We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Christina Sun. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Christina below.
Christina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
Sunchild began as a collaborative project between me and my dad more than 10 years ago. He encouraged me to follow my dreams and then joined the ride. We did almost everything together, from building the website, to meetings with designers. Our shop name, Sunchild, is a tribute to my dad, because without him, it wouldn’t exist. Fast forward a couple years, I moved forward with Sunchild on my own and it has continued to be everything I hoped it would be.
Christina, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
We are a Women’s and Kid’s online retail shop. We believe each product our customer adds to their collection should be special, timeless, and worth keeping for years to come. We focus on stocking ethically and sustainably made pieces, and our aesthetic is minimal and unfussy. As we learned about the fashion industry’s waste and unsafe practices, we were compelled to support independent designers who held the same values as us. We only add designers that fit our values and aesthetic, which include hard to find styles and designers. We started as a Women’s shop in 2012, and recently added Kid’s clothing and accessories once I became a mom in 2020.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Being genuine is really important to me. From the beginning, we’ve never bought any Instagram followers, and every single follower is real. Because of that, our number of followers grows slowly, but each follower is invested in Sunchild, and many turn out to be loyal, frequent customers. Part of being genuine is also showing how our products look on a regular person. Many of my photos are selfies and photos my husband snaps on my iPhone. On top of that, I also respond to customer inquiries via comments/DM. This isn’t the industry standard because it means working at all hours of the day, but I pride myself in being there for my customers when they need a helpful, quick response. Sometimes the inquiry isn’t even about a product we sell, but rather where are my go to ice cream spots. I’ve taken the time to build relationships with my customers and am so fortunate to have grown a beautiful Sunchild community.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Starting a shop is really fun, and appears glamorous, but what you can’t see behind the scenes is a lot of the struggles small business owners go through.
When we started Sunchild in 2012, it was about having a fun shop, and that was it. One year later, I learned about the fashion industry’s waste and unsafe practices, which literally brought me to tears. It changed my personal and Sunchild’s values entirely. I remember being on a buying trip, feeling like I failed. I didn’t believe in Sunchild’s products anymore because they were partially responsible for fast fashion. I thought this was the end of Sunchild and we were only one year in. I thought about giving up, but my support system encouraged me to pivot and create a new version of Sunchild I could be proud of. I was compelled to support independent designers who held the same values. It took another year to bring Sunchild to a place I was proud of, which is when we broke even on our initial investment. Sunchild today looks nothing like it did in 2012. It took resilience, purpose, and continued dedication and motivation to realize the full potential of what we could do with Sunchild. We are champions of the slow fashion industry and everything it stands for.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.shopsunchild.com/
- Instagram: @shopsunchild