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

Bethany, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

In my industry, often times designers will create a suit based on a conversation and a few requests from the client, and often times the client has no idea exactly what the finished product will look like. I developed a system of creating digital sketches of each suit, with details about the materials that will be used so that my client knows exactly what to expect to get as a finished product. Some people are okay with surprises, but I’ve found that when someone is investing their money into a custom made product, they’d typically like to know what they’re getting.

Bethany, 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?

I started making suits in 2017. I am a bodybuilder myself and one of my favorite parts of the sport has always been the beautiful suits that the female competitors wear. When I was getting ready to compete that year I couldn’t afford my dream suit, but I knew I could probably make it for a fraction of the cost.

I knew exactly how I wanted my suit to fit, but I didn’t know how to sew it myself at the time. I contacted a suit designer who would make me a suit to my specific fit requests, and then I could rhinestone it myself. I taught myself how to apply rhinestones by watching YouTube tutorials and doing some research on which rhinestones to buy. I ordered a few hundred dollars worth of Swarovski rhinestones and when I had all my materials gathered I camped out on my living room floor and rhinestoned my first suit. I loved every second of it.

After I wore that first suit on stage and posted on Instagram that I had rhinestoned it myself, I was contacted by a few bodybuilding friends who were wondering if I would make suits for them too! I did, and I quickly fell in love with designing and making competition suits.

I quickly realized that in order to have a profitable business, I needed to sew my own suits rather than buying them from another designer. I’ve been sewing since I was about 8 years old, so with some practice and quite a few trial-and-error attempts, I was able to successfully sew my own suits! This also meant I could more easily customize the cut of each suit per my client’s needs.

I’m on my 6th year of making suits, and I’ve fallen in love with not only doing this because of my passion for bodybuilding, but I’ve been able to express myself artistically through my work as well. I know first-hand how much work and discipline it takes to step on a bodybuilding stage, so I take that mindset of work, discipline, and always striving for better yet towards my work too. I want each suit I make to have the same passion and attention to detail that a bodybuilder has in the gym and towards dialing in for a competition.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I’m the first to admit that I am not a social media expert! I enjoy using instagram personally, but as a business I know there is a lot I have yet to learn. Even with my limited knowledge, I feel I’ve built a decent enough following that’s brought me 90% of my customers. I’ve used my background in marketing and graphic design to make sure my instagram page has the aesthic I want, and highlight my work. From the beginning I knew that I wanted to use social media to authentically show my work. I show photos and video of each suit I create, and I use clean white backdrops with high lighting to capture the sparkle and vibrancy in each suit. Over the last year or so I’ve realized how much value there is to “behind the scenes” content. I’ve started to use my personal instagram page as my way to show the work behind the finished pieces. I share many time-lapses and info on how I make suits and the tools/materials I use. I’ve learned that sharing more the work that goes into each suit I make has helped my audience understand the value of my work, and the care and time I put into what I do.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Yes I did! Prior to being a full-time suit designer I was a graphic designer at an advertising agency. I worked there for 7 years before leaving to make suits full-time. I was fortunate enough to work for a business that was very supportive of me chasing my own business goals and they were very supportive of me reducing my hours at some points so that I could keep up with orders as my business grew. While at the agency, working on larger accounts taught me the value of precision, efficiency, and providing a customer with what they want, sometimes before they even know they want it! I loved my work there, but when EvoFit Suits became so successful that juggling two jobs was too much to handle, I had to give up one. It was a proud step to leave a great job to work for myself. I’d been making suits for 4 years already when it became my full-time job.
For me, the step that pushed me to know it was time to do suits full time was when I had so many orders on my plate that I could take a week off of my other job and work on suits for that whole week and still not be caught up. That’s when I knew I needed to make the change. It was a bit scary to leave the security of working for someone else, but sometimes doing something that scares us is what pushes us to thrive even more.

Contact Info:

• Website: evofitsuitsbyb.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/evofitsuitsbyb
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EvoFitSuitsbyB/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bethanyabeln
• Other: Personal Instagram: https://instagram.com/bethany_evofit

Image Credits
Nick Deraney