We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ashly Ryan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ashly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

In 2017, I quit my job to backpack around the world with my boyfriend (now husband). I packed 50 pounds of clothes in a huge 60L backpack, plus had a carry-on/daypack full of electronics and travel accessories. I quickly realized that traveling with that much stuff was not going to be easy and almost immediately regretted packing so much clothing. When I returned home after traveling for 10 months with all that stuff, I wanted to create something that would help women travel lighter and easier. That’s when I came up with the idea for reversible travel clothing – designed to help women pack light, but still have lots of different options to mix and match together to create new outfits.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I always dreamt about starting my own clothing line. I’m a self-taught designer that learned by reading library books about sewing, waking up early on Saturday mornings to watch Nancy’s Notions on PBS, and by creating my own prom dresses from scratch in high school. After the incredible experience of being able to backpack around the world for 10 months to 22 countries on 5 continents, I was inspired to finally follow this dream. I traveled with 50 pounds of clothing which was way too much to be traveling as quickly and as cheaply as we were. When I got home, I started working on the concept of Splice Clothing, reversible travel clothing to help women pack light and adventure easy. I launched my line of versatile, lightweight, and functional clothing in January 2020. Every item can be worn 2 or more different ways and when mixed and matched with other reversible items (and regular clothing), the amount of outfits that can be created is exponential! So women don’t need to pack a lot to be able to vary their outfits when they travel and they are able to focus on the experience instead of their baggage.

I’m most proud of how resilient I’ve been over the past 4 years since I’ve started working on Splice Clothing, especially through the COVID pandemic. I launched my first collection just 2 months before the entire country shut down, borders were closed, and travel was completely halted, but yet my business survived and is doing better than ever. I’m so happy I stuck it out through all those tough times.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy would be affiliate marketing paired with having an email list. Even before the brand was officially launched, I started our affiliate program to attract bloggers and influencers in the travel niche to promote and advertise our products. Not all affiliates are lucrative, but I have one amazing affiliate that sends extremely high quality leads to my site and when their audience makes a purchase, we both benefit. Even if the leads coming in from the affiliates don’t purchase during their first visit, if they sign up as an email subscriber, now I am able to send them emails announcing sales, promotions, or new product launches.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

I use Shopify to run my website and I personally think it’s the best choice for e-commerce. Although the major con would be the high fees for order processing, the subscription, and additional applications, I truly believe you are getting so much for the price. Shopify has so many built-in features and tutorials that make setting up your store and running it day-to-day so much easier. The shipping prices are built in, inventory is easy to update, and product pages are easy to build, I would 100% recommend Shopify to anyone looking to start their e-commerce business!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://spliceclothing.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spliceclothing
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spliceclothing
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/spliceeverywear
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaVZDZFnAJSNnuWf6TIINzQ

Image Credits
Carlos Ibarguen