We recently connected with Rebekah Carr and have shared our conversation below.
Rebekah , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
The idea for Up & Tumble Co’s convertible dress was born while watching my 5-year-old daughter perform cartwheels in her grandparent’s yard on a beautiful, warm summer day. I smiled as I watched her, so focused on her body, her form, the way the grass felt under her feet when she made a good landing. With every cartwheel, her little ladybug dress would fly upside down. Needless to say, comments were made, clothes were changed, and I interrupted her practice for the sake of modesty. This wasn’t the first time I had to recommend a pair of shorts under her dress or a change of clothes to be more functional for her active lifestyle. I took the dress she wanted to wear so much and added a quick button and hole, converting it to a romper, effectively fixing the modesty issue. She loved that she could still wear the ladybug “cartwheel dress” and choose to participate in whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, due to the simple placement of a button. This pre-prototype design did not look too cute, but it planted a seed. My motivation to pursue this idea of a go-friendly convertible dress grew when my daughter started gymnastics. A confident, competitive person emerged out of my shy, quiet girl. She began practicing cartwheels, bridges, and handstands every day, engaged and proud of what her body could do. Being active and testing the limits of her body bred confidence. She began to choose to wear pants every day. Her dresses went untouched. When I asked her why, she said she couldn’t do as much in a dress. Of course.
I want girls to be able to wear a pretty dress and do all the same things they can do in pants. The most iconic symbol of femininity in girl’s clothing is the dress, but you can’t ride a bike in a dress, roll down a hill, do the splits, race, hang upside-down on the monkey bars, play soccer, or do a cartwheel. Dresses present barriers that subconsciously, or consciously, limit girls. The Up and Tumble dress solves this problem: A convertible dress empowers girls to choose for themselves and sends the message that femininity can be–and do–anything.
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?
Being a social impact clothing designer was an unlikely title for me, as I don’t consider myself connected to fashion. Before starting Up & Tumble Co, I didn’t pay much attention to children’s clothing, other than to ensure my kids had some, of course. I am a part-time pediatric Speech and Language Pathologist, and I was an Air Force intelligence officer for more than 10 years before that. My real passion is creative problem-solving and progress— to serve a purpose bigger than myself. I am a critical person. Thankfully, I learned to evaluate my perspective over the years, and keep the critic mostly in check, but in the case of discovering this convertible dress, being critical has been an asset. When I noticed the boundaries imposed by the classic girls’ dress— I was annoyed. What use is a dress, other than to be pretty, if a girl has to change into shorts or pants to cartwheel, race, bike, or climb? As a child, these activities are confidence-building opportunities. I couldn’t find a dress anywhere that would still allow my daughter to be active without an outfit change. It is in my nature to be creative and to look from a new angle, but because fashion is a stretch for me, I needed a social impact strategy to ground me in this venture and to inform the design. My hope to raise a confident girl fueled my desire to change the function of a dress. The Up & Tumble convertible dress is feminine in form and function. For my daughter and, I hope, for all girls, it is freedom. This dress is a tangible reminder that she can look feminine and still do all the same things she can do in pants. As I continue down this path of entrepreneurship, I fall back on the leadership lessons I learned from the military: I try to be assertive and direct about what I want, but not so much that I don’t consider the receiver; I am determined to stick by my personal and my business’s core values; and, I consider the worst case and most likely scenario in each business decision.
The convertible Up & Tumble dress is in the prototyping stage with a Kickstarter campaign to launch in March 2024. It is designed for ages 3T-8, starting with a single product. Sustainability is second only to our girl-empowering social cause. I plan to source American-milled fabrics and manufacture the dress in the U.S.A. In the future, I want to expand merchandise to include girl-empowering, identity-expanding, books, accessories, and art.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Avoid risks. It’s best to play it safe. I don’t like to be wrong, and I wouldn’t say I like to fail. Nobody does! As I get older, I try to avoid risks. Investing in this convertible dress design is a big risk. There is a chance that the product will flop, that it can’t be priced low enough to turn a profit, or that I won’t connect with my target market. When evaluating risks in the military, we used the term “acceptable level of risk” to describe the benefits vs the costs of a decision. If this product had no social impact message, I would consider it too risky. I unlearned to avoid risks that could serve a larger purpose. If I didn’t explore this new idea, I would be telling my daughter that I noticed a chance for improvement and that the risks outweighed her benefits.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
When I initially started looking for a seamstress to bring the Up & Tumble convertible dress to life, I “direct messaged” seamstresses via Facebook, solicited at sewing shops, and took numbers from bulletin boards at Joann’s Fabrics. People were interested but booked up for months. Ultimately, being impatient, I hired two friends of mine who I knew were both hobby sewists. Both of these ladies under-sold themselves, hesitant to get involved, not wanting to disappoint. As suspected, they were creative, inspired, and excited to be involved. Both were also mothers to girls. They were candid with me about the look and the function of each prototype. We spent hours taking dresses I bought at Goodwill apart and putting them back together again. We brainstormed different designs, attachments, and fabrics. I got lucky to have these ladies as part of the beginnings of the dress. If I had taken my design idea to a designer/manufacturer early on, I would have spent thousands of dollars more, I would have felt disconnected from the product physically and conceptually, and I probably would have gotten ahead of myself, moving too quickly to the production stage. The extra time has been a gift. I am using it to perfect the design, consider the impact of the product as it relates to my target market, and build my brand’s identity and following.
Contact Info:
- Website: upandtumble.com
- Instagram: upandtumble
- Facebook: upandtumble