Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sarah/Alex Weiss/Goots. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Sarah/Alex thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

What Corporate America gets wrong in the queer apparel space is that performative rainbow-washing is not a true form of allyship to the queer community. During the month of June, countless corporations slap a rainbow on their logo, sell Pride gear, and then go silent on queer issues on July 1st. Although it may initially feel good to see a favorite brand show outward support, it has become increasingly clear that these rainbow logos do not directly correlate to actions that benefit the LGBTQIA+ community. Not only does the rainbow-washed gear take away from small Pride businesses who recognize that Pride is all year, but this performative allyship distracts from non-inclusive work environments and corporate donations to anti-LGBTQIA+ politicians. What Corporate America needs to realize is that showing support for the queer community goes much deeper than an annual rainbow-washed merchandise campaign. Big businesses need to recognize that they must make substantive changes to their business practices and work environments before the queer community can genuinely feel supported.

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

We are Queer Gear, a small, but mighty, two-woman team who also happen to be a queer couple of six years! Hailing from California, Sarah is an entrepreneurial and spontaneous spirit whose passions include music, daydreaming about new business ideas, and her cheesy dogs, Gouda and Mozz! Alex is an Ohio native whose job has brought the couple to Omaha, Nebraska, where she currently works as a forensic anthropologist by day and a professional dog cuddler by night!

It took us a long time to come out and even longer to feel comfortable in our own skin, let alone wear “queer clothes.” Once we finally started snooping around for some cool gear to represent our identities, many of the products we found were still exclusive to certain identities, tacky, gaudy, or low quality. Why was LGBTQIA+ clothing often sold by sketchy online vendors who also sell beer pong sets, bottle openers, and whoopie cushions? Shouldn’t LGBTQIA+ clothing be made by LGBTQIA+ creators? We knew there was a market for this kind of apparel and thus, with the passion for producing Pride clothes to be proud of, Sarah’s 6+ years of sales and leadership experience in the ecommerce space, and our disdain for the 9-5 grind, Queer Gear was born!

Queer Gear is dedicated to bringing high-quality, inclusive, and empowering clothing to the queer community. We make must-have pieces that are perfect for Pride parades, date night with your partner, political events, awkward holiday dinners with the family, or anywhere else you want to be uniquely, proudly, and unapologetically you.

Today, we’re honored to work with members of the community to produce high-quality products that aren’t only cute but also make a difference in individuals’ mindsets and confidence. Finding stylish queer-related clothing is a minor struggle compared to the discrimination and isolation that millions of LGBTQIA+ people continue to face. Queer Gear is about bringing representation and awareness to this tenacious fight without stereotyping and helping every person show that there is unity in diversity.

What we find most important about our business is the fact that it creates an opportunity for LGBTQIA+ people to support one another. Who wants to buy LGBTQIA+ merch from some online merchant who also sells gardening equipment? We are so proud of the fact that when someone purchases from Queer Gear (instead of any one of the many huge companies selling Pride apparel for one month out of the year), they are not only supporting queer business owners, but giving back to the community at large through our donations to LGBTQIA+ organizations! We think it’s so important to support LGBTQIA+ small businesses instead of big companies that are just trying to make a buck off the queer community.

Queer Gear is our passion project. Our goal was to create a brand that genuinely supports and gives back to our community. What we didn’t expect is how much community would build up around the brand itself. We have had a wonderful crew of brand ambassadors over the years who have formed friendships we never could have imagined. We have been able to use proceeds from our sales to support top surgeries and fertility treatments. We have even received messages saying that our gear gave people the confidence to come out!! These are the moments we are most proud of, and we want everyone to know that these are the moments you make possible when you support Queer Gear!

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

One of our favorite and bittersweet marketing stories was Pride of 2020. We were stuck at home with the rest of the world trying to avoid COVID and saw something about how celebrities were responding to common folk since they were stuck at home, too! Sarah had the bold idea of figuring out how to celebrate Pride month in a big way, since we wouldn’t be out dancing in the streets — why not ask Ellen to throw a virtual Pride party with us? So, we got online and tried to reach out to Ellen by submitting a request through a form on her website with our pitch. A few weeks later, we got a call from the Ellen team! We were ELATED and couldn’t believe that we had gotten through. They weren’t reaching out to throw a Pride party with us (we had big dreams) BUT they did want to feature us in one of her digital segments on EllenTube.

This was just an insane experience and we couldn’t believe that it was happening to us. It was a huge light during a dark time that was Spring of 2020 when we were all in lockdown. Ellen had always been such a huge inspiration to the queer community and really gave visibility to lesbians when making “Ellen” the first prime-time sitcom to feature a gay leading character. She used that as an opportunity to come out herself to the public and in doing so lost so many views that the show was cancelled. She persevered and made quite a huge name for herself since the nineties and was an inspiration to many in their journeys.

The reason this experience is bittersweet is because June of 2020 shed light on so many of the problems in this country, and Ellen ended up outing herself again–this time as less of a kind person than she portrayed to the public. So, we had already gone through the experience of fulfilling some of our starstruck dreams as individuals and as a business, and then they were crushed right as our episode was airing. Queer Gear received awesome visibility, a handsome reward, and a wonderful time shooting the show, honestly, only to find out that the Establishment we were working with wasn’t one that we were proud to partner with.

Overall, we are still so proud of ourselves for taking a risk and following our hearts in reaching out to an LGBTQIA+ celebrity, and we always recommend putting yourself out there, because you never know what will happen until you try! We’re grateful for the opportunity and experience, however, it is a marketing risk because displaying “As seen on Ellen” or showing footage from the episode may rub some people the wrong way. There is good behind the story, the opportunity, and the visibility we were given as a small queer business. However, we also learned that there is always risk in aligning your business with someone who has a large platform, and how heartbreaking it can be when you discover that you don’t share the same values after all.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

When we launched Queer Gear, we envisioned our social media as having very little emphasis placed on us as the owners. Our goal was to center our products, our audience, and the voices of our community members. We initially thought this would lend an air of professionalism to our brand and give us the legitimacy we needed as a brand new business. Although we think this initial social media voice was beneficial for developing a professional reputation in the space, we quickly realized that in order to develop the community we envisioned, we couldn’t be a faceless business. After all, we want to support businesses we feel invested in, so why wouldn’t others feel the same way? We started to use a more casual tone and include ourselves and our stories on our page. It became obvious that this shift really resonated with our audience, and we started to see much more engagement and brand loyalty almost immediately. We began to develop personal relationships and friendships with people who regularly interacted with our content, and we were able to develop a community of people who felt safe coming to our social media pages. When we started making TikToks, the benefits of this personalization became even more clear. We found that highlighting our personalities, our relationship, and our struggles as small business owners really resonated with our audience. This level of personality, which we initially viewed as unprofessional, turned out to be a key turning point in our business trajectory. We encourage other small businesses to infuse their personalities into their content, because this has played a huge role in building our reputation in our market!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shopqueergear.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/shopqueergear/ or @shopqueergear
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shopqueergear/ or @shopqueergear
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shopqueergear or @shopqueergear

Image Credits
Ciara – @thenewmixx A Dior – @adior.dior Alysse Dalessandro – @readytostare Chad Remy – @chad_remy Maij Vu Mai – @maijs_shell Shay Marisa – @shaymarisa27 Nahlu – @nahlu__ Denny Directo – @ddirecto