedule. I get to enjoy spending more time with my family, while also having a little spot in the world for Hey Mavens!

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

The most effective way I have found to grow my customer base is social proof. The combination of social media and word of mouth has been instrumental in the growth of my business. I have found great success and exponential growth on instagram through my use of reels. I’ve honed in on the type of content my customer cares about — body positivity and neutrality, local and small business, and behind the scenes sneak peeks — and doubled down on giving them what they want to see. Coupled with the comments and support from my existing customers affirming that the products I make really are great, I’ve found that driving traffic from social media, especially instagram has been my best tool for converting followers into shoppers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.heymavens.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/heymavensxo
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heymavens

Image Credits
Laura Schneider, Chasten Bugge, Carmen Rogge