We recently connected with Kathryn Cook and have shared our conversation below.

Kathryn, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

As a Christian woman who loves fashion, I have run into the issue of modesty a lot in my life. I struggle to find clothing that both intrigues me and provides the coverage I’m looking for.

In the past, I have felt like there were two different categories of clothing brands I would run into:

1. brands that don’t care about coverage, so I can only pick from the few items that work for me and ignore or modify the rest.
2. brands that are attempting to provide modest dress, but lack some level of creativity and/or provide too much coverage and not enough finesse to feel feminine and beautiful

I wish I were someone who could keep my frustrations to myself, but I’m not haha. And after complaining to my dear sweet husband, Ryan, he responded with, “Why don’t we just make our own?”

This was the beginning of our journey to create Poet Dresses, a dress brand where modesty feels fresh, creative, and celebrates femininity!

Now that we have started a family, we have expanded our focus to put a high emphasis on mothers! We take pride in our maternity and nursing-friendly collections that help mothers feel empowered and beautiful in their Godly role. We also make an effort to use natural fabrics when possible.

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?

My name is Kat, and I am an entrepreneur and clothing designer! I never imagined I would describe myself that way, but here we are.

I love fashion, I felt a lack in the market, and my husband, Ryan, and I worked together to fill it.

Poet Dresses makes high-quality, modest dresses that aren’t frumpy or bland. We emphasize femininity, individualism, and creativity in self-expression.

We have recently expanded into maternity and breastfeeding-friendly clothing. We also use natural materials whenever possible.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When we originally started Poet Dresses, I was a young college student. I assumed that our customers would be just like me! We were advertising to young people and really struggling to make sales.

Soon, we learned that while young people were interested in the product, they didn’t have the capital to invest in the quality of pieces we were providing. We soon realized that the people who were actually interested in buying high-quality, highly curated clothing were an older demographic.

So, with a lot of feedback from our customers and social media following, we began adding features for an older demographic. This is when our sales exploded. As my stage of life shifted into motherhood, I found a huge community of young moms looking for modest clothing that was spunky and feminine while being functional for maternity and motherhood.

I never really saw the business going in this direction, but it has been so fulfilling to provide our sweet customers something they have been searching for.

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

We have been growing our Instagram account for more than three years. As of today, we are at 37.5k. For us, that’s a pretty big deal. Most of our customers come from IG. We get tons of market research data from IG. One of the biggest pros of our IG account is the loyalty we have built with our customers. They get to see behind the scenes, provide feedback on upcoming designs, see our values as a Christian brand, and really connect with us. I love the easy access to market research. IG polls on stories are a great way to break a tie when our team is hung up on a design choice. We just ask the people which color, or shape, or sleeve length they would prefer! It is also meaningful to the company morale to hear from our followers how much our brand has uplifted them.

Another huge benefit that has come from IG is our affiliate marketing program. We have a huge network of creators on IG that promote our product. It is another one of our top sales channels. We find creators who have our same values and give them free product and commission on sales they make. Many of these creators have become close friends, and just add to the amazing Poet Dresses community.

My advice for growing this type of social media presence boils down to “keep on keeping on.” Especially at the beginning, but even now, I get pretty stressed about posting. How do I look? Did I say the right thing? Am I posting too little? Am I posting too much? Is this a dumb idea? All of the doubts.

You just have to do it. Post the bad content. Just get it out there. Start the ball rolling. But don’t leave it at that. Learn from what works and what doesn’t. Shamelessly copy accounts you want to emulate. Nothing is original on social media, so don’t even feel bad about it. Give credit where credit is due, of course, but don’t feel like you need to reinvent the wheel. But whatever you do, don’t stop. It took us years to get momentum. Now, it is one of our greatest assets. It’s totally worth the investment. Be real. Be honest. Truly connect with your audience. Your community will come.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://poetdresses.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/poetdresses/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/poetdresses/
• Linkedin: Poet Dresses
• Twitter: @poetdresses